Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

From the Youngest Daughter :)

Well, here's the promised post! This was from the second night of work, I believe. As you can see, they were working on the basement. 

 It was so exciting! It was nighttime, but the floodlights made it very bright. And everywhere we looked were machines, all of them rumbling and beeping, and people wearing blue t-shirts and white hard hats.

Security was everywhere!

 Caution tape, too. :)
By the third night they were finishing the floor, putting in studs and stuff. Everything was on ground level. TWENTY FOUR HOURS later, EVERY wall was up and they were shingling the house! I kid you not. It was bananas. I heard someone say that the crew did a month of work every day in order to get it done in a week (!).
The next pictures were from the day they revealed the house! There were THOUSANDS of people. As you can see, some resorted to standing on roofs to get a good veiw. :)

 The boy in the wheelchair and blue shirt is from the family who got the house.

The director (in the straw cowboy hat) would jump up and down and wave with his assistant every time he wanted the crowd to cheer. The crowd was *ahem* VERY obliging.  Oof. Loud. :-D

 It's Ty Pennington and the family!!!!
Btw, at this point I was on my brothers back taking pictures. It was the only way to see ANYTHING! There were at least four or five solid rows of people in front of us. Before I got on his back, I couldn't even see the house because of all the people. Sheesh.

 Going in to see the house! As soon as the mother of the family (in black) walked in, she put her hands over her mouth and took a few steps back out! And then she just stood there, staring. It was so cool! :-D   

                       

See what I mean about all the people?! 

Afterwards there was so much traffic it was ridiculous. Not that I minded or anything. :) It was soooo fabulous to see the whole thing! I LOVED it. A lot. :)

Typewriter Owl

From you know who. :-/

(Sheesh. I am so ready to get me own blog. I'm the only person keeping this one alive! Grrr.)

Anywho. :)

Check out this zany owl that I made!!!

OK, not impressed yet? Scroll down. :)

 I made it using my grandma's old typewriter!!! Sweet, huh?
Unfortunately, I didn't come up with making typewriter drawings. I saw it somewhere else, and decided to make my own. :)

Pssst! Don't worry! The Extreme Makeover post IS coming. :)

Things that make me Smile

                                                             From the Youngest Daughter :)

Things that make me smile:

Getting a birthday present ... months after my birthday. :)

And having it turn out to be an adorable frog lamp! He and Yertle are hitting it off splendidly.

 Getting a new plant to add to my zany collection!

Notice how the color changes without any warning? And it's really weird because the texture changes too. The green part is like a nice thick shiny leaf, while the pinkish purple part is a bit more sparkly, silky and thin, almost like a thick tulip petal or something. Weird. I like it. :)

Finding gorgeous fall color, right in our backyard!



Psssst! There's a post coming up soon about Extreme Makeover: Home Edition!! I've got some really cool pictures from when I got to see parts of the show in person!

10/10/10

Today's date is 10/10/10.
Thought you should know.

Two Dollar Bill Story

From the Youngest Daughter :)

You all must know how I love to spend two dollar bills, right? Well a while ago when I posted about it, I told you I would tell you if I got any more funny reactions from people when I used a two. Well recently I did get a good reaction! It was when I was buying Yertle. :)

Here's what happened:

            I brought the turtle lamp to the lady in charge of the yard sale and dug in my duct tape wallet. The turtle was three dollars, so I pulled out a one dollar bill and a two dollar bill. I handed them to her. She held them in her left hand and fanned them out with her right, examining them as if there was a bill missing. After all, how could two bills equal three dollars? She glanced up at me, and back at her hands. She hadn’t noticed … yet. She took one more confused look and then light bulb! She noticed the two.

            “Oh!” she said in surprise. Then she started gabbling, “It’s a two! Well, I thought it was a five, I thought you had given me six dollars, but it’s a two … we haven’t had one of those yet today!”

I suppressed a snicker as I thanked her and left to join my sis. My sister had heard the whole thing.

            “You're a stinker!” she said once we were out of earshot. We both tried to suppress our laughs, but ended up snorting.

          

It was an awesome way to buy a ridiculous lamp. :)

[Awesome] Things that make me smile :)

From the Youngest Daughter :)

(One of these days I want to get me own blog so I can stop this patronizing "youngest daughter" stuff. :)



[Awesome] Things that make me smile:

1. Wearing me moustache necklace all day! :)

 When it's in necklace form in looks like this:

 But if I need a disguise, well, ta-da!!

"Bonjour! Mah name is Pierre." 

 2. Oooh, this makes me grin so much! Dad and I were taking a bike ride, and along comes a nonchalant dude with long hair riding a bike. But it is no ordinary bike! No, no! It is in fact, two bikes stacked on top of each other! (Only one set of wheels though. :)
We even got to see him dismount. Purty impressive and totally awesome. :)
(And yes, I drew the pic. :)

 So we kept on biking, me still laughing and thinking how awesome it was, when we see a girl. She was blocks away from the guy, and she was riding a similar bike! *Jaw drop* It was so stinkin' hilarious! :-D While the guy seemed nonchalant, the girl had this HUGE grin ... rather like I sometimes get when spending a two dollar bill. There's just something about taking people completely by surprise that is totally awesome! :)

 3. Going garage sale-ing and buying a SUPER long zipper.

 Oh, one little teeny detail is that if you zip it, it becomes something!

 Any idea what it is yet?

 Ta-da! A totally cool purse thingamabobber!

 Cool, no? :-D

 Aaaand last but not least: #4!
I bought this turtle at a garage sale.

 And it's actually a lamp!! Bahahahahah! :-D
Isn't that spectacularly fabulous!?

