Yesterday morning we ran to town to look at stain colors for the deck. We made a decision. I liked Natural Cedar. Vince liked Pecan so . . Pecan it is. 🙂
Vince cut the grass in front with the push mower. It’s an area where he had planted some kind of winter grass last fall. It grew very well but then summer came along, the grass died and weeds took over. We no longer have the grass cutter cutting our grass weekly and I fear that one of us thinks the grass could be cut every 10 – 12 days right now and one of us figures two to three weeks is good.
Here’s a weird story. Yesterday Vince was in the shop putting the push mower together. He had the roll up door open and the sun was shining in. There was a box sitting several feet from the door with a bottle in it. Vince said he thought he smelled smoke, looked around and didn’t see any, kept working, kept thinking he smelled smoke . . looked up and the box was on fire . . inside the shop! The sun had been shining through that glass bottle which was acting like a magnifying glass and caught the cardboard on fire. Vince threw the box out in the yard and it burned right up.
If Vince had not been standing right there or had walked away, he could have lost his new shop. I try to be so careful with the magnifying lamps, close the ones that have lids and cover the ones that don’t have lids, but there are plenty of times I forget. I think I’ll be more careful after this incident. My chair sits by a window but it has a blind over it. There’s a transom over the front door and in the afternoons, for a few weeks this time of year, I have to open the door to the entertainment center to block the bright light as the sun sets. Magnifiers and sun are not a good inside combination.
Additions:
I didn’t order anything but a lot arrived yesterday. It was mostly charts I’d already mentioned or charts from a friend. I’m not mentioning names but I have a friend who seems to accidentally order the same chart twice and I’m certainly laughing with her because I do the same thing so we both sent off packages to each other with our extras – without even planning it, we sent the packages on the same day and they were supposed to arrive on the same day! Weird.
Cooking:
I seared fish and steamed asparagus yesterday. The fish was tilapia I had purchased that wasn’t frozen, though it may have been at one time. I seasoned it with salt, pepper and Cajun Redhead, then seared it in browned butter, added fresh lemon juice and simmered the fish a few minutes in the lemon juice. It was good. We had just a lettuce and tomato salad with that.
Videos I Watched:
Contented Stitcher had a new one – #26. I love seeing what she’s working on.
Stitching:
I worked on Addie’s Cat-O-Lantern. This was a picture I took and printed for her to show her mom. I got more done on the pumpkin, got the sun stitched and several more of the yellow border blocks stitched.
Plans for Today:
Today’s lunch is going to be keto pizza casserole, probably with steamed broccoli and a salad. I’d like to plant some lettuce in pots. Vince found some neat pots at Aldi that connect and I think I’ll plant lettuce in them – make consecutive plants every 5 – 7 days and see if we can have fresh lettuce for a while.
I’d like to stitch more on Addie’s pumpkin but it’s kinda hard without the other orange. I don’t do well counting, leaving open spaces and then stitching more. I think I’ll finish as much as I can in the border and then I may put this aside til that other skein of floss gets here.
I might have said yesterday that the rick rack arrived for Harvest Tina so I’m going to try my hand at stitching a pillow today.
That’s it . . as far as I know.
Sara Fridley says
How scary to have that box catch fire like that. A good safety reminder for us all. My husband and I disagreed on deck stain this spring too. I wanted the Natural Cedar, and he wanted something darker. He chose the darker one (I don’t remember what it was called) and it ended up looking almost black – which means the deck has been too hot to even walk on most of the summer. It looks awful too. So I’m hoping that next summer we HIRE someone to strip it down to the cedar again and re-stain it properly. But we’ll see what actually happens.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
The paint store had wood samples. One with the pecan was very dark and one wasn’t. Vince is set on pecan so we’ll see. I hadn’t thought about the heat. We had brown Trex decking at our first house in MO and I don’t know if it was the brown or the Trex but it got miserably hot. I had forgotten about that.
RuthW in MD says
My neighbor in Virginia put in a brown Trex deck, no trees at all in her backyard. She said it was so hot they just could not use the deck during the summer. Brown is not good for a deck that gets lots of sun.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
We had brown Trex in our first house in MO and it was HOT. Trex, or any composite, does get way hotter than wood. I’m sure brown wood will be warmer than tan wood but brown wood is going to be considerably cooler than brown Trex.
Some of our boards are going to be replaced and some will be older so we need a bit darker to help hide the new vs. old (and it still may not). Vince said he’ll refinish the wood every two years (maybe!) so if we don’t like it, we can always change it next time.
Val says
We have a cedar deck here and I have stained it twice. The stain wore off each time even tho used the right product and applied it properly. My husband decide it should be done again this year so I told him to go ahead but I wasn’t going to do it. The shoveling in the winter seems to take the stain off after a period of time.
Anyway, he didn’t stain it so I guess it wasn’t that important after all?
Judy I think that I may have just ordered the same chart twice last night..LOL.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
It is easy to order the same chart twice. Sometimes at 123 Stitch, I’ll put the chart in the cart, then “check all” to get the floss and forget that the chart was in there already and “check all” adds it again. Other times, I keep wanting a chart for months, not buying it, then buy it and only remember wanting it for a long time and buy it again. Other times, I remember nothing and buy it again!
I started using the X Stitch app and that has helped a lot. I add everything to the app as soon as it arrives and have done a good job of checking it before ordering.