This Stop Willoughby

We're skipping breakfast again.  I know you were expecting Mr. Willoughby to dazzle you with his cooking skills, but he doesn't feel like cooking today.  He wants to go skydiving. Yesterday, a friend sent us a link to an article about a new place to skydive in Michigan.  When I clicked on the link, I was surprised to see a familiar face. We'll get to that in a minute. You may recall that Mr. W started skydiving by taking a tandem jump a few years ago.  With a tandem jump, having a great instructor makes the difference between a fun experience and an amazing experience and Mr. W had Josh Sheppard; one of the best.  Josh is experienced, enthusiastic and passionate about skydiving.  Mr. W had such an amazing experience that he decided to take the AFF course (to learn to jump solo) before they were back on the ground.   So back to that article, the familiar face I saw was Josh.  He and his brother Abe have started a new skydiving business in Owo...

My regularly scheduled post has been postponed.  Mr. Willoughby was going to demonstrate how to make a breakfast favorite, but he was busy doing something else. A friend nominated him to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and he accepted! Wanna see? I'll be back soon with the breakfast post. Willoughby You can now follow me through Bloglovin .

This spring we made a commitment to work with supplies we had before buying anything new for our house and yard.  I also wanted to keep the budget for plants and flowers in check (I tend to get carried away at the local nursery), which meant I was going to have to get pretty creative. I still went to the nursery and got a few flats of annuals, but I found some great free and inexpensive ways to fill in the empty spaces in the yard.  In no particular order, here are some of my favorites. 1. Transplant wild plants/flowers (with permission, of course).  This was easy for me because my mom's house is on a wooded lot and she told me to take anything I wanted. I had no idea wild snapdragons existed until my sister in law and I found huge clumps of them growing in a flower bed in my mom's front yard.  I dug up a half dozen plants and they transplanted beautifully. Years ago I had tried to transplant wild black raspberries without success, but t...

I'm a little behind schedule.  I had a different sweet treat that I was going to post, but I don't have all the potentially necessary step by step photos to show you exactly how to make it.  The last time we made it, I got so into the process that I completely forgot about the camera.  Too bad, because it's a delicious recipe that you would most definitely want to make.  Your friends and family would have been so impressed that you made something this awesome that they would have lavished you with praise and, maybe, large gifts of cash.  It would have changed your life.  Really. No worries, I'm still planning to share it with you.  Just not today. Instead, I'm going to share my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I know you're probably thinking that there are a million chocolate chip cookie recipes, so this one can't be all that special or life changing.  But it is.  It comes from years of experimenting with different recipes, ch...

Earlier this summer, Mr. W and I used some wood leftover from another project to make some planting boxes.  I didn't like the way the bare wood looked, so for the first box, I brushed on some light walnut stain.  It's not bad, but it's not the look I was hoping for.  I wanted something that had the appearance of age.  Like it had been sitting around a potting shed for the last 50 years. This is my salad box stained with light walnut.  Those are little lettuce seedlings.   I played around with some other colors of stain we had in the garage.  I made swatches on a piece of scrap wood, but none of them were giving me the aged look, so I searched the internet for some ideas. Lots of websites had recipes for mixing different colors of stain to achieve an old, weathered look, but I didn't want to buy multiple cans of stain for just a few small projects.  The technique that appealed most to me was using vinegar.  It's super simple and you...

We're going to kick off our DIY project spree with a simple project for your kitchen and/or bathroom.  We're going to make a mason jar soap (or lotion) dispenser.  You've probably seen these all over the internet.  They're pretty popular and there are a number of ways to make them.  If you don't want to do any work at all, you can buy the precut lid with the pump insert and just pop it into a mason jar. You can use a new jar or an old jar, either way you'll get a vintage look. The method I used is pretty simple.  You will need a mason jar, an empty plastic soap bottle and a few basic tools. Begin by unscrewing the pump and setting it aside.  Next, cut the top off the plastic soap bottle.  I chose to cut just below the "shoulders" of the bottle, but you could cut just below the threaded portion of the "neck" if you prefer.  A hack saw works well for this.  Just be careful and take your time. Next, trace the opening of the bott...

Summer is so short.  You've got to make the most of it while it's here, and that's what I've been doing.  Mr. W and I have been keeping busy with all kinds of projects which doesn't leave me much time for blogging.  I started wondering, would anyone else be interested in the projects we've been working on? I'm going to take a chance and assume they would.  So for a while, I'll be posting some simple (and some not so simple), inexpensive DIY projects.  I'll post photos and info so you can do them, too, if you'd like. Tomorrow, we'll kick things off with some upcycled vintage flair.  See you then! Willoughby You can now follow me through Bloglovin .

It may not technically be summer just yet, but after the severe winter we had, it's been summer to me ever since the temperature started to stay consistently above thirty degrees.  Now that we've got that straight, let's talk about your backyard. People always tell me how lucky I am that we have a hot tub and a pool.  I suppose it's true that a little luck was involved, but it certainly doesn't have anything to do with money.  It's no secret that we got both our pool and hot tub from people who didn't want them.  We found them under the "free" listings on craigslist. It's the hot tub that I really want to talk about, today, because I have a little secret for you if you should decide that you would like one in your yard.  Unless you're buying a new one and having it delivered and set up, you're going to need a strategy for getting it out of it's current location and into your yard and that's where the secret comes into ...

