Can Dogs Climb Trees?

Because mine keeps trying -- oh how the squirrells taunt her!

Summer Rain

We had more great rain yesterday. I sat out on my porch, all high and dry, and just took it all in. Rain, my dog, some coffee, and a magazine on a summer afternoon: Bliss.

Coming Soon

I've decided I need a list here -- where I can actually find it -- of posts that I need to create to get up to date. So here's what's coming soon... Don't let the suspense kill you, I know it all sounds VERY exciting.

Gutters
Painted trim
Alley upgrade
Guest room re-do
Tree trimming
Crawl space
Squirrel in tree
Fairy door
Shed

Kitchen Cabinet Make Over

I have 2 new projects in the works... One, I am trying to choose a color to paint my livingroom. I got a can of paint last night and rolled it on a sample wall this morning -- oof da! Definitely not the right color. I was going for a tomato-y orange/red, and ended up too red. I think I can take it back to the paint department and have them tweak it to use on my second project: a kitchen cabinet re-work:



Sorry, I know that picture is kind of small -- if you double click it, you can see it better.

It's the red cubbies that I like. Well, I like a LOT of things in the photo but it's the red cabinets that I am actually going to try to do in my kitchen. It seems fairly easy and inexpensive: remove the doors, remove the facing, and then add some vertical boards to create cubbies, and paint.

Worst case scenario, I feel like I don't have much to lose. I think the cabinets are original and they are really unattractive both in design and paint color. So if I fail miserably, I either put the doors back on, or I take everything down and mount some simple shelving. Ultimately I want open cabinets for my upper cabinets.

Lost and Found

In an earlier post about the phone-shelf-now-built-in-bookcase, I referenced an item that Vic found down in the wall within the phone shelf. It is an old skeleton key. It was very dusty and cob-webby... I tried it in 2 interior door locks in my house and it slid in easily. It feels like it would actually work the lock mechinism if there wasn't 80 years of paint over it.

I wonder who let it slip out of reach? An adult, fiddling with it while they chatted on the phone? A child, who maybe was opening doors they weren't supposed to open? Did they have a replacement key?

And then when I look at the simple design of a skeleton key I wonder, how different could they all be? I suspect a skeleton key would open 1 out of every 3 locks on any given street... but what do I know?

Giddy

We got rain last night, and all four of my rain barrels are over flowing! That's over 200 GALLONS of water. Oh, happy day!

For the 2 blue barrels, (I have 2 blue ones and two faux terra cotta ones) I plan to wrap them in burlap to disguise them. And I still need to level them on the cement blocks and "landscape away" the blocks. But they are full of water!!