Spooning in the garden

It's birthday season here in Oregon. The first birthday of the year was in early April and I'm still feeling guilty that the birthday gifts are sitting on my buffet. (The shipping box isn't big enough and every time I get a bigger box I add a few more things and then I need a bigger box. I'm hopeless...)

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, in May, we had another birthday. remember? I showed you the boxes we gift wrapped. Next one is mid to late June, then mid July, mid August, early September, three in October, three in November, then Christmas.

Whew!
So anyhoo, I was poking around Etsy for gifty ideas and came across a sweet idea from Monkeys Always Look. I thought you'd like to see these charming vintage upcycled garden markers.

I love upcycled stuff!

(Oh. And my birthday is in October, so you still have time to shop for me...)

Spiffied up CD jewel case liners

Here is a nifty CD case insert
Originally uploaded by passitonplates

Boring and Bland are my enemies. Their evil plan is to make life as boring as possible, and we just can't have that now, can we?

Whenever possible I try to foil their evil plan... with as little time and effort as necessary.

Maybe I'm cheap and lazy. No, don't try to be nice. I admit it. I am cheap and lazy.

I take great pride in my easy craft projectss and love making all kinds of fabulous stuff for cheap. (wink!)

And it's fun on the inside, too
Originally uploaded by passitonplates

See?
Fun fun fun on both sides of the insert.

It's just a single sheet of scrapbooking paper
Originally uploaded by passitonplates

Yeah, I'm thinking those "design your own CD case insert" programs are awful and my printer is not that great. This is faster, easier, better-looking, and I can do it when it's someone else's turn on the home computer.

See? Tell your mother it's not a such bad thing to be lazy. And when you admit to her that you're cheap, be sure to point out you mean financially. Not . . . the other kind of cheap.

The paper has designs on both sides
Originally uploaded by passitonplates

This was so easy and looked so great that I made a bunch and then scoured the house looking for more vacant CD cases to spiffy up.

Ok, ready? Here's how to make yours:

1. Select a sheet of two-sided scrap booking paper that you want to use for this project. Decide which side will be shown when the case is closed and which side will be shown when the case is open.

2. Fold the sheet of paper, making sure that the paper on at least one side of the fold is as large (or larger than) the CD jewel case.

3. Align an existing CD insert with the folded edge of your scrap booking paper. Using the CD insert as your template, and a really light touch with your pencil, trace around the remaining 3 sides of the CD insert.

4. Cut along your traced line.

5. Embellish as desired. I traced the shape of the CD on the front and cut it out.

6. Slide into place.

Ta dah!
Now poke through the house looking for more boring CD jewel cases to spiffy up.
You know you want to.

Scrabble time, literally

I was looking for some scrabble-related stuff last week and found Two Cheeky Monkeys, two clever ladies from down in Eugene who make neat stuff out of old board games and children's books found at thrift stores and yard sales.

This clock made me smile.

Either this classic game was rejected by its owner because the letter distribution was a little off (there's just one letter X per game) and nobody could think up that many words containing the letter X... or the ladies at Two Cheeky Monkeys found a place to buy extra letters.

All of Pam's parents are big Scrabble players and I bet any one of them could use up three Xs and five Vs in a single game, but most people would give up after the words Axe, Xray, Live or Love, and Evil.

Although you could use Vex, and on a triple word bonus that's what? ...a 42-point, three letter word?
Not bad.

Of course, when it's time to play Scrabble, you'd have to keep score in this book.

Get ready...

We have a big even planned here at The Adventures of Pam & Frank.

The blog renovation is almost done and to celebrate, we're going to have a party!
Stay tuned for details...

Flickr Album Covers

Here's something to kill about a half an hour or so...

1. Go to a random page in Wikipedia by clicking here:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random Wikipedia article that shows up is the name of your band.
   
   
2. Get a random quotation by clicking here:
   http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last three to five words of the very last quote of that page is your album title.
   
