silliness is key

While looking at the DIY Showoff link party, I found a link to this post from Our Peaceful Planet.

Its all about how humour and laughter are the key to a good relationship.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

Ideas To Get You Laughing

 

These suggestions were chosen to encourage having fun and laughing together.  NOTE: If any of these things sound way too immature, your totally missing the point.

 

1. Watch funny movies or shows together.
2. Watch stand up comedians together.
3. Set a goal to share one new joke with each other every week.
4. Grab some things in the bookstore humor area and read to each other.
5. Have a game night where you play a fun board game together. You can even do it with friends. (Crimes Against Humanity sticks out as a good choice.)
6. Be playfully teasing with each other.
7. Get over inhibitions and do something silly. Make faces, walk funny, do some slap stick.
8. Always look for the humor in a situation.
9. Whisper naughty things to your mate that makes them giggle.
10. Have a tickle fight.
11. Play twister together.
12. Hang out with funny friends.
13. Learn to laugh at yourself.
14. Play a fun video game together. (Roy and I play World of Warcraft.)
15. Ride go carts together.
16. Do the hokey pokey.
17. Go to a park and play on the swings and slide.
18. Have a silly string fight.
19. Play laser tag.
20. Have a water, snowball or pillow fight.
21. Act out a scene from a movie.
22. Learn to juggle.
23. Have a bubble gum blowing contest.
24. Have a burping contest.

Well... that's interesting. Lets see how we fare.

Watch funny movies/shows together - of course. Although sometimes I have to draw the line at some of the stuff Wayne finds funny. I mean I absolutely hate Absolutely Fabulous. And Kath and Kim. And Little Britain. Ugh. However we share the Big Bang Theory, Two Broke Girls, Two and a Half Men (with Charlie of course), Mom and a few others.

Watch stand up comedians together - I wish we could watch them live like I used to in Melbourne long long ago. As it is we just watch the comedy specials on TV.

Set a goal to share one new joke with each other every week - no goal, but we share jokes often. Especially the political jokes that get elected...

Grab some things in the bookstore humor area and read to each other - nah.

Have a game night where you play a fun board game together. You can even do it with friends. (Crimes Against Humanity sticks out as a good choice.) - Crimes Against Humanity? I can't find that game... I found Cards Against Humanity... is that the same thing? I used to love board games but its been a long time since I played any. Time to bring back the fun. Anyone for Pictionary?

Be playfully teasing with each other - always.

Get over inhibitions and do something silly. Make faces, walk funny, do some slap stick - gosh. If we made more silly faces we'd be at risk of the wind changing and staying that way! Anyway, silly voices, silly accents, silly words... all the time.

Always look for the humor in a situation - ok... easier said than done in some situations. But good point and sometimes we can do it.

Whisper naughty things to your mate that makes them giggle - uhuh.

Have a tickle fight - no way. I'm too ticklish! Does slapping each other on the butt as we pass count?

Play twister together - are you kidding? We'd get stuck in some contorted position and have to be taken to hospital like human pretzels.

Hang out with funny friends - as much as possible.

Learn to laugh at yourself - always.

Play a fun video game together - we don't play video games. Or computer games.

Ride go carts together - that would be fun. Do we even have go carts in Tasmania?

Do the hokey pokey - have you seen us get out of bed in the morning?

Go to a park and play on the swings and slide - LOL... but no. We've never done that.

Have a silly string fight - sadly, I've never had a silly string fight. Put that on the shopping list.

Play laser tag - I don't think I could pay Wayne enough to play laser tag.

Have a water, snowball or pillow fight - water yes, pillow yes, snow... no. 

Act out a scene from a movie - does quoting lines from movies till he wants to strangle me count?

Learn to juggle - I'm game if you are.

Have a bubble gum blowing contest - could do, providing we don't pull out our fillings... speak for myself. Wayne has great teeth. Mine are a whole lot of filling held together by some enamel.

Have a burping contest - HA. All the time! In fact we grade each other on depth, decibels and reverb. 

