$250 Gift Card Giveaway To Rock On

How about a Rafflecopter $250 gift card giveaway?  

Target, Michaels, Staples, Visa....

Lots of great bloggers in the bunch to follow and meet as you get your entries going.  Sure 'ya gotta jump through a few hoops, but somebody's gonna win and it won't be you unless you enter.

$250 smackaroos.  I could get my craft on with that much moula. 

So what are you waiting for...... rock click on at the end of this post. 

And because this is a rocking gift card giveaway, I've got a teaser for 'ya. 

Remember the Rock & Roll dresser I made?  

Well it had a secret.  And it wasn't a good one.

After it got all painted up in it's musical coolness, and put in my son's room, we started to notice an odor that was not directly related to my son.   Like ummm.... well maybe animal.  Because it definitely wasn't vegetable or mineral.  

As much as my son loved the dresser it was outta there.  Pppppppppppp Ewwwwwwwww.  Now I know why it was out at the curb with a FREE sign.

Little Rocker said ok, fine, now you have to make me another one just like it.  So stay tuned for the encore.

Rock & Roll Dresser #2....In Concert Soon.

Oh yeah Jenny, I got your number..... again.  #6 kid, #4 son is calling.

And if all that isn't cool enough for you, stop over at Nellie Bellies where I'm guesting today.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway


 

Norway has a Kodak Moment

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I would have to agree.

It's even sweeter if you like the imitation better than what it is imitating.

And such was the case when I opened an email from Norway and saw this.....

via En Vintage Drom

The writer told me how my dresser inspired her to make one of her own.

Now I want to copy the copy.

And how about those old time graphics on the side doors?  Pretty nice.

The blog is in Norwegian (that's what they speak in Norway right?) but the email came to me in English.

It wasn't the first copy of my Kodak Dresser.

This one is mine.

Another lady emailed me with this one that she made.....

via Starview Sonnet

I walked by my suddenly boring brown bedroom dresser and gave it a sideways glance today.  I could paint it white and put black letters on it........

      ~~~~~~~~~

Stop back in on Monday and enter a Rafflecopter giveaway for a giftcard.

Initial, Name & Date Wood Plaque

I have this handsome son.  Well, I have 4 handsome sons really, but for this story we will focus on one, son #2, which is child #3.  (If you need a reminder, I have six kids, I squeezed a couple daughters in between the boys).

He loves to travel and for a while I was worried he was gonna fall in love and live far far away.  Some kids best friends live next door, some live in the next country.  Such is the case for son #2, so he travels a couple times a year to Guatemala.  

When he traveled for a recent wedding he needed to have a gift small enough to travel with him, so thanks to mom and her silhouette cameo I came up with the perfect gift.

At Christmas time I made a couple of wooden plaques with the last names, initials, and year my two oldest kids were married.

Yes I have blocked out their full last names, and yes they tested my sanity by both getting married the same year - five months apart to be exact.

I made these on Christmas Eve and because Annie Sloan chalk paint dries so fast, they took me no time at all.

When #2 son needed a gift I whipped one up the day before he had to fly out.

I don't remember exactly how the custom in Guatemala works regarding taking the last names, but it has to do with both sets of parents and the couple ends up with two last names, hence the two initals, the B and the R.

Ana and Rodrigo loved their gift from son #2.  They told him at the mall there in Guatemala, a personalized gift like this is very expensive.

Yeah I knew that when I made it at the last minute!

I whipped up a tag and we wrapped it in twine.  It fit flat in his suitcase and the dudes in Customs and Border Protection didn't have to unwrap it.

The Process:
Paint board base color.  Stick on letters.  Paint 2nd color over letters.  Peel letters off.  Sand.  Distress.  Wax.

 Linking up with....
Christina @I Gotta Create and the Wildly Original Party
Pinterest Blitzen @DebbieDoos 
Freaking Awesome Fridays @MellywoodsMansion

Old Door Headboard

Wanna see the talents of daughter #2? 

Or should I say more talents.  You can see some of her painting talents where she made her mama cry making a sign for me, or her famous one of a kind lampwork bead cake testers .... 
 

But to see the parts of her room that didn't have wet towels and clothes laying all over, you have to go visit Shannah at JustUsFour. 

You will find the headboard Beth made from an almost 100 year old door, complete with the key in the keyhole, the $3 Goodwill lamp she painted with a chevron print, and her first try at making string art.

What her room lacks in having a clothes free floor, it makes up for on the top half.

