Trip to Texas

Well, our purpose in coming to Texas was to assist Kate’s recently widowed mother who needs help painting a few things at her house.

We were going to paint the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom and also repaint a couple of doors/door frames and a breakfast room.  By the end of the first day we’d pulled everything out and the place looked like an absolute wreck!  But things have to get worse before they can become better!

 

  We all tried to work together…

…and Lydia was a great help.  She’d be on top of anyone who tried to lie down on the job!

 

 

 

 

 

That is, if she wasn’t sleeping herself!

 

 

 

 

 

  Thankfully by the end of day two we had wrapped everything up as illustrated by the picture of a sticky ball of tape to the left.

 

 

 

 

 

  The next and final day we visited a Civil War Museum and shared a dinner with Kate’s sister and niece who also live in TX.  We enjoyed looking at their pug…SO ugly it can become cute over time.

  We headed home the next morning…

City skyline

The highways/toll ways were a bit confusing through Dallas and there seemed to be a very limited amount of highway signs and directions-things that would’ve made navigating much less confusing.

We made hit thunderstorms and rain at Joplin, MO, so partly because of that we didn’t get home until 1:45am.

Aug1-4

Back Bathroom Flooring

    These photos were taken just a couple of hours after the grout was placed so it dried out lighter than this and we’ve been able to clean up the excess grout.

Ben’s New Ceiling Fan

   I worked with Glenn this afternoon and we installed the new ceiling fan in Benjamin’s room.

 

 

  Once we got the fan running I tested out some of my camera’s ISO settings.

    Back in the day of photographic film the size of the tiny crystals in the film affected how quickly it would react to the light.  The larger crystals would capture the light faster and expose the film less than smaller crystals.

   In digital cameras ISO refers to the speed at which the digital sensor reacts to the light. ISO also affects the clarity of the image. Faster ISO speeds produce noise, but the slower ISO produces a smooth image that is very susceptible to camera shake.

   Most of the photos that I post on this blog have been taken on the fly and usually with one hand! When I know I may need to take a photo quickly and probably without stabilizing the camera I set my camera to a fast ISO setting.

  The images below demonstrate a few different ISO speeds:

ISO: 1600 The larger the number the larger the crystals were.

ISO: 800 High ISOs speeds are hard to blur with camera shake, but they can also create noise/grain.

 

ISO: 400 Take a look at the 3 photos above and look at the darker parts of the photo you see the little dots? That is noise.

ISO: 200 With the slower ISO the picture looks smoother, but more blurred.

ISO: 100

ISO: 80 The ISO speed is so slow that you can’t even distinguish the ceiling fan blades.

 

   If you take a look at the photos above they all look very different even though the speed of the fan’s blade’s never changed.  Whenever you are taking pictures of moving water like a waterfall adjusting the ISO is one of the ways to get different photo effects.

Andrew’s New Room

 

Today we pretty much did a complete transformation of my room. In the pictures above you can see how my office area used to look.  We got this desk from a neighbor who was didn’t need it and a couple of things were broken on it. Mom found a nice desk off of Craigslist and we hauled it home in the trailer a couple of days ago.

I worked on unplugging everything and taking out the desk.

Getting the desk and hutch down the hallway and into my room was a bit tricky.  We had to take measurements, take off my door and turn the desk around a few times before we got it into my room. The easy thing to do would have been to obviously take off the hutch but it was fastened using dowels and we were trying to avoid cutting them at all costs. Mom had me take a picture of how the way we got the desk into my room for future reference when we’ll have to take it back out!

I am really excited about how much more workspace I’ll have not to mention how much nicer the desk looks and the new storage space!

 

  I got all of my many device plugged in and got the wires organized some.  The printer now has it’s own space and I can keep my folders in my desk instead of the plastic box. Compare these pictures with those above.

 

(Left: First Prayer in Congress Right: Photos from Plymouth Faith & Freedom Tour)

  We also got some picture frames fastened to the walls, so now I need to order some prints to put in them!

A new bedding set is on the way and will be here soon.

 

The new layout makes the room look a lot larger than it used to and now the room is very functional for me and my business(es.)  I’ll now have the room to bring clients into my room and work with them on the computer. I am particularly excited about the loft bed and the desk!

Before & After: Moving the bed to a loft bed created a lot of space

New Bathroom Sink

    Earlier this week Mom bought a new sink for our bathroom online and today we picked it up and set it up inside the house.  The plumbing for the sink isn’t hooked up yet, but we’re looking forward to having 1.5 baths instead of, well I suppose, 1.25 baths. Does a toilet-only bathroom count as a quarter-bath?

 

The box was fairly heavy because of the marble “countertop,” but with the dolly, getting the sink inside was just a matter of rolling it in.

 

Noah taking the sink/cabinet box out to the street. The box looks about as big as Noah himself!