Making Stuff

We always seem to be creating stuff: gardening, cooking, carpentry, etc.

Zzzzzzzz

This weekend we bought a mattress to fit the new bed frame and I finished the frame with tung oil.  I really like tung oil, it retains the character of the wood and enhances its appearance.  The oil soaks into the top layers of the wood and make it partially translucent, so that it kind of glows.  It also hardens the fibers of the wood making the surface a bit tougher.

You cannot buy this.

 I find it is sometimes easier to make something that suits my taste rather than trying to find something.  Lamps in particular, I find, are spectacularly expensive and incredibly ugly opieces of junk.  While trying to find a bedside lamp I ran across a wide variety of terrible-looking lamps that cost in the range of $50.  I ended up buying a bunch of old lamps from thrift shops and scavenging them for lamp parts.  The lamps cost about $3 each, a "lamp kit" from a hardware store runs about $10-15.  The lamp here was built from scavenged parts and a couple of purchased bits (a new harp and shade, about $20).  The base is a heavy vase that I also got from a thrift shop for a couple of bucks.  I drilled a hole in the bottom of the vase for threaded tube and wiring and assembled everything in a few minutes.  I now have enough bits to make about 6 or 7 more lamps.

Fresh dough!

Seyoung made a pizza and some cheese bread for dinner.  It's actually not much cheaper than buying a frozen pizza on sale, but it's a lot more fun and you can make the sauce and toppings however you like them.  The cheese bread has a mixture of blue cheese and mozzerella.  The pizza sauce is store-bought but doctored up with seasonings like extra basil and garlic.  When the store-bought sauce is used up we're going to make our own from tomato sauce and canned tomatoes.

Pizza wreckage