I guess me and Wayne (or Wayne and I for those of you who are more pedantic than I am) aren't doing so bad after all.

Pass Go and collect $200.

Might be time to challenge Wayne to a game of Scrabble.

z

a kettle collection and an old cupboard

I love my depression cupboard.

Wayne and I bought it on a spending spree when we bought the farm. Up till yesterday it lived in the guest room holding linen.

It wasn't very good for holding linen and I didn't like it in there so I decided to replace it and put it where I can see it and enjoy it.

Its actually not in great condition. The top bit needs to be re-attached properly (right now its got huge nails that've been hammered in randomly but have come loose) and the base has rotted away in parts... it probably spent a lot of time in someone's damp shed. Thankfully its not musty.

And it still has the remnants of the sold sticker on it cause I never saw it often enough that it would bother me enough to get out the eucalyptus oil to remove it.

I love it cause its made of old crates. When you open it up inside you can see them. During the depression a lot of furniture was made from crates cause they were easily available. Back then stuff came in real wood boxes, not cardboard and polystyrene.

Today old crates cost almost as much as a new lounge suite.

So, the old cupboard is now on the front  porch, in the enclosed area protected from the weather, and it holds the broom, steam mop and vacuum cleaner, as well as all kinds of stuff which don't need to be in the pantry: cleaning products, light globes, etc.

And the top now holds my collection of old kettles and some of my succulents.

Of course, where it is it covers the bottom half of the window, but I don't mind that. I love the way the light comes in over the kettles.

And I love the way you can see the crates writing through the window.

I'm thinking of making a small doily curtain for the top part of the window to finish off the quaint look.

One day, when I get around to more sewing projects.

z

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life (and loss) on the farm

A few weeks ago one of our new chickens went clucky. First she sat on the nest and got a bit insulted when we took eggs from under her. Then she got short tempered. Then she got cranky and pecked if you reached for the nest.

So we took the 3 eggs she was sitting on and put her and the eggs in Alcatraz. That's the original dog run on the property that we've mainly used as a chicken/duck pen/hospital/nursery.

The chicken sat on those eggs for so long, never coming out of the nest even to eat, that every few days Wayne or I would go in and poke her to make sure she was still alive.

As you can imagine, she really enjoyed that. Small bruises on our arms will attest to that.

Eventually I walked past one day and saw something I never wanted to see... a baby chicken floating in the water bowl.

They'd hatched and one fell straight into the water. Sigh. Poor little thing.

I blame both of us for that. We (he) should have known better than to put a deep water bowl in there with the hen. Didn't we (he) learn after all those times we (I) fished Herman Too out of that very same bowl when he was dead set determined to kill himself?

Ok. He may have put the bowl in there, but I saw it and didn't remove it. So, we're both to blame.

Three hatched. Two alive. At least we have two live ones.

They're so cute, and she's such a good mommy. If you go in there she'll chase you away, wings out, tail up and pointy beak.

Meanwhile the other three chickens decided they wouldn't be shown up so they went clucky as well. Only problem is we'd been taking the eggs so they're sitting on empty nests, threatening us with the business end of their beak for nothing.

Well, except one, which is sitting on a ceramic egg. She plans to hatch a chicken figurine.

The horses are all well. Cass is still locked in the stable, poor girlie. She's being spoiled and pampered, being fed the good stuff twice a day while we wait till its safe to let her out. Its looking like that might be this weekend. The wound is healing well, only four stitches pulled out so its held together. We've been cleaning it every day and spraying it with disinfectant twice a day.

She's ready to get out. She's bored.

The others are jealous. They don't understand why she's being fed while they have to fend for themselves. Life ain't fair, is it?

Chipmunk shows off his manly physique.

All in all, Dancer and Chipmunk are taking it well but Wally is cranky.

I stay out of his way.

Oh, and we've had another animal adventure. Sheep this time.

I think our place has become known locally as the best animal resort in the area.

