Counting my blessings...

A homeschool book/website review contest...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:30:12 -0500

Thought I'd pass this along...

HomeschoolRecess.com is having a book/website review contest-- the winner gets a $25 amazon gift card.

For more information, go here.

Good luck!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Just for fun...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:20:09 -0600

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Just for fun...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:20:08 -0600

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Science at our house...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:04:54 -0600

Moondirt1

My girls demonstrating a science experiment. My oldest inparticular found making a video to be a lot of fun, and she actually has absorbed quite a bit of the stuff I've been saying! This is actually only the beginning, the rest is too long to include here, I think.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Just goofing around...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:11:44 -0600

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

A couple videos from this week...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:40:40 -0600

For Christmas this year, I made the kids wooden balance beams. I was inspired by the balance beam I saw here. It wasn't too hard, and it gave me an excuse to learn to use our router. Here's how they turned out.

IMG_0006

And here are my daughters enjoying them:

MVI_0025

And just for giggles, here's a cute video of my youngest playing wii:

MVI_0028

Hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

A few photos...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:14:48 -0600

Just goofing around with photoshop this morning. My sister took this picture of T with a bunch of groceries behind him, so I cropped it out and used a bunch of other effects too.

Lilstinker

And here's T after he's talked his aunt into setting him up on the computer. He's quite the screen addict-- if we're out he likes to explain to any random adult that he can't play wii.

And here are the snowmen A&B made with their friends yesterday, that are getting washed away by the rain today.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

How we replaced the combustion blower on our furnace...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:11:49 -0600

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were sitting in the family room when a terrible noise came from downstairs. Fortunately it was a terrible noise we recognized, the sound of a bearing failing on a motor, in this case the combustion blower for our furnace. Initially we planned to call in an HVAC technician to fix it, but my brother shamed me into switching out the broken motor for a new one myself.

The first step was ordering the replacement part. I went through our furnace's owner manuals and found the original part number, and with that, google helped me find the current incarnation of the motor I needed at http://www.furnaceparts.com/ . I sent in my order and waited. Shortly before Thanksgiving, the new motor arrived, and since I was frantically getting ready to roast a turkey and continue my annual tradition of messing up the stuffing, I checked the part number on the outside of the box and set it aside. After Thanksgiving, I took the motor out of its box and found this:

1stmotor

The shaft was bent too, so it was basically a big, ugly paperweight. I contacted Dave at Furnaceparts.com and he sent us a new one without an argument, and it arrived a few days later (meanwhile my husband was out of town and the weather was chilly, so I kept my fingers crossed that the motor we had would hold out till we could get it fixed).

Finally it was time to get to work.

First and most important step: CUTOFF POWER TO THE FURNACE AT THE CIRCUIT BOX. I was tempted to just flip the switch next to our furnace, but my husband and electrical guru explained that occasionally a switch is miswired, and when it is in the off position, instead of having a very low voltage, it can have a very high voltage, so go ahead and make the trek to the circuit box, it may save you from getting zapped or worse.

Here was our original (dying) motor:

Before

The motor is actually contained in the black squirrel-cage (you can see the copper windings), but the part we replaced included both the motor and the nautilus-shaped blower to which it's mounted. The blower sucks air in through a hole in its back, opposite the motor, and then blows it out through the circular duct at the top when the motor turns.

I began removing the old motor by cutting the black and white (?) wires, and disconnecting the red rubber hose from the old motor (it pulled right off). Then I removed the screws attaching the blower to the ductwork and the screws holding it in place. It came out easily, and this is what we saw:

Motoroff

When we removed the motor we found a new part:

Seal

This gasket was in between the motor and the hole in the furnace, and was covered in fiberglass. Luckily the new blower came with new adhesive fiberlass rings.

Newseals

So I scraped off the old and stuck on the new.

Next was the tricky maneuver of getting the blower in place while holding the gasket in place until the screws were tight enough to hold it for me. Nothing complicated, just a situation where it was nice to have a third hand (from my husband.) The blower is supported by 4 screws, and I put them in loosely at first and then gradually tightened them, trying to keep them all about even, to try to get a tight seal against the gasket.

While I was dealing with the gasket, my husband helpfully prepared the furnace's wires to power the new motor. He stripped off a little insulation and crimped on connectors called FASTON tabs. Once they were in place, it was easy to slide them onto the motor's terminals (it doesn't matter which wire goes on which side). After taking the picture, I connected the red rubber hose to the nipple on the left.

Newwiring

Next I started to connect the ducts to the blower. This required drilling holes to receive the screws.

Drilling

Unfortunately the bit was too small the first time, which became apparent when the head of the first screw broke off.

Ductcu

But once the holes were redrilled, the remaining screws went in fine. We replaced the cover, turned the furnace back on, and enjoyed the knowledge that we'd done the job for $126 and about an hour of our time.

A disclaimer: This is not a "how-to" post. It's a "what-I-did" post. I'm not an HVAC technician, just a cheap homeowner.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Feeling crafty...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:59:25 -0600

I have been doing a lot of crafting lately. I'll have to get some pictures online to show what I've done lately (cute little mini pinatas, and some super-easy fleece ballet slippers). But here are things I have in mind for Christmas. As an alternative to a gingerbread house:

It's based on the cardboard template here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/07/diy_minicomic_stand.html

I hope to make a version big enough for the girls to play with their barbies in it. They've agreed to help me decorate it for Christmas (the girls, not the barbies, LOL).

For gifts, I'm thinking of making three of these for the kids:

Balance beam far away

I like that they're small enough to be able to put away, they can be played with in a bunch of different ways either all together or separately, and they should be pretty easy to make. And I get to go hide in the workshop to get them done.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Why I'm going crazy...

nobody@vox.com(Ln) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:36:03 -0600

Here's how my day goes-- {T} heads for the DVD player with a DVD chosen at random. I say "no movies" and he answers, adorably, "but I WUV movies" and continues on his way. Eventually he figures out that I'm not going to let it happen, and he heads for his candy bucket, and we go through it all again. And then cookies. And while all of this is going on, {B} is singing "Allouette" to herself OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, and {A} obviously needs desparately to go to the bathroom, but is apparently waiting till she needs to sprint.

Ah, motherhood.

Alouette

Read and post comments | Send to a friend