Garage Makeover

Chris and I took a week off of work. Did we do anything exciting? Go anywhere interesting? Nope. We cleaned out the garage.

We had a storage shed before we moved and we pretty much just moved it straight into the new garage. As you can see, our three car garage could barely hold one car when we started.

We spent the first day breaking down empty boxes and throwing out trash. We still had lots of empty boxes from the move and from Sam's birthday. Most of the trash was just the styrofoam and other packing materials in the boxes. We loaded up the truck and made a trip to the dump. There are two different stops at the dump: one for trash and one for recycling yard trimmings, untreated lumber, cardboard, paper, etc. I wish we would have gotten a picture of the recycling operation. It's pretty amazing. I think we'll do a field trip to the dump with Sam. I think he'd get a kick out of it.

We donated an old exercise bike to one of the senior centers in town. We were so glad that someone could use it. We hate to throw out things that are perfectly functional.

We unpacked all the boxes and found everything that we were missing from the move. Some stuff got moved to the attic, but most of it is staying in the garage.

We spent the second day measuring and calculating what to buy for organization. We pretty much knew that we were going to get the Broder system from Ikea, but we had to calculate what sizes and options. A trip to Ikea and Home Depot was all we got done that day.

Day 3. We broke down the old workbench that Chris and I built out of particle board back in 2002. It was the first major wood-working project that we did. It was sad to see it go, but it just wasn't functional in the new space.

We moved everything over to the other side of the garage and built the free-standing unit in the back with the tool boards and desktops. We broke for lunch and another trip to the dump to scrap the old workbench.

I was dreading installing the wall mounted system. I thought it was going to be hard to install, but to my surprise it went up really quickly. We got lucky and actually hit a lot of studs. Each horizontal suspension rail had at least one screw that went into a stud. The one that we planned to hold the heaviest equipment had three out of seven screws in studs. Then three of the seven vertical posts were against studs.

It was Friday night and Melanie offered to babysit. Did we go out? Heck no! We finished the garage! Melanie took care of Sam and got him into bed while we installed the shelves and organizers and put everything up.

Our three car garage is now at least a two car garage. I'm pretty sure we could squeeze a third car in there if we had to. We still have a little more organization to do on the right side, but we got far enough for us to knock off and enjoy the rest of our vacation.

The whole project was a lot of fun and was pretty much like playing with a large tinker toy set. I honestly thought we would not be done by the time we went back to work tomorrow, so I'm thrilled!

The Ikea Broder system is extremely well made and very reasonably priced. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for efficient garage organization. We're considering another project down the road in using this system to organize the walk-in attic space too.

Ope it

I ran a few errands this afternoon while Sam was napping and picked up a toy golf set while I was out. It was leaning against the wall next to the back door and caught his eye the second he came down the stairs. "Ope it? Ope it?" We opened it right away and went outside to play for a while.

After we came back inside, we were all sitting in the office when Sam saw a box of cookie cutters that I got while I was out. He immediately started his chant: "Ope it? Ope it? Ope it? Ope it? Ope it?" I tried to explain that they are not toys and that we would be making cookies soon, but not today. Yeah, right. Like you can explain that to a two year old. The chant continued ... "Ope it? Ope it? Ope it?"

Chris left after two minutes. I continued to ignore Sam with the focus of a zen master. "Ope it? Ope it? Ope it?"

Five minutes later, he stopped. He was silent for a few seconds, then said, "that's Mommy's toy, huh?"

Sweet Potato Pancakes

You HAVE to try these pancakes!  I think we've had pancakes every Sunday since we moved into our new house.  We have a Wolf cooktop with a griddle, so it's a great excuse to make pancakes!  We rotate between buttermilk, blueberry, and sweet potato pancakes.  We got the idea for this recipe from Deceptively Delicious.  

We use Bisquick because we can get it at Costco, but this recipe should work with any instant pancake mix.

2 cups Bisquick Mix

1 cup milk

2 eggs

1 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup mashed sweet potato (1 sweet potato)

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Stir ingredients until blended.  Pour 1/4 cupfuls onto hot greased griddle (we set ours at 350 degrees).  Cook until edges are dry.  Turn; cook until golden.  Sweet potato pancakes will be a little darker than regular buttermilk pancakes.  