This IS my party face.

Happy dog day to Riley @WhileWearingHeels, 

but Mo wants to know who that other doggie dude is with his girl?

Duluth, North Shore of Lake Superior

Since I haven't finished a project I am working on, and can't even finish my laundry, I decided to take a vacation in my mind.  I went back to May when we took the two youngest on a four day trip to Duluth, and the North Shore of Lake Superior.

Lake Superior Shore as seen from Split Rock Lighthouse

First of all I have to say after many years of taking 6 kids on trips, it still feels a little out of the ordinary to travel with only two.  For this mom of many taking only two along, it's sort of.... well.... a piece of cake.

The Duluth weather in May can be unpredictable.  We were lucky, it was sweatshirt weather and sunny half the time, but as any history buff knows, Lake Superior can turn in the blink of an eye, often for the worst.

Killer Whale as Seen from Coldstone Creamery booth.

Sometimes the lake even tosses forth a killer whale to a Coldstone Creamery.  This was the first time my two sons and Brawn had been to Coldstone.  Not sure they will remember the ice cream, but the Orca maybe.

View of Split Rock Lighthouse

Most of our travels involve heading out of state to a beach or tropical destination when it's freezing here, so taking the scenic route in Minnesota was a lot of fun for us. 

We headed to Split Rock Lighthouse and Gooseberry Falls and stopped in at everything between Twin Harbors and Minneapolis that looked interesting.

A vivid memory of our last trip to Duluth was having our just about four year old throw a full blown temper tantrum in the train Depot because her siblings left on a second cable car ride and she didn't make it back aboard in time.

The Depot conductor came over to see if she lost a limb, then as politely as he could say it, told me to ask her to stop crying.

I asked.
She screamed louder.
He asked us to leave as her wails echoed through the whole place.
I took her to the restroom as folks stared.
I smiled pleasantly back at them.
If they only knew I was contemplating tying her to the train track with a gag in her mouth. 

Split Rock has a tour about life here in the days when the light house was in use.  I loved going back in time and seeing how they lived.

Gooseberry Falls had these trees along the shore with the roots exposed from the water eroding them.

They were really creepy looking to me, yet interesting.  I kept waiting for a troll to step out from behind one.

There is an upper and a lower falls.


And of course my family wanted to take the hike alllllllll the way around.

With miles of path, some gravel, some boardwalk.
And 10,000 stairs.

Thankfully I had on my most favorite shoes in the whole world.  They were a gift from #2 daughter......

 My all terrain Dansko's.

I'm no hydrologist, but I concluded that the yellow and rust color of the water was due to the fact we were on the Iron Range, and iron ore probably causes this.
I know this because if I leave iron in water, that's what happens.

I'm Einstein I tell 'ya.
At about this point in our walk, while I was enjoying the view, I determined I was approximately half way around, and worried I would starve or pass out from dehydration.
Dansko's don't fail me now.

But I stayed strong, I knew what was down the road......

And there's nothing like a looooonggg hike to work up an appetite and a hankering for pie.

Vintage Car Patina

My family loves vintage cars.  Of course vintage cars to my boys seems a lot newer to me than what I think of as old cars.   Old cars to me.... are reeeeeallllllllly old cars to them.

Last summer I posted my ideas of how to decorate with the oldies but goodies;
Hot Cars in the Summertime.

This summers post is all about the patina.  How the weathered boys of summer really look.  The ones that have been around the block a time or two.... and it shows.

I savor everything about old cars.....
the chrome details,
the colored leather seats,
the buttons on the radios. 

I enjoy the way some of these vintage vehicles transport my mind to another time.

Like growing up in Southern California, which meant cruising Van Nuys Boulevard - the real-life American Graffiti.

And the patina.

This post is dedicated to the patina on these bad boys of days gone by, and embracing the rust and wear on a well loved body.   (Sort of like a handsome boy I know - circa 1955).

No photo-chop-ing, no photo special effects.

No reason to digitally alter any of these beauties, it's the age, the raw natural wear and tear on them, that makes them appealing. 

Tough old rusty guys

Patina that is classy and flawed

 

With worn areas that still shine.

 

Brawn has yet to put his woodworking skills to use on restoring a car.

But something tells me he'd like too.

 

The real bad boys of summer

The kind who put an antique trunk in the back of a Chevrolet pick up truck and throw down a few beers.... a few A&W Rootbeers.  In a frosty mug of course.

My kind of boys, my very own bad boys of summer.

