WHAT TO DO WITH A SHRIVELLING PUMPKIN

 

 

This is our Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend.

Most of these photos were taken of Mrs. Ps Thanksgiving table I put together last week at The

 Passionate Home. Im thankful for many things especially the opportunity to step into someone elses

 shop and decorate to my hearts content. This time I even got to snack on some of the props.

 

 

I am also thankful for George.

Since I met him he always puts an apron on this weekend and serves a nice turkey dinner.

For those that ask me "what cant you do?" .... cooking a turkey is near the top of my list.

 

Mrs. P is going on vacation for awhile but plans have already been set for Christmas

decorating at TPH in November.

 

And before I leave you I have one tip for the season.

It is for the pumpkin carver in the family.

 

 

When your carved pumpkin starts to show signs of shrivelling on the front porch run a nice cold bath in your tub to rehydrate him and you can get him back on display in a few hours good as new.

I use to carve pumpkins professionally, a little cinnamon sprinkled on the inside of the lid offers a nice aroma as the candle warms it up.

 

 

HAPPY OCTOBER EVERYONE, ENJOY THE COLORS OF THE SEASON!!

 

 

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THIS LADY KNOWS WHAT SHES DOIN apothecary cabinet

Im Here, Im Here!

Let the bells ring out and the banners fly.

Ive had an extreme makeover and Im looking marvelous.

We had a long road together getting each element finished just right.

Sometimes I just didnt understand her vision and wouldnt cooperate with what she wanted.

It was a vision of beauty.

I hear that next time shes gonna show more pictures

of how we created this look together.

UPDATE

here is the link to see more about this transformation:

http://blogspot.ca/2012/06/not-just-any-word-will-do-how-to.html

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The Coffee Scoop What Happened

Good Morning All,
Well, I went outside and checked on the state of the collet chuck and the glue was dried and the whole thing seemed strong enough to withstand turning on a lathe, so I placed the oak blank in the chuck and put the whole thing onto the lathe:

I checked to make sure the handle cleared the bed of the lathe:

And then I turned the lathe on just to see what happened. It worked without incident:

Well, so far so good. Time to set up the tool rest and cut away the face of the blank:

And what do you know--it worked! I continued to shave away at the face of the blank, very gently, until it was flattened. Then I took a drill bit and cored out the center of the blank, both to establish a center in an eccentric turning and to eliminate having to cut out more wood and possibly making the blank unstable and thus make it pop out of the chuck:

Here we are several minutes into the turning and after Ive cored out the center:

As you can see the center and the blank are not lined up well. Oh well, its a prototype. Here we are several more minutes into the turning:

I turned it down and emptied it out and that went uneventfully. I just did it gently and slowly, bit by bit and here it is:

And it really does hold coffee!!

Analysis:

Well, the process works but the final product has a lot of flaws in it. The blank wasnt completely round and I used some scrap red oak which is a coarse wood and not the best for this type of small turning. On the good side, the chuck does work and so does this process so Im going to keep the chuck and try it again with harder, finer grained wood and see what happens. I am also going to carve one by hand and compare the results with the one in the photo. That will be a future project and Ill keep you posted on that.

Now here is a picture of the black ash bowl from last week. This did turn out well:

Im going to deliver this to its happy owner tomorrow.
Our next last project for the time being will be a platter made from Phillipine mahogany. Its a soft pink in color and softer and more light weight than some of the woods weve used this summer.
Well, Im going to take my coffee scoop and go and make some coffee and sit down a bit.  Have a great day and as always, thanks for stopping by.
See you soon,
VW

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UPDATING A BEDROOM what we did on labour day

Jumat, 18 Maret 2016

During our Labour Day weekend George and I changed our bedroom area.

 

 

Above is how it looked before we started and below is us starting to move things around. 

 

 

Oh the dust bunnies!!!

 

 

3 days later and all the furniture is in place but there is plenty still to do before I can show you it all.

 

 

Yes I painted the loveseat, and what an amazing difference it has made to the space.

 

 

Im also going back and forth fiinishing up the buffet and hutch from last week.

 

 

A table has come my way that I have grand plans for.

Anyone have some wonderfully beaten up, weathered lumber (2 x 6 or larger) that you want rid of?

 

 

A set of 4 chairs found their way into the back of Georges Van.

Im feeling a tad bit overwhelmed and I havent mentioned the other 3 projects on my plate.

