I was a little rushed, but still managed to rinse the noodles, and tonight the entire family sat and enjoyed a dinner of Chicken Parmesan, garlic bread, pasta and steamed veggies.
Midway through the meal Penny, one month off her 2nd birthday, stands up on her chair and pulls at her pants. We ask her if she needed to go potty, she shook her head no. Curious, the Breadwinner and I watched as she maneuvered out of her pants and headed to the bathroom. She returned with her potty chair, placed it at my feet and gingerly backed into a sit.
Her business finished she proudly stood up and removed the potty insert, walked into the kitchen where she raised the insert over her head and poured it in the sink not spilling a drop!
For a second I was proud her of then it hit me and I laughed so hard I nearly falling out of my chair. The Breadwinner looks at me as if my reaction didn’t fit the situation. I managed to calm down enough to say “look in the sink.” He skeptically walked into the kitchen and began to laugh as his gaze fell upon the freshly “seasoned” pasta sitting in a bowl still in the sink.
Seconds anyone?
All 3 of my kids were in cloth diapers from birth till they potty trained. If the sound of cloth diapers brings visions of pins and plastic pants research the latest advances in cloth diapering, these are not your grandma’s diapers!
I like to think my crunchiness turned my neighbor ConservaMom into a cloth diapering momma but she was already on her way, I was more of an accelerant along her path to crunchiness 
Enter the diaper sprayer! ConservaMom wanted a diaper sprayer to help care for her new cloth diapering obsession so we teamed up to install it!
Shut the water off!
Flush and hold the handle up to empty the reservoir.
Unscrew the top.
Unscrew the bottom, have a towel ready there is water in the line.
Remove the pipe.
Install the diaper sprayer shutoff.
If you started with a straight tube replace it with a flexible hose.
Push the tube in. It is secured by a method similar to Chinese handcuffs.
Convenient sprayer holder.
Ready for a test drive.
And it works!
Be sure to check out ConservaMom’s blog for great cloth diapering information and a diaper sprayer giveaway!
We’re moving. I have mixed emotions about this but it’s happening anyway. I’ve given up all my grand home improvement projects and begun tackling the not-so-fun Home Maintenance projects. Thanks to Murphy’s Law the Home Maintenance project list keeps growing….
On Christmas Day I opened the coat closet and parts flew through the air with the greatest of ease. After some searching I found a ball and spring under my sofa.
A trip to Home Depot later I learn that I have a Ball Catch mechanism holding my closet doors closed. Okie dokie, I can do this!
This may have caused the problem.
The catch on the left is not level!
The catch on the left is not level and that was the offending side! I suspect the incorrectly installed plate caused uneven wear and the eventual failure of the door part of the ball catch.
Remove the plate.
Seat the plate and fix the screw hole with toothpicks.
Break off toothpick to fill hole.
Hole filled with broken toothpicks.
The screw holes are stripped. Toothpicks make an easy inexpensive fix! Breaking off toothpicks in the hole provides material for the screw to grip, add a little wood glue for extra strength.
The left plate is level.
New Ball Catch.
Remains of old broken "ball thingy" on top of door.
Removing the old system.
Installing the new system.
It's in.
Time to adjust.
Screwed down a bit and looks good.
Works great, all done!
Shortly after I finished this project my neighbored asked for help with her door falling off its hinges, the toothpick trick fixed her up. As I was getting ready to type up this blog my front door broke, the fun never ends!
All my fun projects have been canceled but if you need some motivation to get going on those home maintenance projects simmering on the back burner then hang around, grab a Mommy’B'Happy drink and submit a brag or two!
Cancelled, one major garden renovation! The Breadwinner has added “Move Family” to the To-Do list. Instead of building my dream garden I’ve opted to give the garden a little “curb appeal.”
We may sell or maybe rent, either way the garden needs sprucing up. I had grand plans to add raised beds, stepping-stones, flower beds, increase the overall size and define a border. Not knowing if the next occupants will even want a garden I have scrapped my plans to replicate the Garden of Eden and settled for cost-effective landscape edging.
Sunning the edging makes it more pliable.
Plastic edging is rigid and unforgiving when cold, it is easiest to install on a sunny and/or warm day. I learned the sunny day lesson by watching my neighbor’s cloudy/cold day edging project 
Edging set in the trench.
To install the edging dig a small trench ~4 inches deep and wide enough to hammer in anchors at a 45° angle.
Anchor
45 degrees is best, I'm a little shallow but it'll work
This brand of edging sells in rolls of 60′ and 20′. I needed 74′.
Splicing the ends, easy peasy IF it's warm.
All Spliced.
Done. *Note the bad photo, I'm using it anyway cause it's RAINING!!
After anchoring simply back fill and it’s done! My first attempt installing edging, the hardest part was keeping the kiddos occupied.
Are you impressed? This could be your garden. Would you like to live somewhere over the rainbow?
Neil: “Mommy don’t let the baby sit next to me she causes me money.”
Me: “she causes you money?”
Neil: “I don’t have enough money for a baby.”
Me: “This is true son.”
Meet Jamie, her boys are older than mine and her stories scare me.
