Friday night science

Here's a fun party trick. How can you extinguish candles without touching them?

Put some vinegar in a jug and add in baking soda. This makes carbon dioxide that can be "poured" over the candles. And, poof! They extinguish.

The CO2 is heavier than air so not only does it stay in the jug but you can then pour it over the candles starving them of the oxygen they need to burn. It's fun, give it a try. Amaze your friends.

The edge of a storm

As you may have heard, Southern California is getting smacked with quite a storm. Huge winds and heavy rain have been beating down our door all day. I managed to sneak outside during a moment of relative quiet and was greeted with this delight right over our home.

Should I get his opinion before I buy the fabric?

This weekend my friend Jane and I scoped out some good garage sales (and then bought over a dozen donuts which were devoured in the blink of an eye). I scored some nicely shaped terracotta pots.

A new jar is always useful. I like to keep a few varieties of rice on hand and my basmati just didn't have a perfect home, problem solved.

I also got this fun sterling silver star necklace.

But the best part of all is that I came home with this wonderful chair.

I love the shape and I can't wait to recover it! I'm thinking about something like this...

The blue works in the bedroom, the red works in the living room and the print, well the print works with me! How cute would that 50s shape look with big popping flowers? What do you think?

Foggy mornings and a sneak peek

It's been a long, hot, crazy week around here. I barely even remember taking Daphne the Adorable home on Sunday. On Monday we repaired our DLP tv. It broke ten days prior and when we finally received the new color wheel there was no way Thomas was going to wait to the weekend to do THAT project. It went pretty well, we had most of the tv apart in under 20 minutes. Except for one tiny connector, the last possible thing that needed disassembling before we could put the tv back together, would not come out of the circuit board. Everything we had read about fixing the tv warned about this one connector. DO NOT PULL UP, DO NOT WIGGLE IT, DO NOT GRAB IT BY THE WIRES, DO NOT LOOK AT IT FUNNY OR ELSE IT WILL COME OFF ITS CIRCUIT BOARD AND YOUR TV WILL BE DEAD AND IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT, WE WARNED YOU. So we heeded their advice and talked nicely to the connector, we massaged it and fanned it while we fed it grapes on the veranda. It didn't matter. That connector wasn't going anywhere. It was so stuck and so brittle that it didn't want to budge. Then I got angry. I mangled the hell out of that connector until it finally gave me my way. And then I could move on. And you know what? Replacing a critical part of your tv is not as bad as I thought it would be. It was actually kinda fun! (Minus, of course, that connector and the one hour of my life it stole from me.)

Then came Tuesday and here's a sneak peek of what megalithic DIY project we did THAT day. A new kitchen floor!

Should I or shouldn't I?

During her regularly scheduled bird and bug watching session, Lola took a quick break to evaluate if I was being interesting enough to bother getting up and following me. But she noticed I wasn't holding a side of prime rib.