Painting wine bottles

I started painting some of the wine bottles back in June. I thought this one turned out rather well. The lady bug was actually part of the label of this particular wine bottle.  I decided to give this one to a friend of mine, as a gift.

Here's another bottle that I had painted:

Here's the other side of it:

Looks like I've motivated Charlie to paint also :-)

Not too shabby!

I haven't done much with the wine bottles recently. At some point I'd like to get back to it!

New company logo (6/30)

Looks like it's time to find my company logo!  And actually, I probably could give Charlie some credit. And perhaps a little help from AI (Artificial Intelligence). Can't seem to get too far and needing a little help occasionally!

We did have a few choices before I finally decided on this one! 

There were so many options with colors. Yikes!

Yup, still partial to butterflies :-)

And also business cards and the company website.  Check!     

Be sure to check it out when you get a chance:  https://plantsandpaint.biz/

Thankfully most of the website was already pre-filled and had plenty of templates where I just needed to add my own photos and descriptions. Technology has come so far!

And I've just realized that all of this happened on my late mom's birthday! 💓

Flooding in the garage (6/22)

I guess when it rains about 3" in 1 hour or 5" in 2 hours, this is going to happen?!  Yup, the storm drains in our yard could not keep up and the water kept raising and ended up in our garage!

What's funny is that our neighbor next door had mentioned something about water flooding into the garage when the previous owner had lived here. And I could not believe what she was saying. Well, unfortunately, we had to experience it to believe it!

Not exactly sure where this water is coming from?! Although, we did notice after the fact that the overflow of the rain barrel was not exiting the barrel properly. Urgh!!

The aftermath:

And of course, this was the time when we were just working through getting the shed put together. And that's all getting soaked!

The material of the shed should hold up to water.  Hopefully!

We finally decide to just shut the garage door.  You can probably see a little baby pump - we used that to drain the baby pool that we had for the boys during Covid (back in California).  It really isn't doing much here!

And then, it started to flood in the laundry room too?!

Perhaps it's designed to do so? I have no idea, but I was always curious what this red "thing" was on the floor in the laundry room. Well, we know water comes in when the drains can't keep up!!

You can see remnants of the water line on the garage door. Yikes!

Let's hope this doesn't happen again! Although I did buy some expandable "sand bags" so if anything, we have those handy for next time. Also raised a few things off the garage floor so we have less to clean up when it does happen again!

Here's a video of when the rains stopped and we opened up the garage doors to drain all the water out:

I'm debating about making some sort of french drain and then also perhaps creating like a natural rain catchment area near the drain. In time!!

There/s still a few more things on our "to-do" list that we need to take care of!

Putting up a shed

So... technically, we are not suppose to have a shed.  Or there's something about, if you do have one, it needs to be connected to the house.  Well... we're going to try and push our luck here!

I bought a small shed online and hmm, looks like it's going to take a while to set up.  

Especially if Graham is just going to lay on the parts.  LOL!

We had a recent flood in the garage too during this time and so I was definitely not motivated to do anything. But thankfully, it's been nice having Graham - being so handy. He is a good helper - for the most part!

We also had to figure out where to put it and since the kayaks are being stored on the other side of the dumpster storage area. So maybe on this side instead? 

The leveling took a while:

The shed will be facing the driveway....

Funny enough, our neighbor across the street noticed all our commotion in our driveway and reminded us about the HOA policy on sheds.  Well, Bobby always said, "Ask for forgiveness later?!"

By now, weeks have gone by with the shed just sitting on the driveway. We did finally buy some camouflage paint, which really just means "super flat" paint and so maybe painting it in Olive Green might help?! Tape first. I figured I was going to leave the front side the original tan color:

This rain is not helping!!

Went through 2 cans of spray paint and still needed to buy 1 more extra can!

I also moved the kayak storage area to the other side of the garbage area:

So now, the shed's side will be facing the driveway:

Perhaps that will work instead. Guess we will find out when it doesn't!

