Birdhouses

I enjoy birdhouses. I don't collect them, but it's fun to look for them and it's fun to see the various things that people use to make them!

This summer when we went to the Ogden Nature Center, we saw oodles of them! The trail from the parking lot to the visitors center is called "Birdhouse Trail" and there were at least 50 birdhouses along the way.

I would never think of using old propane tanks to make a birdhouse, but I loved these.

I think that the shingles on this one are great.

The house-bit of this one isn't remarkable but I absolutely LOVE the ladder staircase!

I wouldn't want to turn -my- bike into a birdhouse, but I thought having the panniers as the birdhouse on the bike was a cute idea.

And just for a bit of added fun, here's a birdhouse that my grandpa and I made for Martijn's mom a few years ago. It's made from old weathered barnwood (the roof is the original "barn red").

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This week B is for... Birdhouse! Go visit Mrs. Matlock by clicking on the link below to see more AlphabeThursday!

Antelope Island

One of the spots we visited while we were in the US this summer was Antelope Island. We've been there before but it was the dead of winter and it's not so nice to stop and get out and enjoy the scenery. This time we braved the absurd amount of biting gnats and the wild wind to do a little exploring.

For those who don't know, Antelope Island is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake (also known as the big stinky pond). It's connected to the "mainlands" by a 7ish mile long causeway.

There is a roaming herd of about 500 buffalo and we were lucky enough to see quite a few on our visit.

Those tiny little brown specks are all buffalo, I swear it!

We took a picnic lunch with us. Martijn started laughing like a maniac when he saw this sign so of course he needed to take a picture! Shortly after this we fled back to the car to finish eating our chicken without getting eaten alive by demon gnats.

If you're in the area, I recommend checking it out! You can ride your bike over the causeway or go by car. If there are insane biting gnats, I recommend the later so you have somewhere to hide from them while you eat your picnic lunch.

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Summer is over and we're starting back up with AlphabeThursday! This week A is for... Antelope Island!

Friday Fragments- September 10, 2010

I finally got my new glasses yesterday. I HOPE that my eyes adjust to them fast because today I was kinda miserable until I put my old glasses back on. I always have issues when I get new glasses for some reason. The arms are made of some sort of magical bendy rubbery material and I keep having to resist throwing them on the floor to see if they bounce back up like a superball!

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I don't know about my Five O'clock Friday submission for this week. It sorta looks like a creepy stalker surveillance photo of these people, even though it really isn't. I'm standing on my balcony on the 8th floor and utilizing the magic zoom on my new camera.

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I have been cooking recipes from the Nigella Express cookbook. There are some really nice ones in the cookbook but some of them have really pretentious names like "Croque Monsieur Bake" when they really could be called "Ham and Cheese Sandwich Casserole."

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I'm going to spend a lovely day tomorrow in Alkmaar (way up northward) exploring and seeing some friends. I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Friday Fragments- September 3, 2010

It's Friday! Time for fragments. Thanks as always to the lovely Mrs 4444 for hosting us.

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We were watching the news tonight and I asked Martijn if he ever wondered if the newscasters were wearing pants. He insisted I was insane, but now whenever he watches the news he'll be looking at the desk they sit behind and feeling mighty curious about the whole thing.

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I went in on Tuesday to complete the final piece of my Dutchification process. They said they'll get back to me within 4 weeks. I hope it will be sooner and I really hope I passed. I'll let you know... Unless I failed and then I might just make up a lie about them losing my results and me needing to do it again. Although, knowing how competent this system is, it might not even be a lie!

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My sweet friend Lori does a feature called Five O'clock Friday on her blog. You take a picture at 5 o'clock (AM or PM) and post it (or e-mail her and she'll post it for you). Seems simple enough. It really is, yet somehow 5 rolls around on Friday and it's the furthest thing from my mind. I told her she needed to start an SMS reminder service. Here's my photo from a couple weeks ago. He's our groovy turtle pot. Please ignore the fact that I'm a terrible plant parent and the tips of the leaves look like something horrible has happened to them.

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I was slightly resistant to the changes that Flickr made to their pages, but I'm sorta digging the fact that you can just click on "share this" in the photo window and grab code for whatever size picture you want to post. Before you had to click on "All sizes" and then click on the size you wanted. I thought it was a lot of clicking and waiting for pages to load so this makes me rather happy.

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And I shall leave you this week with this:

Some guy in Texas has managed to deep fry beer. I think it sounds revolting, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

The article says "Zable started experimenting. But the beer-and-dough concoction kept exploding once it hit the fryer. He kept getting burned...
Then, earlier this year, he finally found the recipe for success."

So I suspect the moral of the story is: If at first you don't succeed, fry, fry again.

Changes in scenery

We live across the street from a great big school. When my mom was here she commented that she thought it looked like it wasn't done because it was covered in blue painters tape.

I agreed with her and I've never really been a fan of the way it looked. While I was in the US they painted and it doesn't look like it's covered in blue painters tape anymore.

I thought it was a nice change of scenery.