Projects! Projects! Projects!

A few weekends ago while I was home visiting my parents, my mom and I made some bird baths. My Aunt Jeanie and Uncle Gene showed my mom these and we had to try it ourselves. First you take a really large leaf(we used rhubarb leaves). Then you make a cement mixture with less water than you would use for normal cement. On top of a table that you don't care about you dump out a bag of sand. Place a large garbage bag on the sand. Then arrange the leaf on top of the garbage bag/sand, this gives the bird bath depth. The cement goes right on top making sure to have it cover the entire leaf with no wholes. It needs to be pretty thick. Ours is between 1/2 and 1 inch think. You have to let it dry for a few days. After that you can turn over the cement and remove any pieces of leaf that may be stuck in the crevice. My mom painted the leaves(I am not sure with what), it has to dry again. Before you seal the leaves it needs to sit for about two weeks. Last time I was home we sealed the leaves with 3 coats, top and bottom. Here are the finished products. I love it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week I spent a couple of days at my parents house. My parents have always had a fluorescent light in their kitchen that is not really very pretty-you can see the rectangular area of different colored paint where the light was. One of the bulbs burned out and my brothers were going to fix it before they left. Eric is a carpenter and Gary is and electrician, they decided they would redo the lights in my moms kitchen-something she has wanted done for a long time. Here's a picture. They did almost the whole thing in a couple of hours. All that is left is one light(the pipes need to be moved first), and painting the ceiling. I had to leave before they finished, but I will put another picture later on. Doesn't it look great!?!