Say What?

Rachel suggested that we go out to DQ Friday night to celebrate her 14th and a half birthday...hey, it's as good an excuse as any. We used the same reasoning the next night to celebrate my 48th and a half birthday by going to dinner and then the Third Day/David Crowder concert at Target Center. Actually, the concert has been in our plans for a couple months. I was able to get out earlier in the day for a brisk ride in mid 20-degree temps so as not to feel too guilty when I over-ate at Chillies. Tammy's sister, Theresa, also went with us. The concert had a 7pm start time so we wanted to be at the restaurant before 5:00 and before the crowds. We got seated right away and began to ruin our appetites with a basket of tortilla chips and dip. Fortunately our food came before we could actually do that . We arrived at Target Center and parked in the ramp across the street on the 4th level...we wouldn't realize until later how big of a mistake that was. We had some time to kil...

We've been pretty busy around our household as we try and get the windows in the kitchenette of our basement done before the warm weather moves in and I find it next to impossible to do stained glass with all the bicycling I'd rather be doing. Tammy did some very nice design work to get the ball rolling on these. In case you missed a previous post of mine, here are the designs once again... left window , middle window , right window ; and here's where they're going  above the cabinets in the cutouts. Once we got the designs finished the first thing we did was work on the background glass. We're working with some beautiful Youghiogheny stipple glass we found at a shop in Minneapolis. We got the only two sheets they had and it should be enough but trying to find just the right piece for transitions between areas is still tricky at times. We laid out the background for all three windows together by placing them in our family room windows so we could view all of ...

We've been busy working on a stained glass project for our basement. I was hoping to be a little further along than we are but it's very tedious work with no way to rush it. Once we finalized the  last of three drawings it didn't take long for us to get busy. Tammy cut all the pattern pieces out and I got busy pasting them to the glass and cutting and getting cut. The hardest part so far has been trying to get the background glass to flow from one area to the next. I bought some beautiful Youghiogheny stipple glass for the background and I would think that two sheets would be enough but I'm finding that it's still a challenge finding just the right glass for the right area. There are so many tiny pieces but I like working that way as you seldom if ever see anyone else work that way. It takes a lot more effort but for something which will be around for years or decades to come, a little extra effort isn't such a big deal. I hope to have the first window done thi...