Why did the guinea cross the road?

 Because someone got out of a car and scared them with a camera. 

ETA:  Initially, I thought these might be wild turkeys.  I spent some time last night googling photos of turkeys and different birds and couldn't find any like these since I didn't know what they were.  I asked Mr. Backwoods and he glanced at them and said, "Yes, they're turkeys."  So I posted them; then someone tells me, nope, they're guineas.  After googling again to confirm I showed the pics to Mr. Backwoods again and he says, "Oh, no those aren't turkeys.  I wasn't really paying attention."  Gee thanks, Hon.

Rebuilding

A few weeks back some pretty bad storms came through our area.  Eastern Kentucky received the worst of it, tornadoes touched down and the area was declared a state of emergency.   Last week we were traveling through on our way to Lexington to visit family during spring break.  This is a photo of where we usually stop in Salyersville for lunch and to gas up.  Out of 10 or 12 restaurants on this strip, the only place left open to stop was a Dairy Queen across the street.  Every other place was under repair or in a few cases, being completely torn down.

A little further down the road all the trees on entire sections of the hillside had been flattened.  Then on the other side of the road, everything would look OK.  I would have liked to have taken a few more photos, but the a lot of the damage was on parts of the road where I couldn't safely pull off completely.   We saw an errant pair of coveralls hanging from a branch high in a tree, like they had been laid across it to dry.  Except for the fact that the branch was 20 feet from the ground.   There was also a huge tree that had been uprooted completely and set back down perfectly upright against an embankment just off the road shoulder.

You hear stories of the crazy things tornadoes do and how bad the damage is, but I don't think you can fully grasp it until you've seen the aftermath in person.  The people in this area are in my thoughts as they repair, recover,and try to get their homes, businesses, and lives back in order.

Thrift Store Finds and Lamp Update

There's a little thrift store across from my bank.  It's called "The Flea Market".  It's not open every day, I have no idea what their actual business hours are, I just stop in when I see the open sign lit.  They're closed a lot.  I drove by last Thursday after picking Babe Jr up from school to see if they were open.  The sign was on, so we stopped and went in.  It was a successful stop, we found some cool stuff.  Disclaimer** please overlook the fact that a few of these photos are fuzzy, I didn't notice the focus issue until I loaded them to my computer and was too lazy to retake them today.

This is Mr. Backwoods' nightstand.  It needs refinished desperately, I have future plans for a big project of updating my bedroom suit.  This little turquoise dish was 3.00.  It's perfect to corral the clutter he always piles up here.  Note the lamp now complete with a new shade.

The next photo is my nightstand.  I already had the small dish holding miscellaneous earrings and bobby pins.  I picked up the mirrored tray this trip for 1.00.  It had a really old sticker that said "magnifying mirror" and remnants of old mirror adhesive on the back. I think in its former life it must have been attached to someone's vanity mirror for makeup application.  For now I'm using it as a place to put my bracelets etc. at night when I take them off.  I'm bad about not realizing I still have on jewelry or pins holding back my bangs until I'm already in bed.

Note my lamp also now has a shade.  The shades were 15.00 each at Lowe's, bringing the total cost of both lamps to 47.00.  Not bad considering the last yellow lamps this size I saw were about 90.00 each on sale at a furniture store.

 
The coolest find of the day was discovered by Babe Jr.  At first she decided she was going to wait in the car, but she got bored and hot after about 3 minutes.  I had apparently walked right past this without noticing it at all.  She comes in the door and about a minute later I hear "Mom, look at this!"
 

It's an old SLR camera, a Canon Model 7 to be exact.  I know very little about film SLR's as I couldn't afford one until we already were pretty far into the digital age.  I'm pretty doubtful that it's functional even though it started winding while I was playing around with it.  But it was only 5.00 and as a photography buff I couldn't pass it up.  The lens is a 50 mm 1.2, an equivalent lens for my digital camera currently runs for about 1500.00 (of course that's with auto focus and other technological updates).  I'm guessing just from the quality of the lens this must have been a really nice set up in its day.  I think it's pretty neat just to have as a conversation item. 

**Edited to add - after being given a helpful link by an internet friend and doing a little research I found out this camera is approximately 50 years old. This model was manufactured 1961-1964.  At that time with the 50mm 1.2 lens it retailed for about 200.00.

