Tag: DIY

Essentials.

At the beginning of the year, I introduced myself to essential oils. I was curious about them and the purported benefits of aromatherapy. Until then, my only exposure to them was during visits to the day spa. Right before COVID was a thing, a neighbor invited me to attend an introductory session at her house, as she had just signed up to sell for one of the major essential oil multi-level marketing (MLM) companies. I learned the basics of essential oils during that session, and wanted to try some, but I’m not really a multi-level marketing kinda girl. Instead, I found Revive for my first purchase, an on-line retailer of high quality, 100% pure essential oils. No MLM-strings attached, with free shipping, too.

After 6 months of using them, I am a fan! Years ago, Monte made me a wooden box out of mahogany boat scraps. It would be a perfect storage box for my essential oils, as they need to be stored in a dry, dark place to maximize their shelf-life. I drilled out cylindrical voids in a few pieces of wood to create two tiered rows inside the box to hold the bottles of my essential oils. I’m in love with this storage box. It smells amazing every time I open it.

I have found various ways to enjoy my essential oils. I haven’t become a fan of ingesting them. But, I use a diffuser to disperse the oils in the air, especially when I am doing yoga, a workout, or just working in my office/studio at home. Sometimes I use a single oil, sometimes I blend a few together. Revive has their own blend called “Sleep” that I really enjoy diffusing around bedtime.

Please remember that 100% pure essential oils should not be applied to skin undiluted. They should be mixed with a carrier oil or other liquid.

Dabbling with essential oils (pardon the pun) has expanded my repertoire of DIY projects with these that each incorporate several drops of oil:

Yoga-mat de-funking spray

  • small spray bottle (mine holds about 4 ounces)
  • 3 parts distilled H2O
  • 1 part witch hazel
  • 5 drops tea tree oil (note, tea-tree oil may not be pet-friendly, eucalyptus is another option)
  • 5 drops lavender oil

Mix all together in a spray bottle. Just spray on your sweaty yoga mat and wipe off with a dry, clean towel.

Foaming soap

  • foaming soap dispenser (Note, make sure it is for foaming soap, which is different than a regular liquid soap dispenser.)
  • 3/4 cup distilled H2O (Put this in the foaming soap dispenser first to cut down on creating foam inside the bottle while mixing.)
  • 2 1/2 Tbsp pure-castile liquid soap
  • 1/2 Tbsp fractionated coconut oil
  • 5-7 drops of your favorite essential oil

My foaming soap dispenser holds 8.5 ounces and the above amounts work for that size dispenser. If yours is a different size, adjust quantities accordingly, but make sure to allow enough room for the foaming mechanism on the spray insert to fit without causing the contents of the bottle to overflow.

Hand-sanitizer (or hand-cleaner, whatever)

  • 2 parts rubbing alcohol (99%)
  • 1 part aloe vera gel

Mix together in dispenser of your choice.

Anti-chafe cream:

  • 1 part fractionated coconut oil
  • 1 part corn starch
  • 4-5 drops essential oil of your choosing

I find this helps alleviate chafing on my skin when working out. You may want to tweak the amount of corn starch to create a consistency you prefer. I keep mine in an old face cream jar and rub a little on my arms or my legs if things are experiencing a bit of friction.

Pizza!

Pics of last night’s bounty, using homemade dough, homemade sauce, and home grown basil.

Savory margherita:

Freaking awesome prosciutto with onion, mushroom, and kalamata olive:

Luscious toasted parmesan on pizza crust:

I loves me those leftovers!

Exchange of DIY ditties.

Monte asked me to make him a mask, since the ones he’s been using are either too small or uncomfortable.  So I finally knocked out my first homemade COVID mask, custom made to his specifications.  🙂

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I then asked him to make me a frame for a piece of art that our niece, Laura, drew and sent to me.  He knocked it out, custom made to my specifications. 🙂  I just LOVE this drawing.  Laura requested people to send her photos of their quarantine workspaces, which she then drew in watercolors.  I sent her a picture of my craft space in my office, which is where I sat to make Monte’s mask.

