Author Archives: mlwilkie

About mlwilkie

Software Developer, Mother, Wife with keen interest in art, design and crafts of all kinds.

Quick Update: Weekend Projects

We arrived back from vacation with an action packed weekend planned.

Firstly, I am ecstatic about my first sale on Etsy. I finished making a custom order for chair bags (for 11 in. wide kids chairs).

The first picture is the actual color swatch which shows the true color, the second picture is the finished bag but the photo was taken in the evening light.

The other big project this weekend is the backyard – we are having a “working bee”, where friends come over and help us out with manual labor in exchange for food and drinks. The two walled levels are being put into the backyard as designed in the previous post. This weekend we should have the following update done to that post (cross fingers 🙂 ):

Additional steps over the next few weekends:

Order and get the wood (DONE)
Order and get the sand, gravel and dirt (DONE – except for the gravel)
Lay out the step walls (DONE)
Put in french drains behind each step (DONE)
Fill in with soil (DONE)
Order and install concrete step tops
Order and get sod
Add the additional vegetable garden (DONE)
Place the boarders for the vegetable garden path
Fill with stones

I will post photo’s on Monday on the progress of our back yard :-).

My projects, over the weekend is to try to make progress on the:

Four Season’s Quilt
Place mats
New Monster Designs

S for Snake

Sean was so happy with making the giraffe as our first track out project, that we repeated the activity with S for Snake as the subject.

Materials we used:

Foam board – red for the tongue
Champagne Cork for the head
White paper for the teeth
Wood stick (picked up from Lowes, then cut at various sizes)
Bottle caps (6)
String
Two eyes (picked up from AC Moore or any craft store)
Super Glue or Wood Glue (for the teeth and eyes)

Drill a hole in approx. center of the Champagne Cork, wood and Bottle tops.
Tie a knot at the end of the string (big enough to make sure the string does not slip through). You may need to melt the end depending on what type of string you use.
Wrap the other end of the string with a small piece of duck tape – try to get a slightly narrow end at the tip – it makes it easier to thread through.
Sean was able to thread the string through the pieces easily enough (with assistance). Start with the bottle caps for the tail (it rattles 🙂 ), then the wood pieces and finish with the champagne cork.
Tie another knot on the string, but you will want to bend the snake to make sure you tie it loose enough. If needed melt the end of the string on this end as well.
Cut a strip of the red foam and double it up to cut the tongue shape. Take of the backing and press the tongue pieces together with the string in the middle (like a sandwich).
Glue on the eyes and teeth.
Use paint, crayons, markers or paper to decorate the pieces of wood.

Here was his journal entry, his picture, the word snake he sounded out and wrote and his story.

“Snakes curl around whatever it finds and squeezes it. The snake opens its mouth and swallows whatever it finds. His body is then very big.”

Now to come up with the next one….I think we will do “Caves” or “B for Bats” based on our trip to the blue mountains.

Goal Achieved – Relaxed

The mountains put on a scene that was amazing today. This was our best and last day in the mountains. The autumn/fall colors really came in, these are a couple of trees surrounding our cabin.

We spent the morning in Boone, strolling down the main street enjoying the park benches and the flower gardens along the pavement (footpath).

Next stop, was lunch in Blowing Rock. We tried Bistro Roca, while the food landed up tasting good, it was a little disappointing. Our lunches of Salmon with fries and a Veggie Burger, were cold the first time out. The second round the food was great; the veggie burger was Eggplant and Quinoa with tzatziki, and would recommend giving it a try.

For the trip along the way, we grabbed a coffee at the acclaimed “Bald Guy Brew of Blowing Rock”. They made the best Latte I have ever tasted….I will be stopping by there again tomorrow – one for the road, so to speak.

The afternoon of sight seeing started with the overlook at Linn Cove. It was totally worth the stop.

We got back in the car to spend the afternoon at Linville Falls region, a little further south on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had decide to go to the Linville Cavern and do the Linville Falls walk. I would definitely recommend both – Sean’s favorite is the cave. Some facts we learnt about the cavern:

There were fresh water trout that go blind in the dark after approx. two years of living in the spring cavern creek.
The stalagmites grow up (grow with all their might), stalactites grow down (they hold on tight). They are made mostly of Calcium Carbonate, Iron oxide give them a rust color. Algae (green) grow over the growths.
The bats return to the cave in winter when it is cold enough for them to hibernate.

We throughly enjoyed the 0.8 mile walk (each way) to the Linville Falls. Sean went a little crazy and pretty much ran there and back, jumping off every rock, tree stump or step he could find – exhausting just to watch let alone keep up 🙂 (I am getting old).

We started the walk around 5 pm, and got great sun-light in the late afternoon.

As sun was setting as we made our way home, stopping quickly to catch the sunset at the Grandfather mountain overlook.

It is always a little daunting at night on a windy road….I kept myself entertained by experimental with some night shots :-). The last of our photo tour.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed our vacation photographs. We had a successful vacation and, yes it was relatively STRESS FREE=RELAXING!!!! Goal achieved.

Sean’s Photographs (age 5)