Photo of Mark Twain’s study – found at: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/mark_twain_elmira_ny.htm  Yeah, I know – it’s freezing cold up here in New York and no one wants to take a walking tour in January. But this one is well documented online, so you can Victorian-house-peep from the comfort of your own home. One of our blog readers […]

Let’s face it, fixer-uppers are a special breed. They require special holiday gifts. Don’t bother buying them a nice wool sweater – it’ll have caulk on it two days later. New watch? That’s nothing but a safety hazard when you’re running a tablesaw. A nice piece of literary fiction? A new video game? A DVD? […]

On this, the holiest of all shopping days, I’m sitting in my craft room working on a few homemade Christmas gifts, consciously avoiding the spending frenzy. I’m a bargain hunter, which makes it tempting to head out in search of those “great deals”…. I took a long hard look at the Lowe’s flyer yesterday, but […]

Want to send your dog into violent fits of rage? For $29.95 you can install a “Pet Peek” in your privacy fence, so he can see every little leaf that blows past HIS property, and bark his head off accordingly. Please tell me I’m not the only one that finds this product shot (complete with […]

A friend passed along this “consumer alert” via email… too funny not to share: Home Depot Alert A ‘Heads Up’ for those of us men who may be regular Home Depot customers. Over the last month I became a victim of a clever scam while out shopping. Simply going out to get supplies has turned […]

As I mentioned in a previous post, my parents are in town this week. They’re “escapees”, full-time RVers who no longer have a permanent address or house to return to when they tire of life on the road. They can fit everything they need comfortably in their 5th wheel, a Big Sky Montana with a […]

Our fall has, thus far, been one of the nicest in recent memory. We’ve had weeks of warmer-than-usual temperatures (tomorrow might hit 80!) and very little rain. It hardly feels like fall at all, except for the obvious reminders – pumpkins and potted mums on everyone’s front steps, leaves floating lazily to the ground with […]

When one stops mowing due to no-motivation-syndrome, marvelous things can happen. Your neighbors might despise you, but beautiful things will pop up all over your yard. Use this as an excuse to put off weed-whacking for a few more days: Whatever that thing is, it’s cool – and about 4 feet tall at the moment. […]

The hotter the day, the further his legs splay out behind him. Today it’s 95ish and humid. I just got done mowing the lawn, so I’m getting ready to suck down some popsicles and join him on the cold tile floor. Frogman, recuperating from a hard morning spent doing absolutely positively nothing.   Really, really […]

It’s things like the CIMA ladder that make me want to become an industrial designer. Call me superficial, but I would trade our beat up old wooden ladder for this lime beauty any day – and it doesn’t even have a place to put my paint bucket. It could never do the job of our […]