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Keeping busy in the time of COVID….

 

 

Sweetness in the mailbox.

Monte and I have enjoyed joining his sister’s family zoom sessions.  Her adult kids and young grandkids live in 3 different cities.  They all join.  We join when we can.  It’s special.

Last week my great-niece, Adelle, showed everyone one her latest project, making bracelets out of colorful rubber bands.  We all asked for one of our own, and little Adelle delivered!  They arrived in the mail today.  I picked Seahawks colors, and I absolutely love it!

Thank You Adelle!

 

 

Twin antennas.

We cut the cord a few years back, and have been watching TV since then using over-the-air (OTA) antennas, which can pick up a number of local HD television broadcasts.  That, in addition to a few online streaming sources, works well for us.

We aren’t big TV watchers.  But, we do have a large TV in our game room.  And I have a small one in my office over the treadmill.  Last year Monte found a design online showing how to make an antenna that might give better reception than ones we’ve tried.   He made one for the big TV and christened it the HD3000.  It works great, much better than any of the others we’ve bought over the years, and it nearly doubled the local channels picked up.  I’ve been waiting patiently for mine, and this week Monte made one for my office TV.  We installed it up in the attic right next to the first one.  We simply screwed the coax cable from each antenna into the existing coax cable that was already run through the attic into the room of the TV to be connected.   It works great!  Now I can reliably tune in KXAN to watch the weather alerts during severe weather, which we’ve had much of, lately.  Yay!

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If you’d like to know how many (and which) channels you can receive where you live, check out this website:  antennaweb.org.

 

This might take a while.

I ordered a paint-by-number kit a month ago to help me pass the time in self-imposed quarantine.  It took a while but arrived today.   Perhaps I should have picked something smaller…  No matter, I will start tonight and take my time.  Wish me luck!  🙂

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Swing into spring.

I just finished a new canopy cover for my friend, Irene’s, garden swing.  I popped over this morning and we put it on.  Looks great!

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Aloft!

Okay, I’m a tiny bit ecstatic. I finished the mainsail repairs today. And the slow, endless rain of the last week or so has moved on. So we drove out to the marina and tied the main back on, then took Nirvana out for a sail for the first time in about 3 months. We hoisted both the main and the jib. It was the first time taking Nirvana out since I repaired each of the sails. The winds were light, but I loved seeing them out and in the wind.

Ready to sail.

Time has flown by since we took Nirvana’s mainsail home at the beginning of December.  But we’ve not been idle.  We’ve had a lot going on; a few visits from family and friends, an Atlantic coast boat delivery, the holidays, the bathroom remodel, yardwork, life, etc.  But I think I’m almost ready to start repairing the main.

I’ve made a scale drawing of the sail and all its detail (including seams, layers of dacron, batten pockets, luff and leech tape, direction of the warp & weft/fill – or weave – of each piece of the sail’s construction, etc).  On top of that, I marked the location of the damaged areas that need to be repaired.  Using this, I can figure out a strategy of what pieces to replace, the dimension of each piece, and then lay them out on scale drawings of 54″ wide dacron yardage so I can figure out how much I need to cut out all the pieces with the weave in the required direction.

Nirvana’s sail is a bit unusual – at least for a US boat – in that it has a furling boom (a Forespar LeisureFurl furling boom).  It’s a very nice upgrade that is reportedly prevalent in Australia and New Zealand sailboats.  We like the convenience and the fact that our furling boom allows us to have full battens in our main.   As I’m preparing to repair the mainsail, I’ve learned that sails for LeisureFurl booms are built with multiple layers, or plies, toward the leech end of the sail, which is required to ensure proper furling of the main.  It just makes things a bit more interesting (complicated), as that is where the majority of the damage is.  I’ve also spent time on the phone with Sailrite and Forespar to ensure I use the right weight of dacron for the replacement pieces.

The repairs I plan to make to the mainsail include:

– Replacing the bolt rope tape on the luff of the sail.  This goes into a track on the aft-side of the mainmast as the sail is raised and lowered.  It is well worn due to wear and UV damage.