Currently its hanging out  in my living room with a tripod and some decor items on a dresser.  Appropriately they are in front of my gallery wall.  I plan to do some googling and see if I can find an old manual.  I might get adventurous, clean it up, and see what I can get with a roll of film.  Even if that's a total bust it's still a cool find.

After the rain

I stopped yesterday morning on the way to my mother-in-law's house to snap a photo of the fog rising out of the mountains.

Magnolias

Spring is here and everything is blooming.  I've been trying to remember to take my camera with me whenever I go anywhere right now.  Inevitably, if I don't have it with me, I run across beautiful flowers and I'm kicking myself because I can't get photos. 

On Monday, Babe Jr had gymnastics.  They hold it in the school gym at 5:00 and we got there early with about 30 minutes to kill.  There is a magnolia tree on the edge of the parking lot; of course I got out to take some photos.

I had to hop a guard rail to get to this tree.  The principal was leaving just as I was climbing over it; he stopped to see what I was doing.  I think he recognized me and as soon as he saw my camera I'm sure he figured out my intentions.  I'd love to know what he first thought when he saw me climbing.

Lamps & Spray Paint

The latest project in my quest to update our master bedroom is lamps.  They can get pretty pricy, so I decided I would try to find a couple at thrift stores and spray paint them.  I picked up this orange one a few months ago for 4.00 at Goodwill.  I had been scouting around for shades, and I finally found some I liked at Lowe's for 15.00.  I haven't purchased them yet, but I know they have some that don't require a harp.  After finally locating the shades, I figured I could start looking for another suitable lamp.

I ran in Goodwill last Friday to see what they had, and found the brass and white lamp.  Ironically, I had a lamp just like this in my bedroom as a teenager.  My mom probably paid about 12.00 for it at Walmart in the 90's, I got this one for 6.00.

When we got it home, I realized it was about 2 inches shorter than the first lamp, and I wanted them to be the same height so they wouldn't look completely asymmetrical on our night stands.  I started looking around for something to use to add some height to the base.  I was thinking I might have to cut a few pieces of wood but I found this black plastic thing in Mr. Backwood's hoard of random junk.  He said it was an end cap used on large water pipes to protect the threads from being damaged during transport.  Apparently he'd picked up a few of them out of a trash pile or something somewhere and was going to use them as containers for who knows what.  It was the perfect size to add to my lamp base, so I confiscated it, cleaned it up and gorilla glued it together with the base.

I covered the sockets and cords with paper and tape so they wouldn't get paint on them.  Then I took them outside and coated them both several times with Krylon Gloss Sun Yellow spray paint.  I used the whole can and brought them in once they were dry.  After looking at them for a day, I decided they needed a few more coats, the paint was thin in spots.  Also, there was an unsightly visible gap between the smaller lap base and the plastic cap I had glued to it.

I found some paintable caulk and used it to seal the crack.  We stopped by Walmart again Saturday night and I picked up another can of yellow spray paint.  Here they are after I got a few more coats on today.

A tip for painting anything bright yellow, do it in the winter when there are no bugs or in a garage or something if you have the option.  I had to keep picking gnats and things off of them while they were wet.  I think the bugs thought my lamps were huge flowers or something.

I left the tissue paper and tape on one of them so you can see how I kept from getting paint on the cord and socket. The tissue paper was a lot easier to wrap around than the note book paper I had used the first time.  I'm pretty happy with them, so far my total investment for lamps and paint is about 17.00.  Lamps this size without shades would probably cost me at least 40.00 each new in a store.  I didn't really want an exact matching pair, and I think I got pretty lucky finding 2 that were fluted vertically, so they are similar and should look pretty good together.  Once I get shades and dust my bedroom furniture, I'll update with photos of them in place.

Photos of the lamps with shades here.   Shades were 15.00 each bringing total cost to 47.00!

