Lego

Image

Zombie Clowns

3 Comments

Mr. Smith and I have been on a little mini hiatus for the last few days. I had hoped to get a post up before leaving for said break from the real world but I wasn’t really sure what to write about. 

  
At first I was reluctant to pick up blogging and my hobbies again. To be fair I was reluctant to do anything. I couldn’t even eat. Now I’m finding I relish the little things; in particular the hobbies that bring me and especially others joy. So of course I’ll be doing a blog about how my hobbies are helping me through everything. I guess every blog I do is about a hobby or project, I just have a new love for them. 

  
But of course now I have a mini vacation to blog about . For Mr. Smith’s birthday  we spent some time with his aunt and her family down in Florida. As I’ve said my family has been amazingly helpful with getting through this so I’m incredibly grateful Mr. Smith has some family relatively close by.

  
They live in an area that I’m quite familiar with because my grandparents used to live there. We had the opportunity to go to Legoland one day… 

This is going to sound like an

  
Type of thing, but I actually went to Legoland before it was Legoland. On a side note I had been to Legoland once it was Legoland as well, I was just excited to see how Mr. Smith would like it since this was his first trip. 

  
Legoland is built around a place called Cyprus Gardens which I had been to several times in my youth and your admission to the park includes admission to the old gardens. Don’t get me wrong Legoland is cool, (more about it later) but if you don’t bother going to Cyprus Gardens while you’re there you are missing out. 

  
Mr. Smith didn’t really bother taking any pictures in Legoland but his eyes lit up and the camera snapped away when we got to the gardens as you can probably tell by all of these pictures.  If you’ve never seen a Banyan tree it is an amazing sight to behold.  Of course he had to have a creepy tree in this post. 

  
Legoland itself was toy heaven, secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) neither of us have matured in the last 20 years so we are still stuck in the 8-14 age bracket that Legos cater to… our vacation budget was spent accordingly. And that’s pretty much all we did was shop. The weather was terrible thanks to this time of year so a good amount of the rides were closed anyway. I’m extremely happy I wore my bathing suit under my clothes because I never dried out.

  
(Han definitely shot first) 
Our haul from Legoland however was epic…. Oh I mean Awesome!

  
I’m personally of the master builder disposition whereas Mr. Smith tends to follow directions. He has plans involving Kra-Gl but I’ve got a piece of resistance around here to stop him. 

Image

Resurrection, or A Lantern for That Glamping Trip

8 Comments

Do you remember that clock I murdered so ferociously without any thought of what I might do with it.

If you don’t you can find it here.

Well I figured out what to do with it in a somewhat round about fashion. I had considered turning it into a lamp but … well, it seemed complicated and despite how this blog may make me appear I’m a lazy person. Then I came across these lovelies on Amazon. They are the tiniest fairy lights you’ve ever seen. They are battery powered and oddly the strand is waterproof. I don’t need it to be but that’s cool none the less.

I also found a roll of window frost on amazon with good reviews. I’ve got a bathroom window that needs frosting and it will only take about 6 square inches of the 9ft roll to do this project so its worth it.

The next bit got a little complicated. Only because I made it so. It doesn’t need to be. I laid the glass over some pretty scrapbooking paper and laid down the frost contact paper over top of it letting the excess hang over the edge to secure it in place. I then used a Knife of Exact Zero* to cut out the pattern of the scrapbooking paper into the contact paper. You can purchase frosted contact paper that has patterns like this in it ready made. I opted for regular old frost since it’s something I’m going to be using for multiple projects, including some I just want to be plain. I decided to stick with the cheaper and more boring frost, and thus created a little bit more work for myself.

After that it was just a matter of spray painting that horrific brass

I then reassembled the glass and faceplate just securing it with a bit of glue and strung the itty bitty adorable lights through the back plate where the clockwork used to be.

Last but not least I happened to have a frame that fit the front of the clock perfect and I glued that on to the front as well to glam it up a bit and voila…

A lantern for your next glamping trip

 

You could skip the pattern in the frost or skip the frost all together by placing some tissue paper (any color) in the lantern. I (or rather my mother) discovered this after the fact but I actually like it a bit better as it also manages to diffuse the light a bit more and hide the wires a bit better. The header picture is of the clock/lantern on with tissue paper behind the face.

At any rate I’m glad our sad, neglected, noisy clock found new life as a glamorous lantern. It will likely come in handy during our regular power outages. What other objects can you think of upcycling into lanterns?

 

 

 

 

*that’s an exacto knife for those of you that are not awesome