It’s sometimes a bad sign when your boys are extremely loud, but it’s never a good thing when they are altogether quiet. Sure enough, boy number three thumps down the stairs to give us the scoop. Boy number one threw boy number two through the wall. Or maybe it was vice versa. We are still waiting for lab results on that one.
That hole needed to be dealt with, and sure enough it had to be covered when it suddenly got very cold. The second story of an old farm house is not a warm place to be on a cold night, but with a hole in the wall it becomes downright chilly. Since hubby was out of town, someone else had to come to the rescue.
I loaded up all four kids to go to the local hardware store. “Hole in the drywall? I’ve got an easy fix for that. How big is the hole?” (Me) “Oh, it’s about four feet.” Hardware lady stops in her tracks. “Four feet?! You boys can’t do things like that!” (I tried not to laugh. You’ve got to love a local hardware store!) Yeah, those little patches wouldn’t do the trick for this job. We needed a sheet of drywall, some mud, some drywall tape. We already had a utility knife and various sized paddles for putting on the mud.
When nap time arrived, I began. First I measured the hole. I drew an even rectangle around the hole.
Then I cut along the line.
Once everything was cut, I pulled out the bad drywall.
Then I had a perfectly even rectangle. Perfect. Why are you zooming in? Okay, it’ s not perfect, but drywall is forgiving like that.
Next I measured my
perfect–Okay, my rectangle-ish hole.
I then measured out my patch.
I cut out my patch.
I lined up the patch and screwed it into the board using a drill.
Then I put offender number one to work. He began to apply a layer of the mud using the smallest paddle.
Then I covered that layer with the drywall tape.
Once that mud was dry, I sanded it down and applied a larger second coat. I repeated that process using bigger paddles.
Once the final layer was dried and sanded down, I painted my wall.
My boys watched the process. Hopefully the next hole they create will be smaller so they can patch it themselves.
By: Jamie Jeffers
The Breadwinner and I bought our first home a few years ago, it was a welcome step up from townhouse living. Starting a garden, playing with the landscape plants and the sprinkler system all excited me! I’d never had a sprinkler system before, how fun?!
Didn’t take us long to figure out the sprinkler system leaked. Since the system was barely a year old we called the installer who happily came out and “fixed” it. I’ll keep a long story short by saying I’m pretty sure the installing company knew what I eventually discovered i.e. they do HORRIBLE work. I called another company, who came out and “fixed” it.
After 2 years, a few hundred dollars and one flooded neighbor’s basement I resolved to dig the &$^# thing up. The Breadwinner veto’d my brilliant idea.
A few weeks ago I was having brunch and mentioned my archenemy. What-do-ya-know, an acquaintance used to own a landscape business and he was willing to help!!!! After 4 hours and what I’m pretty sure was the look of regret on his face we still had leaks. Thankfully he taught me enough to carry on the fight solo.
To-date there are 3 known problem areas. 2 of those areas, totaling 6 leaks, no longer leak. I honestly don’t know how many more leaks I’ll find or even if I’ll find them all without digging up the entire system, which I wanted to do in the first place!
The Breadwinner is away on business for a few weeks, I had planned to spend this time working on a major garden renovation not mud wrestling my archenemy. If you’ve missed me the last few weeks, thanks, I miss blogging. I’d rather be blogging about retaining walls, arbors, hops, over seeding, root canals…anything but sprinkler systems!
A sneak peek at the “How Not To” blog that’s coming if when I win this war.
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- The doohickey is attached to the thingamajig on the whatchamacallit.
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- Glenn and Neil’s old bike tube has been repurposed. It was a last ditch attempt and it worked!
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- Can you see the cable wire running left to right under the splice? I knew it was around but still surprised to find it.
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- I cut a donut in the sod! sniff sniff, what’s that I smell?
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- Nice, as if this project wasn’t “fun” enough, a dog doo doo donut. I was amused enough to take a photo :)
Glen: “Mommy Penny’s feeding the fish to much, she’s going to make it have babies in it’s tummy!”
Neil: “The goldfish is growing up.”
Glen: “When the fish grows up he’ll be a shark.”
When we moved to our first house with a yard I was EXCITED to start a garden. My dad was kind enough to load up his Allis-Chalmers garden tractors and travel a few hours to plow and till my new garden!
My garden, day 1.
The sod didn’t plow well, later while tilling we found plastic mesh twisted around the tiller blades. We assume a combination of the mesh and clay soil caused the difficulty plowing.
My dad with toddler Glen.
I honestly had no idea that most sod is grown on a “biodegradable” plastic mesh. Before putting in my garden I’d never played with sod. The sod had been in place for 2 years when we plowed the garden. I talked to the landscape professional that laid the sod and he assured me the mesh would degrade after 2 years.
I could have removed all the chunks of sod but being the lazy gardener I am I chose to leave it. With assurance the plastic mesh would degrade in the next year I felt confident in my laziness.
Sweet potato found some mesh.
I dug this sweet potato last week. The plastic “biodegradable” mesh has been in the ground 5 years and shows little sign of degrading. I have pulled mesh out my garden since day 1 and every year I have a carrot and/or sweet potato that finds some more. Needless to say I regret my laziness and I am now a huge proponent of seeding grass vs laying sod.
