April Fun ('13 Edition)

April blew by exceptionally fast for us. Here are some highlights!

So this was the view on the morning of April 11. Snow, on my tulips. In April. Ug, go away Winter! You'll get your chance to come back around, but let's let Spring have her moment, OK?

We made dog treats for Kramer. We had some meat that was pretty tough due to a learning experience with a roasting pan. We didn't want it to go to waste, but it really wasn't tasty. So we mixed it with spinach, applesauce, and bananas and put it in the dehydrator.

Kramer thought the homemade dog treats were fantastic. She didn't take her eyes of Drew while he was moving them from the dehydrating racks to the storage containers.

Somehow, someway, Kramer managed to fling her bone under the refrigerator. We think she was trying to come downstairs to be with us and traveling at a high rate of speed when the bone was ejected from her mouth. It still doesn't make any sense. Drew got on the floor and tried to find it and Kramer wanted to help, but we ended up pulling the fridge out and getting the bone that way. Pay no attention to the dust bunny that Drew was able to find...

We made some homemade ketchup. Or catsup. I think I'll go with ketchup. Regardless, this was quite tasty. It's still not perfected, but it was a great start. Plus, no high fructose corn syrup!

We had a great deal on some beefsteak tomatoes and popped some in the dehydrator for snacking. Again, still not perfect, but they were quite tasty.

More Wall Hangings in the Basement

After the push of getting the basement finished and painting my own wall art, things really died down on that front and we haven't done a single thing. Well, that's not true. We hosted friends to watch Husker games in our new basement, we had two of our nieces come for a sleepover in our new basement, and we just spent time enjoying our new basement. We just didn't do any additional decorating or arranging down there. Until now.

Every once in a while I get an email offer for 2 free 8 x 10 prints from one of the online photo sites and I always take advantage. We have some great pictures from our honeymoon and our trip to Europe and I've been selecting some of them for these larger prints. Once I pay shipping, it's usually a little over $1 for each print and I've been keeping them until I get enough to actually do something with. That day has come!

I found some incredibly cheap frames online at the dollar store. They are plastic and the case came with 24 frames, 6 of which are a silvery color I have no use for at the moment. Once shipping was added, they were about $1.50 each and I really couldn't beat that deal. So I framed the pictures and I decided to hang them on one of the walls in the basement.

This was the general orientation I came up with, laid out on the table.

Some people have a super involved process of measuring things and getting the placement just right and then tracing on a piece of paper and transferring it to the wall. Me, I just laid them out in the general orientation I wanted and then moved them to the wall. It worked for me.


Pictures on the wall! And, unless you get right up to them, you can't tell that the frames are plastic.

And the best part, I can change out pictures as needed and there's still room to add a few more framed shots on the wall if I decide to, provided I get some more coupon codes!

Photo Locations: Top row, left to right: A bicycle in the lake as a swan swims by in Lucerne, Switzerland; The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France; Yellowstone National Park. Middle row, left to right: Yellowstone National Park; The Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France, A flower at the botanical gardens in Montreal, Canada. Bottom row: The back view of the home from The Sound Of Music in Salzburg, Austria.