Friday, June 24, 2011

Two updates

Today, a couple of quick updates to posts I made last month.  First of all, back on May 23 I posted about how we'd refinished an old corner cabinet to go in our downstairs bath, and the only thing missing was inserts for the cabinet doors.  Well, that problem is now fixed.  My first thought was to pick up some stiff translucent paper from Michael's, but it turned out that they sell this stuff in the scrapbooking section, and it's only available in 12-inch sheets—too small to fit the doors.  Then I thought we could try parchment paper, the kind used for baking.  I bought a roll of this, but we found it too flimsy to be any use; we couldn't get it properly secured in the door panels because it kept popping out.  So we finally decided to try cutting up an old lace curtain that was hanging up in one of the windows when we first bought our house.  We didn't like it at all for a window treatment, but rather than throw it out, we stowed it away in case we might one day have a use for it.  And now, that day had come.  We simply doubled over the fabric, secured it to the inside of the door with a staple gun, and cut away the excess.  And I must say, this jerry-rigged job doesn't look half bad.

Second, on May 24 I posted about a family of robins that had moved in just outside our kitchen door, on top of the light fixture.  In that post, I mentioned that the baby birds were growing fast and would probably fly the coop soon, and sure enough, within a few days they were gone.  After a couple of weeks, when it became apparent they weren't coming back, we removed the empty nest from under the awning.  And no sooner had we done so than a new nest appeared to take its place, and a new mama bird took up her post.  This one's another robin, a bit smaller than the previous one, and with a somewhat smaller and trimmer nest.  The picture's a bit fuzzy—I couldn't get too close for fear of scaring her off, so I had to zoom in as best I could—but you can make out her little head poking up over the edge of the nest and peering at me.

Looks like at our house, everything old is new again.

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