We usually try to have sweet potatoes for dinner one night during the week and just make an extra one for pancakes.   Sometimes we just buy one sweet potato and microwave it that morning.  I usually microwave it for 5 minutes, flip it over, and microwave it for 5 more minutes.  It pretty much cools off enough to add it to the batter when you mash it in a bowl.

You can see how well seasoned the griddle is.  We use it a lot more than we thought we would.  It's primary purpose is pancakes, but we also use it for premade burgers, turkey burgers, and salmon burgers (from Costco, of course).  We've also made sausages, fried eggs, bacon, and tilapia on it.  It works great!

Chris is a griddle pro now!

Ok, bottom line, you gotta try these pancakes!  How else are you going to get 5 servings of vegetables a day!

Sam actually likes sweet potato pancakes best of all.  We had them today and he ate three of them.  "More syrup, Mommy.  More syrup!"

Mystery Cake

Chris turned 35 last weekend. We had a quiet dinner at home to celebrate.



Pretending to blow out the candles.



Really blowing out the candles.



And now Sam blowing out the candles, of course.



We had Cleo groomed a few weeks back, and that guy's mom makes cakes, so I decided it would be fun to order a cake for Chris's birthday. I tried to order an Italian cream cake, but she told me that I didn't want that, so she would make us a special cake instead. It didn't matter to me. I was in it for the adventure. So, let's pretend that it actually says CHRIS instead of CHIRS, ok? It was different from any cake that I have ever had. The cake part was similar to a carrot cake. It seems like it had fruit and nuts in it. The icing between the layers had sweetened condensed milk in it, but I couldn't tell what else was in it. The icing on top either had egg whites or meringue powder in it, so it was like a hard candy shell and actually tasted like Smarties. Next time we order a cake, we might just play it safe with one of the standards, but it really is more memorable to get a mystery cake every now and then.



Sam really liked the cake. He ate a bunch of the icing.



And he ate all the little chocolate balls that spelled Chris on top.



Sam spent most of the weekend "washing" trains with is new Sodor Scrub & Shine.



He would line all his trains up and send them through one after the other until the track was full of "clean" trains.





Chris was experimenting with some of his new camera "toys" one night and took this picture of Cleo with a blue gel on the flash. I realized that we hadn't posted a picture of Cleo since she had that hematoma on her ear. It's healed very nicely, but that ear isn't pointy any more. We think it's actually really cute and gives her more character.

Film Cameras

Mary Lou gave me her collection of 35mm film camera bodies, lenses, and other accesories that she had accumulated over the years. Some of the stuff was caught in a flood at her apartment in Jackson a few years ago, so it may have been junk. I've been going through all of it and doing research on what I found and decided to resurrect what I could and shoot with it along side all of the digital stuff I shoot with now.

I know, I know -- why would you want to shoot with 35mm film now when you've got digital? Well, you might be surprised.

First, these camera are really well built and a joy to use. (They just don't make them like the used to!) They're made out of metal and glass and there's hardly any plastic on them. They feel like a fine machine instead of a piece of electronics.

Second, since the cameras are very basic, they require you to know what you're doing and set just about everything manually. That means pick your aperature, shutter speed, and manual focus. It makes you think about what you're doing and click the shutter carefully.

The hassle is that you've got to deal with film processing like the old days and then add another step to get the negatives scanned so you can share online. The scanning has become the real hassle for me. I have a Canon ink jet printer/scanner that will scan 35mm negatives but it doesn't do a very good job. Good scanners are expensive and all of this takes a long time. The trick is to have your film processed by a lab who'll scan the negatives for you. If you've got a bunch of negatives laying around and want them scanned, go to Scancafe and have them do it for you. Trust me, this is one rabbit hole you don't need to go down on your own.

I'll post pictures from my little film experiments over the next few months. Andrea got us a Holga film camera last year and it's still packed away in a box somewhere. I shot a few rolls of film on it before we moved and I plan on finding it all later this month when we finally clean up the garage.