Stone-Look Concrete Walkway

We have lived at our home for 20 years.  We built it ourselves and being young and agile at the time, we never thought much about maintenance down the road.

Stuff wears out.  Like our young agile bodies.  But the house still needs to be kept up.  As we update I'm going for maintenance free so I don't have to paint every other year as my body gets older and older and less agile.

The weather takes a toll on cedar decks and walkways and it was time to paint for a quick fix (like the year before that and the year before that) or rip the small walkway out and do better.

We ripped it out and did better.

Pretend you see a whole wood walkway still there.  Brawn is not on the same schedule as me and my camera, so when he wants to start on a project, he does.

If you have been reading Bliss Ranch for a while you know my least favorite thing to do is paint.  I don't like painting outdoors anymore than indoors.  But as you can see, the cedar color of the post on the left was in need, as was touch up on the spindles and white gate to the right.

They were especially going to need to be painted after Brawn finished the concrete walkway he was making to match the landscaping stones.  Who could have peeling paint next to something new and looking good?

No that is not my hairy leg.

Every bag of concrete is approximately one faux stones worth, and each bag is approximately $2.00 on sale.  We used quick set concrete.  No mold was used, just a man and his trowel to shape and form the way he wanted.

There is approximately $40.00 worth of walkway now in my yard.  Much cheaper than a poured walk.

This is his work station.

He used empty sheet rock buckets, a drill with a mixing attachment, the broom part was just laying there and so was a jug of something that likely was on it's way to the trash.

He mixed, poured, troweled, and cut in the edges to prevent the stones from cracking in the winter.  He had no rhyme to what he was doing, and said he was making it up as he went.

When he was done, clouds moved in to rain on his new concrete.  He covered it with some plastic which bunched up and stuck to the wet concrete.  But this was not an OH NO, it was an OH YES ! 

The bunched up plastic gave the new concrete a textured look, like stone would have.

Brawn put rocks from the surrounding landscape on each faux stone and used concrete stain to color it and mimic those real rocks.  He has four colors of concrete stain.

If you look you can see the rocks on each stone - he did a pretty good job copying the colors - they are hard to see.

After the stain has dried, a wet look concrete lacquer goes on.

I will have more on the staining process in a future post with walkway #2.

The lacquer dries fast, and when it's dry you can start painting the posts and railing.  

Unless you are me, then you wait a week because you hate painting and then pick the hottest day you can to start.

You do the whole gate and then only do one part of the rail and spindles because you are going to melt painting them when it's 99* out.

You also debate on putting long shots of the walkway up because you don't want to show where you stopped painting the railing (and secretly think you may never come back to painting it). 

Look at the nice freshly painted white post and spindles, next to those fine looking concrete stones.

No those are not my feet but they are not Brawns either, and those ones are not hairy.

I have repeatedly told Brawn how much I love how it turned out.  Bonus on the maintenance thing, the walkway will never have to be painted like the cedar did.

And if I am lucky I won't be the one to repaint the spindles and rail.

That is if I ever finish those in the first place.

Mo is on the left side sticking his doggy face in the picture because that spot is one of his favorite places to lay outside now - the concrete is shaded there and stays nice and cool.  Sure wish he knew how to paint and I'd lay in the shade and watch him, then that part of the rail above on the left would also be bright white.

Coming soon the playhouse/potting shed/Brawn's work supply shed/ gets a makeover with walkway #2.

Stone Walkway Featured at:

Stepping on over to link up at:
Catch as Catch Can @MyRepurposedLife
Made You Look @MadeInADay
Freedom Fridays @MyTurnForUs

Show Me Extraordinary @ 36thAvenue 
Share Your Cup Thursday with Mrs. Olson 
Transformation Thursday @TheShabbyCreekCottage
Thursdays Are Your Days @ 52Mantels
Hookin Up with HOH @ HouseOfHepworths
Treasure Hunt Thursday @ FromMyFrontPorchToYours
 Open House Party Thursday @NoMinimalistHere 
Homework Wednesday @TheEveryDayHome 
Wow Us Wednesday @SavvySouthernStyle 
Whats It Wednesday @IvyandElephants 
Time To Sparkle @TheGunnySack 
The Scoop @CedarHillRanch 
Project Inspired @CupcakesandCrinoline 
Show and Share @SouthernLovely 
Sizzle into Summer @DIYbyDesign 
Tuesdays Treasures @MyUncommonSliceofSuburbia