What's Cookin'?

When Walt Kowalski takes a long weekend, we are always exhausted by Monday morning.  Today is no exception.  I could use a nap already. 

But it was a great and productive weekend.  The weather was beautiful.  We had three evenings of campfires.  Mars and Saturn were easily visible.

It's tricky to get a photo of a planet without moving the camera.  They were so close and bright.  Walt Kowalski reminds me that I have a telescope.  I do have a telescope.  Maybe I know what I will be doing this fall.  {FYI, there's lots of things coming this fall.  Stay tuned.}

 

 

This long weekend had a specific purpose: kitchen cabinets and counter top.  I had a coupon!  The goal was to get as much in one purchase as possible.  The problem was fitting all of the purchases into the truck.  But we did it. 

 

How do you fit a 10x10 kitchen into the bed of an 8 foot truck?

 

Very carefully.  And a few tie down straps.

 

We had a few minor adjustments {frustrations} with the first cabinet.  The house is not square. (Good luck finding a house that is perfectly square.) Nothing a shim or two or three won't fix.  Here's our fancy crutch to help hold the cabinet in place.
 

 
Once we found level, we were rolling. 

 
We specifically did not finish the drywall in the laundry room (the wall behind the cabinets).  This way if we needed an additional support brace to hang cabinets, we could add one.  I also took photos of the window wall before I finished the drywall so we knew were the studs and support beams were located.  We referred to that photo more than a few times.   

 

We like it.



 

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo - aka Fibonacci

Leonardo Pisano Bigollo - aka Fibonacci (pronounced fee - bee - nach - ee {Italian hand gestures will get you bonus points}) was an Italian mathematician, considered by some "the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages." 

He is best known for spreading the Hindu-Arabic numeral system through Europe in the year 1202.  You know that basic counting method we use today...1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.....(There wasn't much on television back then.)

Leonardo figured out the Fibonacci Sequence of numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144.

The next number in the sequence is found by adding the previous two numbers.
1 + 1 = 2
1 + 2 = 3
2 + 3 = 5
5 + 3 = 8

If you were laying tile, you could use the Fibonacci number sequence to create a pattern such as this:

 

The number sequence also creates a spiral.

The Fibonacci Sequence can be written as a rule:

X8 = X7 + X6

Then it gets really mathy really quickly:

For those non math lovers out there, I hear you saying 'Blah blah blah. Math. Math. Math.'  I agreed, too. 

I have several volunteer sunflowers growing where the bird feeder was previously located.

One of them bloomed this weekend.  And then I saw it...

 
See those seeds in the center of the sunflower...the Fibonacci Sequence.  It's in the veins of the leaves, too.  Here it is again, just trickier to see:

The math geek in me says "Cool." The gardener in me says "Those flowers are beautiful and perfect.  Plant more."

For the last two years we tried to plant sunflowers.  The rain washed them away.  The chipmunk dug them up.  I should have just asked for volunteers. 

I would love an entire field of sunflower volunteers.  There is always next spring to try again. 

Ready To Go

The painter has had enough painting.  (Thank goodness we are almost done painting!)  So instead of painting, we worked on the floor in the back bedroom. 

 

 

It goes fast and looks great.   Meanwhile, Walt Kowalski installed the upstairs toilet!  Woo Hoo!

 
It's a nice toilet with the worst toilet seat EVER.  Anybody who has cleaned a toilet knows that this toilet seat will be awful to clean:

Grooves on the underside of a toilet seat!  We were speechless. Why don't they make it with more places to catch dirt and mold!

Obviously, the person that designed this never cleaned a toilet.  Or they have a side business selling better toilet seats and want you to buy theirs. 

Great toilet.  Awful seat. 

March, march, march

I opened the pantry next to the kitchen to get a napkin and when I moved the bag o'napkins, I saw an ant run and hide under the next closest box.

Crap.

Moved the box.  Got the ant.  Got a new napkin.  Saw another ant run and hide. 

Crap. Crap.

I told Walt Kowalski that his suspicions were correct, the ants were in the pantry.  He said he noticed a line of them earlier in week headed towards the pantry with knives and forks. 

The pantry was added to the to-do list.  It wasn't THAT bad actually.  I have seen it worse. 

Here was before:

The bags at the bottom take about 2 weeks to get out of control.  I'm usually in a hurry and trying to find a bag without a hole or a larger or smaller bag for my needs. 


 

The pantry is now ant free!  The ant picnic surrounded a single candy cane pushed to the back from Christmas baking.  Small, but enough to feed a large ant family.  Yummy, yummy, yummy.

Some things were combined.  Some things went to the trash.  There were lots of crumbs (do we eat IN the pantry?), multiple boxes of pasta, unruly bags, boxes of crackers with a half eaten sleeve of that was now stale, a bottle of honey with a 1/4 inch of crystalized honey left in the bottom.  You know, the usual pantry stuffs.

Everything was removed, all shelves were swept, wiped clean and dried. 

The big container of cat food MUST be kept on a high shelf.  These cats are organized.  They can open the door and bite through the container.  It hasn't happened just once.

This is not the only pantry in the house.  I have three more small closets it the laundry room.  That's where I keep the majority of things...canned goods, sauces, chips, baking supplies.  They get unruly, too.  They are rather empty lately.  I haven't been buying as much to "eat up" the old.  I went down yesterday for something quick for a snack.

No snack foods.  Not a single thing to take as a snack. 

Maybe that's a good thing...no mindless snacking will help watch our waistlines.  But it's not good when a snack was needed.  Can I offer you a box of uncooked pasta?

Start a new grocery list...

I see..

 

a super moon rising.  Friday evening was beautiful.  Very little humidity and warm.  We knew we needed a new fire pit, but we just didn't get around to getting one.  Last weekend we extended the life of our old fire pit for two additional evenings of fire by using the spark screen inside the "bowl" of the pit as an additional liner of sorts.

 

But we could extend no more.  We splurged and got a new one.  It wasn't a big splurge and it was budgeted from our entertainment funds.  This is our kind of entertainment.

 

 

 
We love it.  And we were entertained with a meteor shower and a super moon.  Unfortunately, the super moon made the meteor shower impossible to see.  But it was still a beautiful evening. 

 

Looks very much like a fall moon, but we won't even go there yet. 

Gotta Go

Soon we will be able to "go" upstairs!  In the bathroom, that is.

The bathroom tile went down fast, and dried even faster!

 

We installed 8 rows of full tiles, leaving all the pieces needing cut.  Then we went back and cut all of the partials around the outside.  It took just as long to lay 8 rows of tile as it did to cut the outside pieces.

 

 
The finished product looks great.  No escape ladders out the window needed this time.

Tuesday...grout.

Arts & Crafts

It has been a good week to finish projects.  Too many unfinished projects drive me crazy.  I'm guilty that I get bored with the project or the project gets too difficult or I don't have all the supplies readily available. (Don't look in the closet room.  It's where I hide all of the unfinished projects.  If I can't see them, then I don't think about them being unfinished.)  I finished another arts & crafts project this morning. 

If you recall, I help my sister paint several rooms in her house.  Rooms belonging to two young ladies who are quickly becoming teenagers! 

I wanted to use their names to create something unique in a font they selected.  Easy.  Inexpensive. And if they get tired of one font, I can create something new a different font or different colors. 

Take 1 sharp knife, several large pieces of cardboard, add a cool font, and the same color paints used in their rooms...

One font is curly.  One font is geometrical. 
 

 
All pieces cut out of cardboard.  They aren't perfect, but they are unique.   

The ideas are endless, an additional piece of cardboard around the edge, more dots or hearts, a different shape in front or behind...