Here's a shot of Emily and Sam shot on the Pentax K1000 with Fuji Superia 400 speed film. The scene isn't lit as well as it could be and the scan came from my home scanner. I expect future attempts to yield better results.

Wilds of Africa

We went to the Dallas Zoo last weekend to see the Wilds of Africa. We've only been to the zoo once before and we only got to see Zoo North that time.

The first thing that you see when you enter the zoo is the carousel. Sam wanted to ride it immediately, but he still doesn't want to sit on an animal. He just wanted to sit on a bench with Chris and me.

Of course we have to stop by and see the parrots. Sam wanted to climb in with them and pet them.



Lemur Lookout is also part of the Entry Plaza. They are a lot of fun to watch. They are always so active and very pretty. Last time we saw mostly the black-and-white ruffed lemurs sunning on the rocks, but this time we watched the ring-tailed lemurs eating in the trees.



Sam loved the African penguin exhibit. You could see them swimming in the water. He ran up and down the glass with them.



We headed straight for the monorail when we got to the Wilds of Africa. The zoo was not crowded at all that day so we only had to wait five or ten minutes. Sam was very excited about riding the "train." It was an open car, so it was difficult to keep Sam in my lap for the entire 20-minute ride. He really wanted to stand up and lean over the rail.



The monorail was only moving at 3 mph, but it was very challenging for Chris to look at the exhibits and take pictures. He still got lots of great ones. These are some of my favorites. Of course I don't remember the names of all the animals, but I'm pretty sure this is a zebra!



This is an Oryx.



These are ostrich eggs. We couldn't believe that they were just out in the open in the middle of an exhibit with lots of different animals. I'm guessing that they aren't very concerned about the success of ostrich breeding in zoos.



An ostrich and a different type of Oryx.



There was quite a ruckus in the chimpanzee exhibit. This one in particular was very vocal about something. The tour guide said it was a bonobo. I'm not sure if they were all bonobos though. Sam loved that he got to hear them saying "ooo ooo ooo eee eee eee," but he really wanted to climb out of the train car and in to their exhibit. He was a little upset when I wouldn't let him.



The last real stop was Crocodile Isle. This one was "smiling" for the camera.



The weather was beautiful so we stopped for an outside lunch at Ndebele Cafe. It's a funny play on words because it sounds like "in da belly cafe."



We walked the Nature Trail after lunch. They had lots of bronze statues along the trail.



Sam shaking hands with a bronze chimpanzee.



And here's a closer look at the real thing.



These turtles were funny. One of them was trying to escape, very slowly of course.



We don't remember what this animal was, but it was cute and tiny.



Here's a shot of a meerkat, for all you Meerkat Manor fans!



We were so excited to see this gorilla when we were on the Nature Trail. We had hung out at the Gorilla Conservation Research Center for a while looking for one, but hadn't been able to find one then. This one was eating lunch. It looked like sweet potatoes and leaves mostly.



Sam found a leaf and wanted to feed it to the gorilla.



This is a saddle-billed stork. It was huge. It was amazing to see it flying around its habitat.



After the Nature Trail, we changed Sam into his swimsuit and headed to the "river" at the Children's Zoo.



Sam jumped off of every rock he could find.



He thought it was especially funny to splash Mommy.



I think Sam would have staid in that river all day, but I could tell he was running on fumes at this point. He was making a funny constant humming sound willing himself to keep going.



Sam was super thirsty by this point. He loves to drink water out of a water bottle. It's so grown-up.



We wanted a snack before we left so we got some icee's. They don't have straws or lids at the zoo, and Sam refused to use the spoon. He was much happier using his hands.



Mmmmm good!



It was feeding time at Flamingo Pond as we were leaving.



Flamingo close-up.



Pretty pink flamingos.



Sam was super tired and fell asleep as I was carrying him back to the truck. He woke up as we buckled him in. I thought he would sleep the whole way home, but he didn't sleep a wink. That was actually a good thing because he took a nap without a fuss as soon as we got home. I was really amazed at how well Sam did at the zoo. He walked the whole time on his own without being carried and without a stroller.



Of course no trip to the zoo is complete without a picture of the Dallas Zoo Giraffe Statue. It's one of the tallest statues in the world at 67ft.