 

 

There has been some great hardware added to the on-line shop that I found over the weekend

firstfinds etsy

 

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Clothes Hangers What You Need To Know

Closet still looks messy after installing a closet organizer? Does it not look as nice as the promotional pictures youve seen? Whats the difference? The right hangers can give your closet a neater appearance. Let me show you why and some other tips.When I was looking around for ideas to design a closet organizer for my coat closet it struck me how my closets didnt look as nice as the product photos even though I have closet organizers installed. I knew my closets wouldnt look as good as those product photos. I mean, my clothes are things I wear, not props I add to make my closet look nicer. But there was one simple and relatively inexpensive thing I could borrow from those staged photos to make my closet more visually appealing. Get new matching hangers!
Your closet is one of the first things you see every day. Having a neat, organized closet thats visually appealing which allows you to quickly find the clothes you want can really help you start off your day on a positive note. At the very least it will be one less frustration in your hectic day.
Imagine you walked into a shop and they had a rack of shirts using a mix of a dozen different types of hangers and the display looked messy. How would it make you feel about the clothes you were buying? When you open up your closet door do you want to feel like youre in a thrift store or a high end retailer where the clothes probably came from?
I have to admit that the aesthetic aspect was one of the driving factors in choosing to replace my clothes hangers but there are other benefits as well such as:

1. Save space.
2. Keep clothes from getting wrinkled, crushed or misshaped.
3. Make it easier to find what youre looking for.
4. Make it easier to put your clothes away so you dont wind up with your shirts on your footboard and your jeans pilled up in a corner.

Hanger Materials

From a visual perspective, it would be nice to have all the same hangers, but there are some hangers that are better suited to certain types of garments than others while still keeping costs down. My goal is going to be to get all the same type of material for particular types of clothes and have all the hangers at least have a chrome hook for uniformity.

Wire Hangers

Wire hangers are great for all sorts of things. They can help you unclog a sink, fish wire through walls, unlock your car door if you locked yourself out, you can even make an HDTV antenna out of them, and theyre a cheap way to transport your clothes from the dry cleaners. Theyre not so great for your clothes. 

Over the years wire hangers have been getting thinner and weaker. They dont distribute the weight of the garment over a large surface area and arent always wide enough which can cause indentations in the clothing. Apparently the metal can even discolor some fabrics, which is why when you get your clothes from the dry cleaners, theres sometimes a paper sleeve over the hanger or some cleaners use coated hangers.

Keep some wire hangers around because they can come in handy for different things, but once you get your clothes home from the cleaners, put them on better hangers. On your next trip to the cleaners, bring back your last set of wire hangers and see if theyll take them back so they dont wind up in a landfill. From what I understand many cleaners will accept them.
If for some reason you must have wire hangers (packing in a travel garment bag for instance) these Organize It All Chrome Hangers

These are better for your clothes than wire hangers and most of my closets were filled with them. Theyre not horrible but over the years you pick up some from the drugstore, the supermarket, and other locations and you wind up with a bunch of slightly different hangers in a rainbow of colors. It destroys the uniformity Im looking to achieve. 

Getting all new plastic hangers that are the same size and color is an option but it seems like a waste. If Im going to replace my hangers I want to replace them with something better.

Another problem with plastic hangers is some hangers wind up becoming different sizes and shapes, over time some of the hanger hooks have deformed resulting in an uneven appearance that makes the closets look cluttered. Hanging heavy items, such as jeans, on the bar of the hanger can also cause them to deform as can be seen in the photo above.

Velvet Hangers

These new types of hangers appear to be very popular. They have a chrome hook, which fits with my design goal, and the body of the hanger is a thin plastic that has a flocked surface. Think of the inside of a jewelry box. This velvet like surface provides friction to prevent clothes from slipping. They also have little indentations to hold on to clothes with thin straps so your tanks and spaghetti strap dresses dont wind up on the floor every time you look at them funny. 

Theyre reasonably priced and have a lot of good reviews. The only big downside is that if you put wet clothing on them it can cause the color of the "velvet" to transfer to your clothing, or otherwise damage the textured coating. I usually hand wash my workout clothes when Im done with them then throw them on hangers and allow them to air dry. Im going to need to keep a few plastic hangers around for that.

I purchased some velvet hangers to see what all the rage was about and I have to admit Im pretty happy with them. I think they will make a good general purpose hanger for shirts and other tops. I replaced some of my plastic hangers with these velvet hangers and theres a big difference in the before and after photos.