I named him Yertle. :)

Crayons on a Lathe???

From the Youngest Daughter :)

In case you didn't know, my brother is awesome! :)

I had this cool idea of trying to turn Crayons on his lathe. He tried it and it was SUPER cool! I thought I'd have a go, and so he taught me! :)

He could make better ones, but I'm still proud of these; the ones I made! 

I broke about seven before I got the hang of it, and I made a lot of cool Crayon shavings in the process!  

And just why would I want to turn Crayons?

Because it's awesome! Duh. :)

Johnny-Jump-Ups DIY

From the Youngest Daughter :)

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. This is soooo amazingly fun! And just for the record, my friends are amazing. Cuz one of my friends showed me how to do this awesome project!

Take a Johnny-jump-up, or a pansy would probably work too. Just use the flower, no stem. Place it face down on a piece of paper and then lay another piece of paper on top. Now pound it! Use a hammer, a cup, your fist ... whatever. Pound it really hard for like 20 seconds, being careful not to move the papers.

Take the top paper off, peel off the mushy bits of leftover flower, and you'll get something like this: (!!!!!)

The juice from the flower petals will dye the paper in the shape of your flower! It's so detailed, and it looks like a painting. So it makes you look like a really good artist. :)
Doesn't this one look gorgeous? I love the top right hand petals on the middle flower. You can see the veins, and it looks like a fairy wing. *Happy sigh.*


You so need to try this. Seriously. Do it. Now. No excuses.

Yellowstone #2!

From the Youngest Daughter :)

OK, so I was just going to post just two pictures, but then I was like, "Hey. I'm going to post those, so why not a few more?" So here are a lot more Yellowstone pictures for you! :)

Isn't this one of the coolest pictures ever? I liked it a lot. I think my sis took it. :) I like the contrast of the buffalo and the cars, the woods and the road.

Oh, and this pic reminds me of a good story.

There were two bison walking down the road, at a different part of the park. Cars were pulling over a bit to try to squeak past them. Then a motorcycle tried it. All of a sudden one of the bison spooked! He jumped and started charging!!! Straight. At. The. Motorcycle.

Fortunately the motorcycle got away, but it was creeeepppy. That buffalo was REALLY fast. *Gulp!*

We saw some cayotes!
This also reminds me of a good story about a different cayote. We were driving past it, and it was hunting! We saw it stalk something, and then Pounce! And then it smacked it's lips. :)

And now I'll just let the pics speak for themselves!

Yellowstone National Park

From Everyone!!

(But, as usual it's me, the Youngest Daughter, who is actually taking the time to post it all!)

Photo credit goes to: The Eldest Daughter (Of course. She's a photographer, what do you expect??), plus the Mom and the Youngest Daughter.

Last week we went on an Uh-MAZING vacation to Yellowstone National Park!! We rented a cabin a few miles away from the park. One night we went to sleep with the surrounding mountains all black, the next morning we woke up to see snow on them!

This is the first stop we made in the actual park:

Isn't it beautiful? The colors and textures were amazing! And the smell too. Yuck. It smelled gross. But what do you expect from sulphur and mineral filled boiling water?

Right next to that location were a bunch of signs stating: DANGER DO NOT APPROACH ELK. But there were so many elk it was kind of impossible not to approach them. :)

Another place we stopped at was a river. Of literally boiling water. It was the weirdest thing ever.

All over the park were dead trees. And they were strangely beautiful!

This tree had fallen over, and those are it's roots. Cool, no?

These signs were everywhere!!!

But apparently some of the visitors couldn't read. Hence the hoof prints right smack in the middle of a colorful pool of sulphur water:

That's me. :)

This friendly chipmunk stole a potato chip. Right off of my shoe!!

Isn't he cute?! :-D
Almost everywhere you looked there were random holes in the ground. Some steamed. Some boiled. Some had mud that bubbled. Most stank.

This random guy had a very interesting way of keeping his son out of mischief. :)

Meet Old Faithful everybody!! This is what it looked like as we were waiting for it to blow:

All of a sudden it started making huge whooshing noises and shooting hot water!

The spray kept getting higher. It was really cool! :)

Later we visited some mud pots. It was basically mud. That bubbled. :) It was so funny! It sounded and looked a bit like if you were making cream of wheat and then let it boil. It was bubbling and burping all over the place! :-D

Aren't the next few pictures pretty?

We saw this buffalo walking along towards the boardwalk. He was very lazy, just ambling along.

When he got to the path, he stepped up onto it very slowly.

Then he looked lazily around at the tourists, posing for pictures.

And then he went on his way. It was funny. :)

More beautiful pictures:

Oh, you know how I said everything was stinky? Well, I bring before you a photo of an adult. Who is plugging her nose.

She didn't know I took this pic. And I don't know who she is. And it was NOT posed. So there you go. Smelly.

This is what the ground looked like in a few places. :)

This thing was SO cool! It was just a random hole full of super boiling water. Amazing. Again.

Geysers, water, smelliness and steam, everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere.

Three times a buffalo walked down the road. Right past my window. See that black line on the bottom of the pic? That was the bottom of my window, so you can see how amazingly close he was!!

So close in fact, that if you zoomed the camera in, this is what you got:

Oh, and this is the view from one window in the cabin we rented:

Pretty, no?
And this whole place inside the fence was our yard for the week!

And what better thing to do with wild flowers than to stick 'em in you hair??

For the trip home we had to get up at 5. I repeat. FIVE O'clock in the MORNING (!!!!).

The beginning of the dawn was beautiful behind the mountains. :)

Well, that's it for now. I've already posted too many photos. But I have more. :) I think I'll do one more post about Yellowstone, and then be done.

The end.