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– Replacing the dacron tape along the leech of the sail.  This is well worn and cracking due to wear and UV damage.

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– Replacing areas of varying widths along the entire leech of the sail where UV damage has degraded much of the top ply of dacron.  The previous owner neglected to replace a worn sail cover before selling her, probably for a couple of years, resulting in a wide swath of cracked and torn dacron that remained exposed to the sun when the main was furled.

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I’ve been taking my time, as sail work is new to me, and I have a lot to learn.  The first 2 sets of repairs are straightforward.  The third set of repairs is non-trivial and essentially requires replacement of much of the top 2 plies of the sail.

The picture below shows the drawing I’ve made of the port-side of Nirvana’s approximately 13 1/2′ x 38′ mainsail.   The brown lines represent the batten pockets that are on top of all the layers of dacron and the luff & leech tape.  I essentially need to remove and replace the pink and blue layers of dacron on the aft-end of the sail.

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Because of the order in which the parts of the mainsail are sewn,  I’ll have to pull up the existing batten pockets to remove the worn pieces of the sail, then sew in the new pieces of dacron, and then sew the batten pockets back down, before sewing the luff and leech tape on.  I’ll also have to replace a couple of the numbers on the sail when all the repairs are done, as some of the sections that need replacement are under the sail numbers.

This is definitely more complicated than the repairs I made to the jib a few months back.  But, I’m cautiously optimistic that I can do this.  Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

 

 

 

Next step.

The new Silestone (quartz) countertop and under-mount sinks were installed today.  Then I installed the faucets.  Looks good!

After this: floor tile, wall tile, and baseboards!

 

From leaky to squeaky clean.

Several months ago, I noticed water leaking from our 10-year old GE front-load washing machine while doing a load of laundry.  Upon inspection, I saw that a little piece of the rubber seal between the drum and the door had been torn away.

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For a while, a temporary repair involving tape worked.  But the leak returned and eventually got worse.

After a little internet research, I found and ordered a replacement part – a new rubber door gasket – and found a couple of videos walking through how to replace it step by step.    I suggest watching more than one, as each one highlights slightly different things.  These are the 2 videos I found.   I decided to give it a shot.

The part came in last week, so today was the day to install it!   The videos are only about 15 minutes long.   My total elapsed repair time was around 3 hours, though, which included collecting the tools I needed, moving the washer out to where I could work on it, cleaning everything as I went, and playing/pausing both videos as I proceeded from one step to the next.

The patient, with new door gasket sitting on top of the machine:

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While the videos say the repair is an easy one, it does require you to disassemble much of the machine, or at least more than I thought would fall into the “easy” category.

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New door gasket part-way installed!IMG_0176

I think it went pretty much as the videos showed.  Removing and reattaching the second clamp was not as easy as the videos made it look, but I went very, very slowly and it eventually worked out fine.  I’m doing the first post-repair load of laundry as I write this, and I don’t see as much as a drop of water on the floor.  Thank God.

The machine is fixed, it’s clean inside and out, and I finally leveled the washer after ten years of having it wobble a bit.  Bonus!

 

 

Leaf me alone!

I truly enjoy the trees in our yard.  But, there are many of them, and they collectively drop billions and gazillions of leaves every year. Over the last day or two, we raked and scooped up 5 or more trailer-loads of those bad boys – a good workout. Our new pile-o-leaves (and future garden soil):

I can’t complain though. It has been lovely outside. Today the temps were close to 70 degrees F. Thankfully, cedar pollen levels are below the threshold that triggers my allergies. As I sit here, sore and tired, I’m sipping a glass of wine listening to the news guys report on the cold and snowy weather up north. Yeah, I’ll take yard work in the winter in Austin over that any day.

On the move.

This weekend brought Julie back to Texas! 🙂 But, it was only to pack up the contents of a couple of storage units into a U-Haul and head right back to Washington. 😦 She has a great new job up there.

Though I’m sad to see her go, I think Texas has a way of calling one back, after a while, so I’ll keep hoping. Bon voyage! I pray that Mother Nature takes it easy on them over the next few days as they make their way through the mountains.