You can see that the shirts line up better when theyre all on the same type of hanger. The collars and shoulders are more in alignment. The shirts also sit better on the hanger and dont move around when I hang them on the rod thanks to the non-slip velvet texture. It makes it easier to find the shirt Im looking for and the shirt doesnt slide around as I put it back on the rod.

If you look closely on the back wall of the photo there are CedarSafe Aromatic Eastern Red Cedar Flakeboard Closet Liner PanelsVelvet Suit Hangers

If you want to feel like youre looking through the racks of a high end clothing store when youre selecting your outfit for the day theres nothing better than real wood hangers. They add a touch of elegance to your closet. People who market closet organizers seem to understand this because every single product photo Ive seen for closet organizers used wooden hangers.

They are available available in a number of different colors to match your closets decor as well as unfinished aromatic cedarThe quality of the wooden hangers I mentioned above are adequate and about what you can expect for hangers in that price range. If money is no object and you want the best hand made, hand finished made in the USA hangers that money can buy visit Butler Luxury. Whats surprising about these hangers is how affordable they are. Okay, theyre not cheap compared to the wooden hangers above that can go for less than $1 each but compared to other high end hangers from The Hanger Project or Beverly Hangers, theyre in the same ball park. Thats quite a feat considering the Hanger Project and Beverly Hangers are machine manufactured in China while the Butler Luxury hangers are hand made here in the good ol US of A. Check out Gentlemans Gazette for a full review of Butler Luxury Hangers.

Hangers Types For Different Clothes

Your standard triangle shaped "suit hanger" can serve most purposes but there are benefits to getting specialty hangers for different types of clothes.

Pant and Skirt Hangers

There are three basic types of pant hangers, an open ended bar hanger, a clip top hanger as well as using clips on a standard suit hanger. You my need more than one type depending on your wardrobe and how you like to hang your pants.
One tip that can be used for all pants hangers though is to hang your pants with the crotch facing the back wall. It helps make everything look more uniform.

Open Ended Pants Hangers

If like me, you fold your pants on hangers, these open ended hangers both look nice and are very functional. 

I ordered a couple dozen of the Jobar Slacks Easy Slide Hangers

I used to hang my jeans on the bar of plastic hangers and my dress pants usually stayed on the hangers that came from the dry cleaners. The wire hanger with the cardboard tube over the bar seemed to do well to keep the pants from sliding off the bar and onto the floor when I was shuffling through them looking for something to wear.
As you can see though, they looked sloppy and the weight of the jeans would distort them.
The Jobar slacks hangers have a few great benefits.

• There is a ribbed plastic or rubber sleeve over the bar that provides friction to keep the pants from sliding off the hanger. 
• The hangers are chrome plated so they match up well with the chrome plated tops of the Velvet Hangers I purchased. 
• They seem very durable and have no problem holding up heavy jeans. I even put 4 pairs of jeans on one hanger and the hanger could handle it.
• They can even be used to hang folded sweaters or shirts on the bar better than suit hangers.
• Its easier to take pants off the hanger and put them back on compared to standard suit hangers. You dont even need to take the hanger off the closet rod.
• Its easier to see which pants are which because the view isnt obstructed. This is especially helpful for me as I have my pants hanging on the lower half of a double hang rod section.
• The pants sit up higher off the floor compared to suit hangers which makes a much nicer space below the pants for additional shoe storage. There is enough clearance to easily see the shoes. This alone makes the purchase of the hangers worth the cost in my opinion.

One of the major complaints in the reviews were that they werent long enough. The Jobar pant hangers I received have no problems holding the size 34 waist pants that I have hanging on them and theres room to spare. The bar is 12" long (13" if you count the bent up end portion) so if you have any concerns fold your pants over a hanger you already own, take a tape measure and measure the width of the pants at the hanger bar. If your pants are too wide to fit on the hangers and you didnt get a small size by mistake, think about exercising more or get rid of the MC Hammer pants.

The specifications for the other hangers (like these Whitmor Chrome and Foam Collection Slack Hangers which have a foam instead of plastic cover) dont seem to be substantially wider than the ones I purchased except for maybe these Closet Complete Foam-Coated Chrome Non-Slip Pants Hangers

Skirts and Shorts can also be hung using these types of hangers in double hang sections. Some of my cargo shorts and bike shorts are especially hard to fold and Im planning on getting clip top hangers for these. I still havent decided which ones. Either chrome and black ones that match the slacks hangers or wooden ones because the wood will be visible and provide a more pleasing appearance. These are the ones Im considering.

The Honey-Can-Do Wood Wide Shoulder Suit Hangers Read More..