Do it yourself, that is! In this house, we're all about DIY projects.  There is an immense sense of satisfaction for us in taking something and turning it into something else.  Or starting from scratch and ending up with something you've visualized. A few years ago, we found this door at our local Habitat for Humanity store.  It was dirty and beat up, but it had its original hardware (love, love, love original hardware) and it was the perfect size for our office.   We had two pieces of leaded glass that were given to us by one of Mr. W's friends, and we wanted to use one in this door.  We had a little retrofitting and some painting to do, but  here's what that door looks like now: As you can see in the picture, our office is a pretty narrow room.  There was no way we were going to be able to use pre made furniture and get a good fit, so the window seat and the bookcases were also DIY projects. For the bookcases, we pur...

We haven't had a home phone for almost ten years.  That's not entirely true, we do have a phone line that plugs into our cable modem (I think that's how it works, you'd have to ask Mr. W), but we don't use it.  I couldn't even tell you the phone number without looking it up.  The only reason that we have it is because we got a better package deal from our cable provider if the phone was included.  It would cost more to get rid of it than to keep it.  How much sense does that make?  In any case, it's not even plugged in.  You can still leave a message for us because the voice mail system works regardless of whether the phone is plugged in.  We don't check the messages, though, because anyone we would actually want to talk to would call our cell phones.   The only calls we get on that line are from telemarketers and political candidates.  Small wonder we never bother listening to the messages, right? For a long time, we had flip style ce...

On March 15th, a little after 10:00 pm, my dad passed away.  He had been receiving home hospice care and they had told us he was beginning the process of "winding down" several weeks before, but still, I wasn't prepared. He had been struggling with a number of health issues for a long time.  Over the past year he had undergone bypass surgery and two amputations and had been bouncing back and forth between the hospital and a rehabilitation center.  When they finally sent him home and recommended hospice care, we knew our time left with him was short. We were told to expect ups and downs; a roller coaster ride.  Really, though, he had more good days than bad.  He was confused at times and would say things that we didn't understand or would call out for me when I was sitting right next to him.  Occasionally, he would ask about their dog.  "Maggie has been gone for 15 years, Dad."  "I know," he said "I'm talking about the dog that looks li...

Easter is coming.  It's about a month and a half away, so it's a little too soon to worry about what I'm going to make for Easter dinner.  Still, I'm a little scared because I've managed to hurt myself in the kitchen on every holiday since last Easter. Along with the ham, I had decided to make scalloped potatoes.  I was using the mandolin (with the guard) to slice the potatoes, but I was rushing to get it done.  The guard slipped and I ran my middle finger across the blade.  For a split second, I wasn't sure I had cut myself because it didn't hurt.  But then it started bleeding, and I mean BLEEDING, and it hurt like crazy.  I had cut all the way to the bone.  I could actually see it.  Really.  I grabbed a gob of paper towel and put as much pressure on it as I could.  Then I put a bandage on it (which wasn't easy, I was home alone at the time and more than a little woozy after seeing bone), slipped on a disposable glove and finishe...

Being indoors all the time is starting to drive me crazy.  Today is sunny and the sky is clear blue, but I can't get out and enjoy it because it's wicked cold outside.  The wind chill bottomed out somewhere around -16 degrees this afternoon.  It snowed for a short time, but instead of coming straight down, the wind whipped it into a horizontal blizzard. All day long I've felt overdue for a nap.  Sure, there are things I could do to keep myself busy.  I've got a few loads of laundry waiting for me and those tax returns aren't going to do themselves, but I don't have the energy or the focus to deal with either one of them. Yesterday, we got an advertising circular from a local home improvement store.  The front page was filled with paving blocks, landscaping timbers, planters and hose reels.  Everything about it screamed spring.  It made me feel hopeful and sad at the same time.  Hopeful that spring is coming, sad that we still have five fe...

Tomatoes are a total mystery to me.  I buy them, I grow them, I eat them, but I can't say that I understand them. First of all, why is it so hard to get a good tasting tomato in the middle of winter in Michigan?  I know some tomatoes are imported from warmer places and some are grown in green houses.  Unless they're labeled, I usually can't tell the difference.  Neither one has much flavor and they're usually mushy. Next, I just don't understand what to do with them.  Whether it's February and I'm getting the flavorless ones from the produce department, or the middle of July and I'm harvesting fresh tomatoes from my garden, I've always followed the conventional wisdom that you should not refrigerate an uncut tomato.  So I don't.  I leave them sitting on the counter.  This poses two problems.  Number one, I like tomatoes to be cold (I don't care that someone, somewhere says they're more flavorful at room temp.).  Number two, they go b...

The color of the year appears to be winter white.  The snow in our front yard is approximately five feet deep. Taken at eye level. Looking toward our neighbor's house. What is the weather like where you are?   *Warning, shameless plug!*  If you need to keep warm, stop by our shop for some blizzard swag ! Willoughby You can now follow me through Bloglovin .