I love this. This was too good not to post again. And again. and again.
Or watch it on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YCeIgt7hMs
Category Archives: Just for Fun
Sunday Music Videos
I like listening to a lot of music while I paint. I mean really, who doesn’t love music?
Sunday morning is a great time to bookmark some new videos and run a playlist. Usually its a lot of movie or video game soundtracks unless I’m having some creative blocks then I have to change it up. My dirty little secret is I’m a COVER BAND fan! I hate listening to the originals once I’m bored of them and would rather listen to a new version of it. And it opens up this whole world of creative people on the internets.
So this post is dedicated to a sampling of some of the sweet videos I’ve found to get some creativity flowing! These musicians rock!
Enjoy!
1. Amazing Cover: This lady is GENIUS: Nirvana Heart Shaped Box
2. Katy Perry Dark Horse in 20 Different Styles (My youngest LOVES Dark Horse)
4. And since I love Pentatonix so much, here is Lorde’s Royals as well…
5. Barbershop Girls – Something Tells Me
6. Ukulele Bohemian Rhapsody (I have a Ukulele that I can’t play very well, but I’m learning!)
7. Guitar Cover of Skrillex – seriously fantastic.
8. Rimba Tubes – Daft Punk Medley… I love this guy!
So there you go, a small sampling of super creative people doing awesome things with music!
Now go be creative!
Honorable Mention for Nate: JIMMY FALLON BOB SEGER COVER
7 Things I Found Surfing the Internet
Back when I was working full time, I would take a few hours and surf for cool stuff during my breaks. It was a great way to wind down, get inspired, or just laugh a little with my partners in crime. So I’m bringing it back. My Sunday mornings are becoming my “Surf Time” while the girls are sleeping in and my husband is doing rounds. So here are 7 cool things I found surfing the Interwebs. Beware, I’ve very geeky and nerdy at times and my posts will reflect that, I blame pop culture, movies and comic books. And alot of Doctor Who.
1. BATDAD
His wife Jen is going to kill him. But I can’t stop laughing.
2. THE DOCTOR’S NAME WALL DECAL
It’s a ginormous vinyl wall decal of my (second) favorite DOCTOR in the world. You can buy it on ETSY here for me.
3. FLAT. SO FLAT.
I love dumb movies. It’s a blessing and a curse. I’M GOING TO SAVE IT WITH A SOLO!
4. DRUMMING LIKE AN AUCTIONEER
Jazz drumming. Fantastic!
5. HARRY AND LLOYD, ON REPEAT
My oldest brother and I spent 2 summers on a remote “island” in the wilderness of 1996 & 97 with twin beds, a VCR and a single crappy VHS tape of “Dumb and Dumber” on repeat. I’m not even kidding…. AND NOW THIS IS HAPPENING AND TOTALLY REDEEMED ITSELF!
6. WHAT IS THIS WORTH?
Boba Fett finds out the value of carbonite on the next Antique’s Roadshow.
7. Rainbow Bookshelves
A secret wish for my studio.
The Interior: House Update Two of Two
Well if the last post got us up to November of last year, then these photos will get us up to March of this year! It’s going to be alot of pictures of wiring, lumber, insulation and tools, and it might not make much sense but enjoy! Again, it’s an incredible amount of work. I just can’t believe we’ve done this much!
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- My septic tank is delivered. A VERY important part of the house building process!
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- They used this crane attached to the truck to set it in place. IT WAS AWESOME.
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- Completely set.
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- The septic tank is set up and covered with gravel.
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- Two hooligans in front of the sliding glass door. We always hope they will remember this crazy process.
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- The front entrance gets a peak and a larger overhang. I’m going to put a family sign in that little triangle.
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- Another exterior shot with all the porches finished. Yes, the snow flew.
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- Sheetrocking the outside walls before we build walls. WAY easier.
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- Clara is not impressed with our sheetrocking skills.
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- Inside of the entrance looking up at the arch windows.
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- Put in the beam to hold the floor over the stair.
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- I designed my staircase with Photoshop and Google Sketchup and ordered all the pieces from a warehouse! Lets hope it all works!
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- Inside building the structure of the stairs. We went with traditional rather than a spiral stair. This gave us full wide steps.
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- View of the steps going up to the second floor. No more ladder!
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- Building the walls and wiring the kitchen.
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- View of the kitchen, the sink will be under that window. Starting to put our plumbing in and venting.
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- Wires, wires everywhere but no power to them yet.
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- Here is the PEX manabloc. Each line is run to either the hot or cold of every faucet in the house. We put it in, in a weekend. My family rocks.
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- Dry fitting the venting system, once we know all the pieces, elbows, T’s and joints, we will go back and glue it all together.
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- Walls built between Aleia and Clara’s rooms. The layout is a mirror of each other and they share a bath.
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- Pex up to the laundry valves.