We keep getting visitors. First there were a couple of pigs, the native hen family, plovers, then the turkeys who visit on a regular basis for a few days at a time, and now we have sheep.

Dancer keeps a wary eye on the new guests.

The horses were a bit put out by the new visitors. How did they get in? The whole place is fenced obviously. The sheep are part gazelle and part greyhound. I saw them run and leap!

Wally doesn't mind as long as he gets all the treats.

Other than that, I've been doing the odd bit here and there but nothing interesting. Hopefully I'll finish a project or two this weekend to share. Stay tuned.

One thing that I'm pretty sure about now is that I DID fracture my rib. Its been weeks and its still sore.

Mind you, falling on my butt last weekend didn't help.

No, it wasn't my fault this time. It was Barney's.

Let me explain...

Barney was getting in the way of a car which was trying to park in the driveway. I called him over and squatted down to pat and hold him till it was safe.

Its hard enough to balance on your toes in a squatting position at the best of times if the ground is slightly uneven... but there I was trying to balance my center of gravity between my boobs and my butt when Barney decided to lean in.

There was no saving me then. All my weight shifted to my derrier and I went splat.

Again.

Only from a much shorter height this time. And I didn't land on my sore side.

However, the jolt was enough. Ugh.

Eh. Life goes on.

z

old flan tin clock

Among the multitudes of things I've had to relocate and find homes for in the last couple of weeks as I cleaned out and organised the casita, were a few flan tins. I'd collected them with the aim of making them into clocks one day.

Well, I'm pleased to say that one day finally came.

On Friday afternoon, while working on a chest of drawers makeover in the workshop, I found myself shoving a few items over to make space on the workbench. Among which was this old flan tin.

I remembered a bit of Donna's (Funky Junk) advice to only handle something once, so I thought it was time to take heed.

Up till now I've not followed that particular piece of advice even though I wanted to. I'd pick up an item, go put it down a little further over, then remember the 'no double handling' rule and wander around with it in my hand for 15 minutes or so looking for its forever home.

It just didn't work.

It would be ok if I had taken everything out of the room first (which was another bit of Donna's advice) and got all my storage spaces sorted and allocated before picking up items to rehome, but I didn't work that way.

No, I decided to empty the storage room, the grooming room and the workshop all at the same time.

Nothing like making a challenge really challenging!

So, there I was, chest deep in boxes, buckets, tools and dust, holding a jar of screws, unable to move cause there were things in the way, ready to burst into tears.

That's about when I gave up and took a week off, till I realised that the way to finish was to do one room at a time.

Once I decided to do that I cleaned out the laundry, the grooming room and the workshop. The store room is messier than it was before, but hey, you can't have it all at once.

But back to that clock.

When I found myself shoving over the old clocks and the flan tin I realised there was no better time than the present to make that clock. Or try to make that clock.

Firstly I had to bend the squished tin back into shape. Then I found that it had a broken bit on the side so I made that the top, drilling two holes on either side of the broken bit to put wire through. The thought behind that being that the broken bit wouldn't be visible if it was on top.

What I didn't notice till I took the photos was that the Willow logo in the middle is crooked.

Moving right along...

I then pulled apart a cheapie clock with broken glass I'd had in the grooming room a while back. I took out the clock parts and drilled a hole in the middle of the flan tin to fit the mechanism dooby.

Of course, I stuffed that up. I made the hole too small and the hour hand wouldn't move and I broke the mechanism pulling it out.

Lucky I had another cheap clock. I think I bought 3 at the time cause they were like $1 each.

I used superglue to fix the clock mechanism to the back of the tin, put the hands on and put in a new battery. Then waited to see if it would work. 

It works! Its still telling the correct time 2 days later in its new home on the grooming room wall. I call that a win despite the crooked logo in the middle.

Oh well, if you wanted perfection you'd be reading another blog. On this one you'll only see slap dash seat of my pants quality work. 'Cause that's how I roll!

z

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 Knick of Time Vintage Inspiration Party #175