UNA lions

Since we spent a lot of time on the UNA campus this weekend, I thought I would share some pictures of lion art. UNA takes its mascot very seriously.

Turning Teen

JP went over the edge of childhood this week and has embarked on adolescence.

For his birthday dinner we got a babysitter for the girls and went to Carraba's. It was a nice, adult kind of dinner, complete with conversation. Is turning out to be a remarkable young man. Seems like it was not so long ago we were bringing him home from the hospital.

As usual, his birthday was accompanied by a bit a snow and cold weather.

For his party, he had a big sleepover, with Xbox, PS2, catchphrase, speed scrabble, and never trust a pirate, football, as well as a LOTR marathon thrown in over the period of many hours. I think all the boys got a couple of hours of sleep, but there was never a time when all of them were asleep at the same time.

Picture Frames

Awhile ago, I started making picture frames for our art prints.
This arose out of several needs: 1) the big wood frames cost way too much money in the store, 2) these frames of preset size often do not fit the print size, and 3) they are usually only available in one or two colors.

So I started making them my own, inspired by an old friend of ours who was an artist and made frames for his canvases all the time.

I have experimented with several different strategies for joining the pieces and my latest version seems the simplest.

Materials:
Buy several 1"x2"x 8 feet wood strips from your local hardware store. Cost is usually around $1.50 per strip. (Note: this means that the board is actually 0.75"x1.5"x ~8 feet long).
3/8" dole pole for around $0.70. Should last at least 3-4 frames.
Buy a box of wood screws. Cost is around $5 and will last you for many frames.
Buy some craft paint in appropriate colors. Cost is around $2 and will last many frames.

So total cost per frame is probably around $3.

Method:
Cut the wood strips to the appropriate size. Want the strip to cover about 0.75 inch of the print usually, as the white border tends to be from 1-2 inches.

















Lightly sand cut edges so flush.












Using a 3/8" drill bit, drill holes for the screws to connect the length-wise ends to the height- wise ends by marking in 0.75 inches from the ends of the length wise sides. Only drill about half way thru the board.
Using a square to assure right angles, drill pilot holes for the screws from this point all the way thru to the other board.
Then insert screw and tightened well. (I found that a power drill was useful to do the main work, but needed to hand-tighten to get totally tight without cracking frame.)



Then place a little bit of wood glue in each hole and insert dole. Cut dole off flush with board using a hand saw.
Sand the entire product smooth and paint with three to four coats of appropriate color.












Then staple the print directly to the frame using a staple gun.
Add a hanger and the framed print is ready to go.











Here are some finished products:

Pancake Breakfast

Saturday morning is traditionally our big breakfast day.
This week, ME wanted in on the action.

MidState Honor Band

Here's a few pictures from before the performance. We don't have any coverage of the actual performance, because to our surprise, they made an announcement that any video and audio recording of the performance was strictly prohibited. A CD of the performance will be shipped to us later.

But they sounded really good.

Bicycle Training

ME trying out her birthday present.

Note that there is no snow. We are back in the 70s.

SNOW!!!

It started snowing while I was running on BMBlvd.
A genuine Tennessee snow flurry. Actually more than a typical snow flurry, because there was a pretty high density of flakes. Not enough to stick on the ground but for a winter that has been warmer than I can ever remember, its a bit of a surprise.

Exciting Group Game

At the big New Year's Eve party yesterday, we played a game for the first time that was a lot of fun for really large groups. I'm not sure if it has a name but its a bit of a variant on Charades.

-Everyone gets 2 (or 3) blank pieces of paper and writes down the name of a famous person or character on each paper.
-All the papers are put in a hat.
-Divide into two teams.
-On the team's turn, one player from each team draws a name from the hat and tries to get their team to guess it according to the rules from the round (see below.)
-If the team guesses correctly, the name goes into that teams scoring pile and the player draws another name, and continues until their time runs out (we used 30 secs per turn.)
-A player can pass on one name per turn, and returns the passed name to the hat.
-Play alternates between teams until all the names have been drawn, which ends the round.
-The score for each team is recorded and all the names returned to the hat.


The game is played in three rounds
-In round one, the speaker can say anything they want except the name, or sounds like..., or begins with....
-In round two, the speaker can only say two words for each name. Use of more words and the name is forfeited to the other team (we were not super strict on this if it seemed accidental.)
-In round three, the speaker can only pantomime using Charade rules.

As you can imagine, being able to remember the names from the first round is critical to success. We played 2 games, both men versus women and for some reason, the men would lead through the first couple of rounds and then would get killed in the pantomime round.