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- While the guys were runnig the PEX lines in the crawl space, I was pulling them up and putting black collars so they stayed in place.
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- Venting for the half bath and starting to tape the exterior seams of the panels.
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- Another shot of my front door entrance. Because I love it.
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- The girls took over the master bedroom. They would watch movies and make us cake from their kitchen.
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- Casey and I insulated every wall. I’m still itching.
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- In the process of putting in the Kinetico water system. We have well water and this takes everything out and then puts it all back in!
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- Double electric panels are getting filled up.
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- Clara is a trooper. When Aleia is at school, she puts up with the chaos.
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- Understanding sanitary elbows vs venting elbows. I got a crash course.
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- Putting in the tubs and showers.
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- Omgosh I don’t even know. kidding. All the wires for our garage lights.
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- A look at the ceiling in my studio. You have to put plastic on all the ceilings and exterior walls to have a vapor barrier between that and your sheetrock. It was a pain to hang.
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- Can lights in my porch.
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- Can lights zig zagged donw the hallway.
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- We have the newel posts in for the staircase. They are covered now until the mud and taping gets done. We will do the handrails last.
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- Staining all the oak boards for the windows and trim.
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- We made oak boards for all the window sills ourselves, stained and polyed them and finished with the sheetrock returns. We wrapped them in plastic to protect them from the mudding process.
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- Here are all the lines for the drinking water.
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- The master bath is getting a tiled shower. This product is called a Schuleter Kerdi system. Waterproofs the walls and floor so I can tile.
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- Installing sheetrock as a firebarrier in the garage.
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- Once the sheetrock goes on everything gets light.
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- Sheetrock in the kitchen.
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- We arched the hallway entrance.
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- We also arched the big opeing to the house entrance.
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- A look into Aleia’s room.
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- Laying out the tiles in the girls bathroom!
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- Trying to figure out my tile pattern in the bathroom.
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- We tiled the laundry, guest bath, half bath and the girls bathroom. This is the girls. It’s a pinwheel pattern.
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- My master bedroom ready for mud.
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- Casey’s office ready for mud.
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- A look up the staircase.
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- Now we are finally taping and mudding!!
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- My studio is finally getting taped and mudded!
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- We are hoping to get this room done first so I can bring up all my doors and trim to stain and poly. Hopefully the mudding will be done by the end of the week.
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- A view towards the stairs.
House Update One of Two
Hi everyone, well it’s been about 5 months and I have some time to reflect on the enormous amount of work we have been through on the house. The following post got us up to about November of last year. I had said I wanted to get the house sealed before the snow flew and we did! You can click on any of the photos below to open up a larger gallery. Enjoy!
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- We left with the walls just starting to go up. Perfectly flat, second level floor is built.
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- Here the walls are up in the bedroom side. The master bedroom is on the end.
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- The beams for the master bedroom are in to hold the roof panels.
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- No daycare for these kids. They were on site with us the whole time.
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- The bedroom wing roof is on and onto the kitchen/living room side.
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- Setting the wall panels for the main part of the house.
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- We used a Terex lift to bolt through the panels and lift them into place. We always hoped for a calm day.
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- The panels slide into a base plate that is screwed into the floor and get nailed to the adjoining panel. It’s a very fast construction process.
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- Looking out the upper deck.
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- The garage panels are in. We did a high and low door so during the winter we could have the skidsteer in the garage to push snow. If I had to do it over, we would have just done two high commercial doors.
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- The entrance is set. Love my arches.
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- We had to bring in a crane to set the top beam because of the height and it was safer.
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- Putting the roof panels in the den area.
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- Roof complete!
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- Beware of floating pie wedges.
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- A look inside our garage, the glulam beam gives us a ton of ceiling height.
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- Setting the complicated octogon roof panels.
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- The VERY LAST roof panel going in! Such a relief!
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- Enercept panels are all in. The structure is complete.
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- Wrapping the house in Tyvek, looks to be around October. 🙂
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- We set the porch panels temporarily until my columns came in.
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- Josh and I put in our very first window!
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- And then we put in ALL the windows.
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- Windows in the front.
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- Here is a panorama of the inside. iPhones are the coolest.
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- And a panorama of the outside. Click to make this bigger.
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- My Coop came out to put in power. They vibrated it in, it was like a small earthquake.
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- Finishing off the soffit under the porch.
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- We went with a steel roof, it’s called Gold Rush. Appropriate for South Dakota.
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- My power is in!
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- More roof work. I’m not particularly afraid of heights, but it definately tested me.
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- A friendly stalker sent us aerial photos of our house. You can see what we had left on the roof.
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- Tons of rock delivered for my drain field.
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- Dug a huge hole for my septic tank!
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- Garage doors are in and front pad is poured.
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- Back patio is poured, all the Tvyek is on and windows are in.
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- Looking towards the west from the septic tank.