In the meantime, boys are continuing to slowly plough through some more firewood:  We still have a lot to go through! We did cave in and buy a hydraulic wood splitter:

OMG, what a machine! The boys are able to do the entire process by themselves - at times needing to load the bigger logs together. Team work!  As you can see, they have a lot of logs to go through!!

The school year has actually begun and the firewood is not quite completely split and stacked. Hopefully we have enough to dry in time for this winter!

Ps: It's been a couple of months now and so far so good on the shed (i.e. no complaints from any neighbors). I've yet to actually complete the spray paint job but hopefully will get to that this weekend. And hope to start clearing some things from the garage into the shed to make more room in the garage. Woohoo!!

Summer fun on the lake (6/19)

The boys are finally going out on their kayaks! Okay, maybe not quite yet... but Graham will get there eventually. LOL!

Graham is so much heavier this summer than he was the previous summer.  He actually gets to sit in the adult-sized kayak now.  I think he's a tad too heavy for the junior ones now.

Bobby helps carry the kayaks over to the neighbors. 

Thankfully we have some nice neighbors and they are allowing us to store them along their "beach" area in their backyard.

Charlie's friend is hanging out with them today, so he gets hang out on the lake too. These kids have way too much fun. And they are off!

So much lake and yet they are crashing into each other.  I'm guessing they are just trying to tip each other over.  Boys, I tell you!

I can't believe I didn't go kayaking or canoeing ONCE this summer!!  The days and weeks are going by so quickly - either with golf work or mural work.  I actually just finished up the neighborhood Little Library. Will post about that soon!

I'm still determined to get out there on the lake before it gets too cool.  It's been lovely lately but I think we're suppose to hit 90F this weekend?!  There's just been some crazy weather this year!

Experimenting with Glass Cutting and Kokedama

I bought a glass cutter quite a while back.  I'm not exactly sure why - Ha ha! The box did advertise a little something about making self-watering planters with wine bottles.  Maybe that's what it was??!

Well, here's what the glass cutter looks like. It doesn't look very robust:

And we lay the wine bottle on it and make whatever adjustments so it's laying down perfectly with the blade.  That's probably the most tricky (and annoying!) part!

Well, it seem to be quite difficult to get a nice clean cut.  Urgh!!

For every 4 or 5 bottles, I only get one perfect (well, almost perfect) cut. Yikes! Thankfully, these bottles have been free. I've been asking our neighbors for it. He he!

For this particular bottle that did make it - I put some "gold" duct tape around the edges so no one gets cut. I did sandpaper the edges, but just in case!

And this one will just house a plant that likes water. Not too shabby!

And definitely does not require a lot of watering at all, since it just sits in water :-)

Here are some other ones that I decided to paint:

Everyone needs just one more plant :-)

Stand out of my way... a couple more!

I gave a similar one with an Umbrella plant to a friend of mine, but it died somehow. Nooo...!

Maybe should just stick to easy water ones:

Here's my workstation.  Who knew this "kitchen" area downstairs in the basement will be the perfect workspace for all my planting stuff.  

And I also started making these Kokedama for sale. It literally translated to "moss ball":

A friend of mine introduced me to them when we were living in Abu Dhabi quite a few years ago.  I made some when we lived in California, and who knew I'd be attempting to sell them now!

I'm slowly learning about what soil is required for each plant.  It's is still definitely a learning process! I already have had a few plants die on it after making them into a Kokedama.  Thankfully these had not been sold to anyone yet.  I hope the ones I did sell are doing okay! 

This one (below) actually didn't make it.  Too much water!

I feel that succulents are really difficult to be in a moss-ball, since succulents do not like to have a lot of water. So soil combination is really important here!

And perhaps less frequency in watering.  This one is still alive.  Yay!

Also learning how to dot-paint. I'm still a rookie at this, it definitely looks like it should be easier to create that art but it's not!

Well, I guess here's the true test - I asked a friend if I could sell my upcycled self-watering wine bottles as well as the Kokedama at her market.  It's actually where I had previously painted my mural.  Remember this one? I'm so glad the colors are holding up!

It's a small setup but it's a start for sure :-)

So exciting!! :-D