Blingy Mirror

I love the sunburst mirrors that have come back into style.  I already had a large round mirror that I'd bought at Lowe's a few years ago.  It was frame-less, but pretty big - 28 inches across, and was only $40.00.  At the time that was the best price I could find on a round mirror large enough to hang over a dresser.  But I digress.  I've been finding projects to DIY sunburst mirrors (they tend to be $$$ in stores) on Pinterest.  Here's a few I pinned:  meijosjoy mirror, thriftyandchic mirror, bystephanielynn mirror

The first one really caught my eye; I love the sparkle.  I was at a friend's house a few days ago talking this project over.  For the sake of internet anonymity, we'll give them the super secret blog names of Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel.  Squirrel and Mr. Backwoods have been friends since they were kids.  Mrs. S is my craft buddy, she totally DIY'd her wedding and reception decor last fall.  She's also really into blingy stuff, too and for her wedding decor she ordered a roll of this stuff called diamond wrap from save-on-crafts.com.  It looks like rhinestones, but its actually molded plastic that's faceted and painted chrome so that it sparkles but costs much less than yards and yards of rhinestones would have.   We decided that the diamond wrap would be great for sparkle on the mirror and we could just peel the strips off of the jars she had used in her centerpieces and not have to cut any of the new unused stuff.

 I knew I had some leftover PVC in the crawl space from when we ran waterlines from the well last Spring, so I had some material on hand to fashion my border shapes.  I dug out a piece and the next day when I stopped by their house, Squirrel was nice enough to not only cut about 300 slices of it (which was actually way more than I needed, I didn't get out to the garage to tell him how many until he'd already cut a ton), but he also found a scrap of pipe he had with a smaller diameter and cut some of that, too. 

My supplies:

I took that shot after I'd already glued the pieces I used for my frame together, so those are some of my extra rings, not the actual amount I used.  I wiped each slice with a wet rag before gluing because I forgot to before he cut them and it had been laying under my house for nearly a year.  If I had this to do over, I would have taken some acetone or nail polish remover and tried to get the printing off the outside of the pipes.  You'll see later why, it would have saved me a few steps and blunders.  Here's a shot once I had laid out my pattern and glued the rings to each other.  I haven't attached them to the mirror yet.

This is the point where you would paint the rings if you wish, if you manage to remove the printing before gluing its not completely necessary.  Spray paint would be the ideal thing to use.  I was impatient; I didn't have spray paint, the store is far away, and I had a bottle of silver craft paint and a foam brush on hand.  It didn't work too well.  Craft paint adheres to the rough cut sides, but the curved sides of the pipe where the writing is that needed covered the most, were too slick.  I sort of just tried to slap it on a little heavier wherever there was writing and went with it.

After all that handling, the frame came apart a few times in places.  I had been going to just hang the frame separately over top of the mirror, but it wasn't sturdy enough.  So I glued it directly on the mirror.  Then we cut the diamond wrap into 1 row strips and started carefully hot gluing them to the face of the rings.  I say "we" because after sitting on the floor for a few hours my back started to hurt and Babe Jr. offered to take over.

Here's a closer shot. Since the diamond wrap is plastic, the strips conformed to the curves easily with the hot glue as long as we glued a little at a time.

 

You can see my paint job issues here.  Thankfully once it was up on the wall its not noticeable.  

I had started the project in the evening as soon as we got home from the Squirrels' house.  We put it away when Mr. Backwoods got home from work.  The next morning Babe Jr started back as soon as she got out of bed and had it finished before I'd drank my first cup of coffee.  

There is a mounting bracket on the back of my mirror since this one is large and meant to hang on the wall. In a lot of the pinterest projects they use smaller craft mirrors, so you would have to come up with your own method of hanging.  I had to screw mine into a stud and use a drywall anchor for one of the screws, this mirror is heavy.  Here it is all done hanging over my bed.

I love it!  For my wall space, I couldn't do a huge elaborate frame.  With a smaller mirror I probably would have used a lot more circles and made it more "sunbursty."

I'm getting a new comforter set and curtains SOON.  So this is the beginning of my bedroom makeover.  I'm thinking of selling my bedroom suit.  I definitely want to replace that headboard with an upholstered one and the dresser mirror is huge and has the same wrought iron on the top.  I want to get a flat screen TV to replace the 20 year old one we have and hang it over the dresser.  Rather than try to store the headboard and mirror somewhere, I may try to get rid of all of it and just buy a new dresser.  If you know me in real life and know anyone who wants to buy them, please let me know!!