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- Poured the drip edge for the porch and all the columns are finally in.
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- Front entrance is poured.
Our House Building Project
So not very many painting updates lately. I’ve decided to go into construction. Most of my summer has been working on building our new house with the help of my dad and my nephew. It’s very exhausting work but I’m learning so much and by the end of this process will have a greater appreciation for construction. It’s amazing all the details you need to take into consideration. At times my brain hurts and there is defintely blood, sweat and tears. And bruises and aches and pains… But it’s all worth it.
I built this 3D model in a program called Google Sketchup. I’ve always wanted to be a 3D animator and this is probably as close as I’m going to get. If all goes to plan and all the pieces come together, this will probably be the final look when it’s all said and done!
At this point in time we have: poured the concrete footings, crawl space and walls, framed the subwalls and placed I-beams, chained in drain tile, foamed and wrapped the exterior foundation, build/poured a concrete tornado shelter, ran wiring for crawlspace lighting, set my 3 main support beams for the second level, dug a pond/borrow pit and relandscaped with borrowed gravel to bring us above grade, set in iJoists in the floor, screwed down subfloor, then sandwiched foam between another second tongue and groove subfloor and screwed that down. Put in duct work. Built walls for the second level, ran I joists and flooring system for THAT floor, created tile/drains in the garage, ran infloor heating in coils in the garage, poured the concrete floor in the garage, built supporting walls in garage and mudroom for the main glulam beam, wall panels from Enercept arrived, unloaded trailers of panels and started puzzling together the walls, set the common wall with a Terex highlift, set the middle adjoining wall of the bedroom wing, set all exterior walls and gable end and finally yesterday we set 4 of the roof panels.
Whew. And that was just on the last 3 months! The goal now is to get the roof on and put in windows before the snow flies. There is still alot to do after that but the colder it gets the less you want to work outside! I have many many thanks for my father Wally for putting in ridiculous hours, thinking before we jump and pushing me until my body can’t move, my nephew Josh for putting up with my craziness and working steady everyday, he has a ton of talent with his finish work and does a wonderful job and for my volunteers that could put in a few hours over their retired summer, my father-in-law Perry and my father’s friend Darius (who should have both been on the golf course but decided to help with my chaos) we loved every minute you were on site. To my brother’s Collin and Carmen, you can do more work in one day then I could in a month! To my babysitter’s Kelsey, Abbey and my mom, someone has to keep the girls in line and I think they enjoyed it!!! And to my husband Casey and my two girls that are putting up with the long hours, the laundry that isn’t done and the food that barely gets scraped together for dinner, I thank you for your patience and support! It will all be worth it, I promise.
So hopefully I’ll post more in the coming months! Til then thanks for reading!
It’s time to Tumblr
Well I bit the bullet and have sold my soul to Apple. I now own more Apple products than I do pairs of shoes. Recently I became an iPhone owner and have fallen into the wannabe amateur photographer category of Instagr.am with it’s default filters and square cropping. These photos that annoyed me at first have now sucked me into their 365 day Polaroid view of the world. And with my short attention span I can’t pull myself away for some reason. More on that later.
April's Lost Stormtrooper - Day 1
In my defense, I held onto my Blackberry as long as I could, but when a phone restarts on you in the middle of a phone call it’s highly annoying. Security updating?? Really? Restart. Pull the battery. Say a few curse words. Rinse. Repeat. Needless to say it was fun driving over that phone many times as it makes it’s way to a better place.
April's Lost Stormtrooper - Day 2
I also couldn’t go to a Droid. Blah. I had a huge long paragraph of reasons but I just deleted it. Who CARES!?
Which brings us to Tumblr. I’ve had an account for awhile, but I really didn’t know what to do with it. There are times I like posting lengthy blogs and other times I just post or repost something I find funny. Tumblr seems pretty high school to me although I enjoy following silliness. If Twitter is on one end of the spectrum and WordPress is on the other, then Tumblr is somewhere inbetween. Then of course there is Blogspot, DeviantArt and LiveJournal, seriously, pick a card. I had gotten a WordPress account mostly for my own idiosyncrasies that can get quite lengthy (plus I wanted to learn the admin area and how to manipulate themes) and it slowly turned into a place I could show what I was painting. Overall it works rather nicely.
But now I kinda want to keep the blog clean. So I’ll still post here, but I’m going to keep it as art related as possibly. My Tumblr account has now turned into the “silliness stream” and Instagram photo repost for those of you that don’t have iPhones (snob I know). And as always, Twitter is Twitter. If this is all confusing, it’s alright, trust me, I’m a professional. I really don’t know how people that are getting jobs as “Social Media Coordinators” have any credibility. It makes me laugh when I see job descriptions like that.
Tumblr it up: http://aprilheather.tumblr.com
Don’t take yourself too seriously, you might hurt yourself.
