Field Trip!

LOL, I don't get out much.

No, really, I don't. On Saturday we drove over to Alabama to look at a camper and were so near to a family friend's house we had to stop by and visit. J had called to see if he was home, but hadn't mentioned that I was with him. When T saw me in the car he started yelling! He couldn't believe I was there! He got a couple of phone calls while we were there, and told the people, most of who don't even know me, that I had actually come to see him. Haaaaa.

I like being at home. It's my sanctuary, where I'm comfortable. Everything I need is here, my books (Kindle), crafts, internet, gardening, my back porch, my yard, my bed, big screen tv with Netflix...
Everything I don't need is not here: The %$*^# Public.

Well, but, sometimes I need (ie want) things that I don't have so I have to just deal with The %$*^# Public and go get it.

In this case, I had a list of things I wanted from Ikea, namely countertops, and also drawer pulls/knobs.
We were able to re-use the cabinets, but because of the different lay-out the old countertops won't fit. Such a shame. (Not really, I don't really like the old countertops.)
I didn't like any of the home improvement store's in-stock countertops, so I checked out Ikea's countertops online and found one I thought I liked. I thought it was a lot thinner than it is, because I have no real concept of measurement, 1 1/2 inches sounds thinner than it looks. It looks 3 or 4 inches thick to me.

I also thought it was more shiny/glossy than it is. I don't know if I'm going to like these, either.
But I got them anyway because I still liked it better than the ones at the home improvement store, and they were cheap. I got the longer ones, about 8 feet, for $69.00 each. Total, not per square foot, like the quartz or granite or other ones that had also.
Total $138.00 for new kitchen countertops.

 I got these drawer pulls and knobs. I hope they match well. I didn't see any Fagleboda knobs.

I also got a couple of these black under-the-cabinet railing, hooks, and one of the white metal oblong containers, and 2 of the white metal bucket containers. They seemed like a good idea at the time, and mostly, they look good, but I don't really know what I'm going to use them for. The idea is to keep stuff up off your counters, but all the stuff that's on my counters now, I don't plan to have on my counters in the new kitchen. Oh well, I'm sure there'll be stuff ended up in them.

We looked at lighting for over the sink, but I couldn't decide what I wanted, so didn't get anything.

When I get to go to Ikea, that means J gets to go to The Varsity.  If you're not familiar, the Varsity is an Atlanta landmark, open since 1928, on the campus of Georgia Tech University. (The place was Vintage when my Uncle went to Georgia Tech in the 1960's!)
They're famous for hollering "What'll ya have, what'll ya have, what'll ya have!" when you walk up - and you better know what you want, they aren't patient - Varsity chili dogs, onion rings, and Frosted Oranges (milkshakes that taste like the Push-up ice creams).

I wasn't feeling the chili today, so I got a "naked" dog.

It's All Over But the Shoutin'

Right now I am dog.ass.tired and achy all over - stress is sooo stressful on a body - but still I'm as happy as a fox in an unguarded henhouse.

♫ School's Out For-evah! ♫

So, planning to have guests over after graduation, we busted tail last week to get Party Central finished up.

Way our house is, the front is almost completely disconnected from the back. If you were on the front porch or the carport, you'd have to walk all the way around the house to get to the back. Used to it didn't matter. We had parties in the carport, and the side yard was big enough for impromptu games of baseball or tag.
But then, we got the pool, in the backyard. We had built a tiny little Pool Shack back there for me to hang out in the shade and watch the boys swim, but no way was it large enough for any kind of family gatherings.

I had always wanted a large "party room" porch/deck after seeing/eating on a nice outdoor eating deck at a local'ish restaurant.
So a couple years back, we added a large porch (and a larger laundry/utility room) onto the backside of the carport.

Then we learned that there was NO airflow/circulation back there. The winds come in from the West, which is the front side of the house, which is why previous outdoor events were pleasant and we mistakenly  thought it was from the shade of all the large, old trees all around the yard. Even with ceiling fans, going out on this porch on a summer day was like stepping into an oven.
Nice for me, I always go out there to get warm when I cold in the house with the a/c going. It's set on 80*, and everyone else swears it's hot in the house so I can't turn it up any more. I'd leave it off altogether was it up to me. But it's too hot for everyone else.

So this year I got the idea to open up part of the back of the carport wall. Hoping that would allow airflow from the west to come on through, and at the same time it made for a good place to move the extra refrigerator where I keep bottles of water/drinks and popsicle/ice cream treats that used to sit out on the porch, taking up space, and also you could get from the front to the back of the house without having to walk all the around or come through the house.

The mosquito netting we had gone to IKEA for  worked out great for the majority of us. Somehow they still managed to find their way in and gnaw on my sweet niece.

The big thing that looks like it has horns is an inflatable pool
toy. I probably should have moved it into the storage
building for the day, but I'm so used to seeing it,
I guess I didn't even see it. 

Up until yesterday, we'd kept the netting open and tied back out of the way, so I hadn't had an opportunity to figure out how to anchor them at the bottom. They kept blowing into the porch and I looked around and looked around for what I had, and I ended up clipping clothespins to the bottom edges to try to hold them down. They weren't heavy enough, though.

In the end I used some good 'ol redneck ingenuity and dug some coke cans out of the recycling can, partially filled with water, tied some twine on the tab and clipped them into some of the clothespins. Ain't pretty, but it worked.