Treehouse inspiration

 Our family spent Saturday afternoon at Cheekwood Gardens.  Currently, they have a tree house exhibit.  And they are not your average tree houses.

This is a conk shell tree house from Lord of the Flies.  I humbly admit that I haven't read the book...but some people were a little wierded out by this treehouse theme.

Abby loved it.






























































 The "Jolly Roger" pirate tree house was a huge hit.  It had the most transferable ideas for our treehouse.  As soon as Abby saw the pirate ship, she ran to climb aboard.


Caleb was our navigator...he wanted to check the map, and decide where we would go after the pirate ship.

























This was a fish tree house made out of CDs.  Who thinks of these things!

The last tree house was...well...Caleb's favorite.  A rubber band tree house, in the middle of water, connected by "rubber bands" to surrounding trees.

The kids ran ahead of me, and by the time I got close, I noticed a pair of shoes sticking out from the top.  I looked closer, and it was my son, hanging upside down in the middle of the rubber band ball.





























Then he found a "window" and stuck his head out.  I was still thinking he was safe...and so cute...so I told him to smile for a photo.







































A little more nervous..."just hold on, smile...okay, get back in the rubber band ball!"



















I turned around for a few minutes, and when I glanced back, my heart dropped.

Have you ever felt proud of your child...and scared to death at the same time?  I wanted him to get down, but I really wanted to take a photo of him.  Even strangers were starting to take photos of Caleb on top of the rubber band ball.  I didn't want him to see me happily taking pictures, so most of the pics are when he turned his head.

I had to walk away.  Mark was watching him...and I knew that Caleb was an excellent climber.  But my heart was racing.

But he is a pretty good climber, don't you think?

 It was a great day.  We loved all of the tree houses, the weather was beautiful, and even Nate had a great time.

My dog and mayonaise

This is our dog, Rusty.

He is a 9 year old Vizsla.  There are times that I love having a dog and there are days when I swear we will never get another dog.  The past few days fall into the latter category.
















This is an antique desk that belonged to Mark's grandmother, Grammie.  When we got it, it already had numerous scratches.  And I think we added a few more.


























































My friend Amy inspired this project with this post on her amazing blog.  Go check it out.


I took mayonnaise and slathered it all over the scratches and water marks.  It needed to sit for at least 1 hour.  After about 15 minutes, I noticed that it started to smell a little.

The smell peaked my dog's interest.  I had noticed on Amy's blog that her dog had licked the mayonnaise off the table.  So I thought I would be ahead of the game and lock Rusty in our playroom with the big kids while I took a shower.  I told them not to let Rusty out.

When I came back to check on the cabinet, this is what I found.

Tons of deep claw marks all over the front of the desk.  I was so mad.  Not only had Rusty decided to lick the mayonnaise off, he jumped up on the desk and clawed away.

I am never getting a dog again.

Even if he looks like this as a puppy.  I swear I won't cave.

I will remember my cabinet and try really hard to ignore those floppy ears and big paws.

Sigh.  He was a cute puppy, right?

Well, I went back to the desk.  The scratches blend in after another coat of mayonnaise.  But I can still see the claw marks.  Life goes on.

Here is what it looked like before I started...



And here is the top of the desk, even after Rusty's mayonnaise feast...

The end result - the desk looks better than ever.  The mayonnaise works...just remember to keep your dog far away.