Family Pics

Thanks to: www.devinnoelphotos.blogspot.com and or www.devinnoelphotos.weebly.com

Anchorage and Kodiak, Alaska Trip

Floor 2nd Coat of Poly

Hardwood Floor Project

Project Started about mid June. We were going to hire it out, but after hearing $8000 and up we decided to do it ourselves. 500+ Square feet of new unfinished white oak 2 1/4" planks. Then have it finished, and the old stuff refinished to match. We chose to go with 3 clear coats of polyurethane. The 1st coat dried in about 5 hours, the second coat 12 hours and the final coat 24 hours. Supposed to proved 20+ years of service.

Pagosa Springs July 2009

We Went to Pagosa Springs over the 4th of July for some Camping. Had a chance to talk to a contractor about building a home. Discussion centered around straw bale construction. Keeping it small and compact. Bounced around the idea of Geothermal for heating and cooling. Still lots of legwork to consider. A driveway, electricity, water, financing. We shall see. Maybe pull something off by next year.

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EXERCISE TODAY

Exercise Today: Handstand Pushups 8, Hindu Squats 40, Pushups 80, legwork 30, stepups 40, pullups 20, lunges 30, rows 20, hindu squats 40, chinups 15, Treadmill @ Elev. 6 Speed 3.0 30 minutes. TOTAL TIME 60 Minutes

Yard Work

I've been doing a lot of yard work. I've been using a lot of homemade brew to spruce up the grass, can't to see how it works out. I'll try to get some pictures posted soon.

I've used many of this guys concoctions Click Here!

ONLINE SELLING

I sold some items on Ebay a couple of weeks ago. An old Rainbow vacuum I paid a dollar for at an auction. It sold for $51.00, after the buyer paid me all monies (totalling 82.67) for shipping and handling, I computed how much all my fees were through Ebay and Paypal...it totalled up to 11%. WoW! That has gone up over the last couple of years. I also sold some old Carpenters Aprons....I almost threw these away, but after some quick research and realizing they could sell, I listed the 4 I had after a quick wash in the washing machine. (Don't tell Melinda....they were really dirty). So these sold for $12.00 The last item was an old Comet aluminum 20 cup stove top percolator. Sold for $15.00. So all in all not bad profit for some items I probably paid $3.00 for total.
So....after reflecting on Ebays fee increase (Not sold much on Ebay for over 2 years now). I started a little research. Looks like Amazon.com could be another avenue to sell (last month they outsold Ebay for the 1st time). Not sure of their fee structure, but it is supposed to be much small than Ebay. Another avenue is UBID.com, they are the #2 auction site. I knew they existed, but didn't know they were #2. Then there is Craigslist....always free. So with those thoughts in mind, I hope to try a couple of different approaches to online selling.

March News

We are in the process of having some wood flooring put into our home. Trying to match what is in our dining room. It has the 2 1/2" wide x 3/4" planks (oak), we want to put it down in the living room. (main level of our Tri-Level) Go down the down the stairs, up the stairs and down the hall. We also have an ugly old brick fireplace in the LR that we would like to dress up. We are leaning towards boxing in the upper half with a painted wood facade, and possibly sticking some fake stone (dry stack look) to the lower half. We would like to put a fir e place insert into this very poor performing fireplace. (know any good brands?) The fireplace in our family room is terribly drafty around the rock work....whomever installed this just did a bad job. I think I'll have to get an expert in to recommend some fixes for it.

I hope to get into building my own cabinets based on the European 32mm frameless concept. There is a neat company called Festool, that makes some neat tools (gotta have good tools) that help facilitate making cabinets based on the 32mm system. This is really similar to the style of closet systems we installed when I worked with my friends Classy Closets franchise. I really need some cabinets in my garage. I have an enormous 3+ car garage.....not a shelf in it any where. So I'm hoping to build my own and get good at it, then build some nice closet and storage systems for the house. The desired goal is to build all my own stuff for the home we hope to build down in Pagosa Springs.

I contacted a couple of bulders in Pagosa to help us get started. I have always longed for a straw bale home. In fact I went to a week long course in Southern Arizona about 8 years ago with these folks: www.caneloproject.com Pretty neat week of learning it all from the ground up. Of course I can't do it all myself now....but I can at least afford to get the bulk of it done. Hope to build here: www.35acres.net I set this site up to try to sell our land about 3 years ago....didn't sell but now I can build on it......very excited. I have a large cement pad at my current house....been thinking about building a strawbale shed to get my feet wet so that I can understand the process a bit better....who knows. Its all about time and money.

Been doing the "yard" thing...I've never been anal about haveing an immaculate lawn. However, the prior owners neglected the yard pretty bad. So i'm trying some of Jerry Bakers tonics and tips for the yard. Such as, last night I put the last of the fertilizer/epsom salt mix on with a broadcast spreader, then sprayed it down with a mixture of Beer, Dishwashing soap, corn syrup, and ammonia mixed up in a hose end sprayer. It is supposed to help by volumes...........we'll see.

BOOK LIST

Lincoln Child - Death Match - Great Read, fast paced. I've read most of this authors titles.
James Doss - Snake Dreams - Great Mystery Writer takes place around the 4 corners area of Colorado. This one has some quirky humor in it, at first of was unsure, but as the story moved along, I was wrapped up into it pretty good. I've read most of this authors titles. All entertaining.

CURRENT WEATHER

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COLORADO NEAR OUR PROPERTY

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Our New Home

Staying Active - Bodyweight Challenge

If your finding it hard to stay active, try something different.
Go to Youtube.com, type in 100 bodyweight challenge and you will find a great 8-10 minute workout that you can do. When you have that one down, put 200 bodyweight challenge, then 300 and so on. Great workouts, with minimal time.

Winter Fun

We may be far from the great sledding hills of the west. But an ice storm and the drive way bring great fun for these thrill seekers.

Dillon and Caroline took their first engineering class and passed with flying colors.

Pikes Peak in the Rear View Window

We'll miss this old mountain. But I believe we'll be part of her landscape sometime again in the future.

Gas Prices - find lowest in your area

Click here, to find the lowest for your area.

Have you Wooted Lately

A friend told me about an interesting site called WOOT, so go check it out at...you guessed it www.woot.com. Here is some info verbatim from their website:

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it's taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 – by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we're still the lovable scamps we've always been. But don't take our word for it: see what the online community has to say at this Wikipedia article.
I see only one item, do you sell anything else?
No. We sell one item per day until it is sold out or until 11:59pm central time when it is replaced (see next entry for details). However, each item we sell is in stock and typically ships within 2-3 business days.

Family Photos

You can view some family photos at www.dobbsfamily.8m.com

Life is always changing.

So Life is always changing. After 5 great years in Colorado we have moved to Illinois. Yes, I know. It was very hard to leave the views, the mtns, but I now have a regular paycheck. Which is very nice when you have a family to feed and keep warm.
























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