The Home of my Great Grandfather

My uncle Jim sent the etching of the street in Denmark where my Great Grandparents lived in the early 1900s. He included a photo that he took of the same street. I have combined them into a nifty little GIF showing the old and new.  The artistic credit goes to Axel Holm, the painter and engraver who created the original etching and to my uncle Jim Christensen who composed the photograph. My claim to fame is the ability to adjust the opacity setting in Photoshop.

You can click on the image to enlarge it. Once it has played through, you will need to hit the refresh button in your browser to replay it.

Enjoy.

Is it really almost Christmas?

It seems that it has been a while since I last posted.
Where has the time gone?

Oh well, it has been a good time, where ever it went. Attached are a few photos explaining what we have done with the time.

In October we celebrated our 20th anniversary by spending the weekend in our honeymoon cabin.

We finally have our back yard complete... not finished, just complete.

We began touring colleges for Nathan.

Traveled to Denton for the yearly peanut allergy checkup. Who doesn't need to build a Minion?

We have come a long way on the waterfall.

The Alice in Wonderland themed yard now has Alice's shadow.

And the birds from Alice in Wonderland are ready to enjoy the waterfall.

the door to nowhere is up and the Cheshire cat is hanging out. Still need to paint the door red and add the knobs.

The shadows of the card soldiers, painting the roses red.

And the girls playing checkers. Mad hatter VS the Cheshire cat.

Of course there was more that happened in there as well, birthdays and projects, events and outings. But I think that this pretty much sums up the past few months. 

Until next time.

Progress on the pond

A little lesson on the benefits of hard work

After a summer of hard work, finding clients and mowing lots and lots of yards, Nathan found a truck that fit his budget. At age sixteen, he was able to purchase a 2003 Chevy Silverado pickup. It is a nice truck, which has a lot of miles, but it looks like it has been well cared for.

Saving up over $3000 in a summer is an impressive feat for a teenager and we are very proud of him. 

Now it's time to learn how to maintain it.

Shadow boxes

When we moved in to our current house, the previous owner left two pictures on the brick wall next to the fire place. Turns out that the frames hid two square holes in the wall. Today, after ignoring the holes for a few years, I decided to build shadow boxes to fill the holes and make the wall purtier.

To compliment the aspen trees painted on the dining room wall, I am going to cut smaller trees out and make a 3D diorama for the two boxes. We will also store the Pacific and Atlantic water in the boxes.

Before painting. I used old plywood that looked pretty rough. Always hate painting wood, but unless I wanted to shell out for nicer grain, this had to be painted. The photo makes the wood look better than the real thing.

Up and I painted (above) and the final, painted and ready to go is below.

The patio is finished

The patio is finished. Who hoo! We swept the first coat of sand in on Memorial day and re-purposed the Christmas lights into romantic ambiance lights and phase one of the backyard is complete. Only twenty more phases to go.