   
3. Go to flickr by clicking here:
   http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
   Click on the third picture, no matter what it is. Scroll down and look on the right, under Tags, to make sure you don't see this symbol with the copyright info.
   
   
   
   If you don't see it, this picture will be your album cover. If you do see it, the picture's copyright excludes it from this game. Just go back and hit refresh/reload to repeat this step.
   
   
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. (I use www.picnik.com)

Here are two more that I did.
(This next one is creepy, isn't it?)


Let's see yours! Post one (or more) to your blog then comment here with the URL to your post. You can copy these instructions to your post, too.
Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Twigmeister Twig Furniture

Twigmeister Twig Furniture, originally uploaded by Adventures of Pam & Frank.

This guy was making a chair as people watched. Very neat. I've always loved twig furniture. Now it makes me want a house with a front porch even more than ever, so I would have a place to put one of these twig chairs.

This guy is smart, too. When I asked for permission to photograph him for my blog, he said, "Ok, but link me." Absolutely.

This guy is the Twigmeister at www.Twigmeister.com

This was taken at the Salem Saturday Market on May 30, 2009

Yesterday's storm

Ok, you people in other parts of the country, stop laughing.

True, Oregon has a bad rap for rain, but it's drizzle. Sometimes heavy drizzle, but we don't have a lot of wind, downpours, tornado watches, flooding, and in the 6 1/2 years I've lived here I haven't experienced any thunder and lighning.

At all.

...until yesterday afternoon...

When it was over, Rachel and I hopped in the car to drive around and survey the damage.

Along with 60 mph winds, we got about a half inch of rain in 30 minutes.

While waiting for the storm drains to clear the water, this guy found something to do...

Really?

Really?, originally uploaded by elziard.

Craigslist ad - want a hamster cage?

I was having so much fun writing Craigslist ads that I thought it would be fun to share them with you.

Besides, maybe you're interested in some crap from our garage?
Sure you are.

Here is exactly how this item is listed on Craigslist:

We got this critter trail cage for Paul The Hamster a while back. Paul's now in a different cage, and this neat hamster haven is available to you.

The cage has tubes for your little critter to crawl around and you can get parts to add on and make a maze of tubes as big as you want. There are two missing parts that we cannot locate, though. There is a green ball that sits on the opening at the top of the cage, and the water bottle goes in the smaller opening. You can pick up these parts at any pet store (we got the original cage from PetCo or Pet Smart, I can't remember which.)

If you already have some tubes and parts, this would be a great second cage that your hamster could crawl to.

Oh, and for free, we'll throw in the black rubber band around the little space pod sticking up at the top of the cage. Paul figured out how to open it up and got out one night while we were sleeping. Our dog showed us Paul's hiding spot when we got up the next morning, and it took one more escape before we humans figured out what the problem was. Lucky for you, we've already retrofitted the space pod with the rubber band so it's not also an escape hatch!

You're probably looking at the pictures and wondering about the blue ball and running wheel. We're adding those as a bonus to you. The blue ball has a locking cap so you can put your critter in it, click the cap on, and watch your hamster roll around the house. This is a lot of fun and keeps your critter safe from the dog or cat or ... from getting lost! The ball fits small to medium hamsters - a large hamster would need to bend his little body to fit in here, which eventually turned out to be big Paul's problem.

The running wheel is one of those silent types. Ok, it made a little clicking noise, but we were able to keep it in the kiddo's bedroom at night and she was not kept awake by that annoying squeaky wheel. You can fit the wheel in this cage or add it to any other hamster cage.

One last note: we sanitized all of these pieces by soaking them in a bleach solution then running them through the dishwasher, so they're all nice and clean and ready for use.

Asking $20 OBO for the set shown in the pictures.

Fun Sale??

Is the sale fun? Or are they selling fun?, originally uploaded by Adventures of Pam & Frank.

Is the sale fun? Or are they selling fun?

Gosh, how irresistable. We'd better turn left and check it out!