Gourd Birdhouse

Last fall, one of my good friends Lou Weigand, had a truck full of birdhouse gourds. I thought I'd like to take a stab at making them so I bought one. Isn't it pretty?

Here's how I did it. First I started with this dried gourd.

Then I made a circle on a piece of paper.

and cut it out.

Then I put the piece of paper on the gourd and drew a circle with it. Grampa Tom thinks I should have used a smaller circle and he's probably right. I am spacially challenged you know. I'll change that next time.

 Then I got out my handy dandy dremmel tool and cut into the gourd around the circle.

It didn't go quite all the way through, but it made a nice groove for me to finish the job with a box cutter.

The one thing I like about the size of this whole is that it was easy to pull the seeds and fiber out. I will probably need some sort of a bent hanger tool to remove them from a smaller hole.

Then once again, I got my handy dandy dremmel  tool out and made some holes in the bottom so it would drain.

and a couple at the top for the wire to hang it with to go through.

I'm way to cheap to buy ink cartridges for my printer. Many years ago, I got into refillable cartridges because it's a much more economical way to buy ink and the more ink you buy at time, the less you pay for it, so I got several big bottles of ink. But I just don't use the colored inks fast enough. They got thick and were gumming up my printer. I just hated to throw it away so I've kept it thinking it would be a good paint.

The first coat went on and dried really well.

But the second coat was still sticky and wet even after 24 hours.

and even after sitting a couple of days on top of the corn stove. So I finally rinsed it off and put some acrylic spray on it. I really like how it turned out!

I need to call Lou and see if he's got any left. I'm going to grow some of these this year, but they take a year to dry and I'd like to have some painted ones to take to the markets this year.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

6 Days of Creation

God created man in His image. Every one of us is creative. I used to think I wasn't very creative because I couldn't draw or sing, but that is just plain wrong. The way I  read it, God spent 6 days creating and then spent the 7th reviewing all that He had made. . So, on Saturday's I post some of the things that I created the previous week.

Here goes:

Sunday I spent most of the day working on a floor plan. It's a pretty amazing house if I do say so myself! It only has 1903 square feet of living space but the 3 bedrooms are all tucked far enough from the main family areas that they ought to be quiet retreats. I really value a quiet bedroom! Check it out here. 

Monday morning I flipped on my computer and went in to finish up Exodus 12 on my What's In a Name Bible translation and every word was marked misspelled except for 4 "I AM LORD Yehovah". There was something wrong with my spell check. Not sure what, I got to fiddling around with some settings and it corrected itself, but I thought it was pretty cool to wake up to that reminder!  OK, so I didn't create that one, but when God trumps you with the most awesome creation of the day, I think He needs to take center stage!

Tuesday I decided to try my hand at making a gourd birdhouse. There are some things that I will do differently next time, but it is turning out kinda cool. I'll blog about it soon.

Wednesday I got to page 23 in my book about homeschooling called Almost Unschooling Grama. I posted a little bit from the section on record keeping that I was writing on Thursday. If you missed it, click here. Hope I can get it done before garden time! I've got tons of new gardens to create!

Thursday I had all kinds of fun creating a new floor plan. This one is about 2500 square foot. It is another inter-generational  plan with a processing room between the mud room and the kitchen where you can process fresh meat, veggies and eggs for storage. It also has a walk-in cooler and freezer. It's the latest post on my Floor Plan Play Land blog.

And on Friday, I created another big pot of chili. I have 45 quarts of chili put up now. I've only got one more gallon of tomatoes left in the freezer. I watched Alton Brown make a tomato sauce the other day. I think I'll try something like that with the rest of my tomatoes. You know it's going to be "something like that" because I hardly ever follow a recipe exactly. Besides, he started with canned tomatoes, mine will be frozen. :)P

That's it for this week! I'm going to spend the weekend helping my mother and father in-love celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary!


God Bless You All!


~Grama Sue