This past year has been our first in our new home. I love the views from the back porch in the winter. The views from Texas were okay, but they consistently lacked character— there was no beauty…

Living in the Chattanooga valley there’s lots to look at.

I’m still workin on the yard… or course.

I started with this…

This whole section was grown up random stuff; bushes, flowers, green things— it all had to go.

I cleaned it up, edged it off and planted some grass; it looks nice now…

I went over to Lowes and picked up a fertilizer bag of 13-13-13 and a bag of grass seed, aerated the yard and then threw down the mix. So far, it’s done well. And since it’s cold, I don’t see grass growing for a while. Yeah, no mowing.

I also bought a wood chipper and mulched up a lot of wood; spreading the clippings all over the placed I was having a hard time getting grass to grow. The chippings helped keep the ground moist and helped the grass to get bigger. As it came in, in those ‘bad’ places, it was really green.

Here’s another shot…

To get the best range out of the sprinklers, I made extensions for them. I had some spare rebar; and drove them in the ground about 10 inches— using them as a base. Then I got some ¾" PVC pipe and cut 14" pieces/sections.

On one end, I cut a cross section for the sprinklers to sit in the top without spinning around and then at the other end, cut it at an angle to put in the ground.

I did this just to make it easy to temporarily remove them if I needed to…

Do you recall the other side of the yard?

Back in April…

http://www.casadehenry.com/2012/04/playn-catch-up/

Well, now; it’s doing a lot better…

[Chuckling to myself…] It’s really not that easy to keep grass on a slopped yard.

Until next time,
Larry Jr.
www.casadehenry.com

My/our vacations have always been to Chattanooga, or to a relatives house/home somewhere. It’s never really been to anywhere, with the exclusion that we went to Gulf Shores with my dad once and we had a great time.

But this year, when I was asked to go Daytona Beach, I was a little reluctant to do so because of money, but ultimately I decided to go. I was dreading the drive and I was skeptical about going, but we went, we drove and we got there and it was so nice.

Between my mom, my sisters and Becca they found and picked out this place where we could all stay; a place where everyone had their own room— and everyone had their own bath. It was a nice place. It was much nicer than I was expecting. The place was a condo on south Daytona, on the 11th floor; the view was great.

Hearing the ocean and having the view was all worth it…

Just seeing Ethan on the beach for the first time ever was cool…

Here’s a few shots from when we first got there…

This is the main entrance to Daytona Beach… from here, we were going to Joe’s Crab Shack…

And the boardwalk… it was kind of empty because the rain was still kind of floating about…

I rained just about everyday, but it was a good rain. We had overcast, nice warm weather, cloudy… so we could play outside and not worry about getting too hot or sun burned; everyone was liking it…

I took a few shots as the last of clouds were passing through and as the skies were clearing up…

This was Thursday and Friday; perfectly clear, warm— the sun was out in full force…

I never could get around to getting a shot of the sunset. This is about as close as I could get…

I thought this was a really cool shot. It’s early morning, around 6 am. The sun wasn’t up and as we looked over the horizon the view of Mars and Venus were visible; more than I had ever seen before. It was awesome— I tried to get some picture, but man, these don’t do what we saw any justice at all…

I wanted to get one just as the sun was coming up..

Here’s a panoramic shot…

Anyway, I have to say, I had a great time and this is definitely a good place to return to…

Until next time,
Larry Jr.
www.casadehenry.com

My mom used to keep a drawer in the kitchen— all lids went in that drawer so you could effortlessly find the lid later without having to dig through the bottom cabinet…

Anyway, Becca was at Target the other day and they were selling lid organizers that fit right inside the cabinet door; you could just drop the lids in there and you can reach in, get a bowl and all the lids should be right there.

But the problems with the concept was that this thing was $8…

I thought what about a file holder, or an inbox you would hang on the wall… So, we went to the office section of the store, and sure enough; the inbox for folders was $2.

Instant savings… same function.

Here’s my version…

I didn’t use screws. I used industrial two sided tape…
I didn’t want to use screws because the wood is so thin and I didn’t want to mess it up. And I placed the holder closer to the top and to the inside of the door to have more bottom space and so that the holder would hit the cabinet as the door was trying to close.

Also, the tape added some space between the door and the plastic to help it breathe more; just in case the dishes have a little water on them…

It works because otherwise that space is wasted anyways… I’m thinking about making or installing a pull out for the pots and pans.

I believe this works out good.And I may do something like this on another door for cutting boards…

Until next time,
Larry Jr.
www.casadehenry.com

We’ve been keeping busy and now that the good weather is coming back around our way, I’ve been working on a few projects.

By the way, some of you’ve seen this, but this is my view from my back porch…

That’s Lookout Mountain over there, just to the left… It’s nice at sun set…

And this is us…

There’s normally a flag on front for the TN VOLS, but the one of the last strong storms damaged it; I’m going to have to get around to fix it one day.

This is MOMO; I like him named more as MOFO, but, oh, well…

He’s a ragdoll cat, he’s supposed to get to be about 25lbs and right now, he’s about 1 year old and 16lbs… he’s pretty healthy and I also believe a bit retarded at times.

A little while back, Ethan whacked his eye brow and must have some stitches; now he matches me, but I still win, becuase I had more.

And Ethan has been playing baseball here and doing great for his first year. I didn’t know if he was going to be left or right handed. But he throws left handed and bats at either left or right. I’m still waiting to see if he’s better at one or the other…

Here’s a picture of his team…

Humorously, I’m getting used to seeing the ubiquitous southeast sights…

What can I say; people think differently… sometimes, much…

I worked out in the yard a bit recently. I put in a retaining wall in the back yard about 3′ high and I relocated a lot of the flowers and bushes and such to lower part of the back yard— to have more ‘yard’…

The grass is already coming in for the cleared off area…

And I just finished with clearing out some holly bushes from around the porch area. Cranked out the ole chain saw and buzz buzz baby and they were down…

To ensure no one drops off my porch, I put up a new rail on the far side of the sitting area…

And we accented the porch with solar lights to put a glow on the back yard… It looks nice at night…

I will try to post more often…

Until next time,
Larry Jr.
www.casadehenry.com

And at the end…

He takes a bow…

Until next time,
Larry Jr.
www.casadehenry.com