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How To Carve A Pumpkin

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So, you’ve got a big orange gourd, and you want to carve that pumpkin into something.  I don’t blame you; this is a great time of year for it, and you’ll still have a great-looking pumpkin come Halloween if you do it here within the next few days.  YouTuber Hickok45 has some expert advice on how to carve your pumpkin with a minimum of effort and a maximum body count:  he carves pumpkins using a semiautomatic Glock pistol!

It’s kind of a waste of ammo, but it’s really impressive nonetheless.  Kids, don’t try this at home.  Get your parents to help you, especially if they’re lifetime NRA members with incredible grouping on their shots.  This kind of work is best left to the professionals (because this looks insanely difficult, even at such close range).

If you don’t have a gun, don’t worry.  You can always turn to your friendly neighborhood chainsaw to get your pumpkin carving done.  It’s even more impressive than the gun!

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Birds Can Make Outdoors Desirable

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During the Labor Day weekend, we invited company to our house for a pot-luck cookout.  That Saturday was perfect.  Temperatures were in the mid-70s, humidity was low, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  The worst part were the mosquitoes who seem to have set up their own private Alamo-type seige at our house.  I blame the house next door that sat empty for 5 years – along with a swimming pool filled with green water, toads, and other scary things.  Now that people live there, the mosquitoes have moved to our place to stalk our red veins.

Even with mosquitoes, the presence of hummingbirds had our guests oooh’ing and ahhh’ing.  We love watching the territorial males fighting over the nectar.  It’s also quite enjoyable seeing the birds splash in the bird bath.

I plan to expand the number of birds we attract in our yard by building a bird feeder wreath.  The Old Farmers Almanac has a how-to tutorial, but briefly here’s how you do it.

  • Get a base for the wreath (you can make your own using grapevines or buy one from you local hobby store), and pick up some sunflower heads, herbs, tall grasses, and flowers with seed heads.
  • Starting with the sunflower heads, attach using floral wire.
  • Poke the other flowers (e.g., coneflowers, black-eyed Susans) in between.
  • And according to the almanac, finish by putting in the herbs and grasses.

The Almanac assures that the birds will find this beautiful wreath.  I hope while they’re dining on the flower seeds, they’ll also take out a mosquito or a thousand.

Image by Farmers Almanac.

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Computer Monitor Kitty Beds

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I’m lucky.  I have a massive desk with lots of empty space.  At one point, it was a school desk for like a principal or administrator that we picked up at the surplus auction, so it’s both wide (about 7 feet from left to right) and deep (probably 4 feet deep).  So when it’s time for my cat to get nosy and investigate what I’m doing, she’s got plenty of room to roam around or flop down.

Still, it’d be nice if she had a place to go where she could watch me work and not be in the way, so I’ve been thinking about picking up one of these PC Cat Beds from Etsy crafter alpinebutterfly.  It’s expensive (to me), but it’s made from low impact, high-quality materials, features a very cute paint job, and all the hazardous and/or pointy stuff from the inside of the monitor’s hard plastic casing has been removed (which is worth the cost of purchase alone, as the guts of any TV/monitor are always kind of unpleasant).

If I knew for sure my cat would go for it, I’d turn one of my old monitors into a cat bed for her.  I think she prefers to be in the way, though!  Generally, cats love to be in the way whenever possible, because that means you can’t ignore them.

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Twinkling Fiber Optic Stars

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When I was in college, there wasn’t much you could do to decorate your dorm room.  A lot of people put up posters, but the really impressive decorations were things like Christmas lights and, if you really wanted to show off, glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.  The only downfall was that the stars weren’t permanent, and if the glue gave way, you’d be picking stars up off the floor for ages.

These days, with extreme home makeovers being all the rage, a must-have feature for any home theater is a starry sky made out of fiber optic lights.  If you want to make one yourself, but don’t have the budget for a theater makeover, then perhaps these Instructibles directions (complete with pictures) will help you replicate the effect for pennies on the dollar!

It’s a pretty cool effect, but I’d want it to be an actual star map of my area, so that way I could look up at my bedroom ceiling and see the same lights that’d be overhead on a summer night.  Still, it’s great for a kid’s room as a nightlight replacement, isn’t it?

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Cold Weather Barbeque

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So here it is… I don’t like to cook much.  Fortunately my mother-in-law used to cook for several restaurants and she lives with me.  She still practices her profession, so it’s not necessary for me to write out menus and follow-through.

I am the person, however, who does all the outdoor grilling during the summer.  Don’t tell my mother-in-law, but apparently you can grill during the winter months too.  From Backyard Fire Pits,

Since its winter, there’s the likelihood that you won’t want to spend a lot of time outdoors cooking meat so it would make sense to grill steaks or pork chops because they cook faster than something large. Place a little more charcoal on the grill than you would use in the spring or summer.

The outside temperature does make a difference in the length of time it takes to cook your meat. Watch your rib eyes or center cut pork chops carefully so that they’re cooked to your specifications when you take them off the grill. Cook the meat a little longer.

Okey dokey. Dont’ tell my mother-in-law!

Photo by Rochelle et al via Flickr Creative Commons.

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Following Santa's Trail via NORAD

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Want to know where Santa is right now?  Just use the official the official NORAD Santa Tracker, powered by Google Earth!  Right now Santa is over Russia, and he seems to be making good time.

The tradition of NORAD tracking Santa Claus’s flight over the Earth dates back to 1955, according to this BBC article.  Due to a misprint in a Colorado advertisement, people phoning a Santa hotline were actually calling the Continental Air Defense Command, the predecessor to NORAD.  An official at CONAD took the calls and pretended to be Santa Claus, and the tradition took off from there!

Tracking Santa is high tech.  You can ask questions of NORAD volunteers by emailing noradtrackssanta@gmail.com, check the Santa tracking Facebook page, browse the Picasa photo album, install a browser plugin to keep tabs on St. Nick, subscrube to the official NORAD Santa Twitter feed to track of his progress and give interesting facts about the stops along the way, and even get SMS updates of Santa’s progress sent to your cell phone!

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Christmas Light Shows

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It always amazes me to see people meticulously plan and create Christmas light shows on the outsides of their houses and yards.  I truly appreciate their hard work and dedication, but it just seems like such an overwhelming project to take on.  Maybe some year when my kids are all grown up and I don’t spend 80 percent of my time carting them around, I’ll give it a try.

If you’re ready to do it this year, here are directions from WikiHow,

Decide how big you want it. A channel is a unit of lights that can be controlled individually. For example, a single bush in your yard may be a channel. All the lights in a channel work as a unit (you can’t flash an individual light bulb). 32 to 64 channels is a good size to start with.

There are a lot more good tips if you click through!  Meanwhile, here’s an example of someone’s light show already done!

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