Categories
Art Create Woodworking

Awesome DIY Cork Art Project

Wine-Cork-Art-Project

I’ve been saving wine corks for as long as I can remember.  I can’t bring myself to throw them away – the natural ones – because I just think they’re cool.  I even find myself picking bottles of wine based on which ones have real corks vs. synthetic.  There’s something tactile and visceral about them that totally intrigues me, from the smell of the wine-soaked end to the elastic resistance I feel when I roll them about with my fingers, to the almost limitless variation of patterns and colors.  And I’m amazed by the fact that cork comes from trees and start out living and organic.

Categories
Blogging Content Marketing Create Learn Starting a Business Web Development

How I Built the World’s Worst Website and Still Made $1,500

World's-Worst-Website-graphic

You’ve got to be kidding right?  Why would anyone want to read about this?  I mean, last month alone, Pat Flynn made almost $120,000 so who cares about a measly $1,500?  Most people think that ‘www’ stand for World Wide Web, but I have a special URL where it stand for World’s Worst Website.  Here’s the start of my story.

Categories
Create Plans Woodworking

DIY Farmhouse Bed – King Version

King-Bed-GraphicI’ve had a number of questions about converting my Farmhouse Bed post plan to a king sized version (the original plan is a queen).  While the construction techniques are the same, the king version changes quite a few of the measurements to stretch the headboard and footer.  This post is a detailed plan for the king version.  To give full credit, the original version of this plan is from Ana White’s website (the queen version) which you an see here and I’m also working on a full version.  I think Ana has done a king version as well, but this plan is a little bit different.  

Categories
Ed Unfiltered

Listening to God

Listen-and-you-will-hear-His-voiceI woke up this morning at 3 o’clock to the sound of a thunderstorm.  As I laid in dark, listening to the sound of the rain drone on, my current struggles and anxieties began rolling around in my mind like the thunder outside and I questioned God, “what do you want me to do?”  I go there too fast, thinking that there must be some answer, some thing that I can do to alleviate the trials that I’m experiencing.  I’m so quick to speak, so fast to pull the trigger.  Fire, ready, aim…  

Categories
Ed Unfiltered

David & Goliath

David-&-GoliathToday in our Sunday school class we studied the well-known bible story of David and Goliath. While we discussed a number of very applicable and insightful truths, there is one aspect to the story that doesn’t often get mentioned, but which I think is absolutely critical for God’s people today.

Categories
Cycling Live Run

Walking Around Birmingham

I was talking with my neighbor from California the other day and he was remarking how there aren’t any good resources online to find out where to go walking around Birmingham.  In addition, he said that while he’s met lots of people from California who’ve moved to Birmingham (who knew?!) that there wasn’t any way to connect with them.  As anyone who’s “not from around here” knows, it can be challenging to plug into a community like Birmingham where it seems like all the insiders know each other and if you didn’t grow up here, you feel like a real outsider!

Categories
Ed Unfiltered

School Busses and God’s Word

It seemed like a good idea and I needed the exercise.  We don’t walk enough as it is and the repair shop where I dropped my car off early in the morning (so I’d be first in line) was only 2 miles from my house.

Categories
Create Learn Marketing

How to Create a Brochure in InDesign

I just uploaded a video tutorial series on YouTube on how to create a brochure in InDesign.  For this series, I’m taking a brochure Beth created in Pages and I’m re-creating as a lesson in using InDesign.  I find tutorials creating something “real world” to be more helpful than a generic lesson and I’ve tried to explain each of the steps as well as the features of InDesign that I used.  For those of you already very familiar with InDesign, this will probably be more basic that you need.  My target audience here are folks who are generally working in Word or in Pages and want to move to InDesign where there’s more flexibility than the basic word processors allow. 

Categories
Create Home Improvement Learn Woodworking

How to Build a Kendal Extra Wide Dresser: A Complete DIY Plan

I’ve been wanting to build a dresser for some time now and finally decided to take the plunge.  After searching for a long time to find one I like, I settled on a modified version of Ana White’s Kendal Extra Wide Dresser.  This has an overall clean design and I like the way the drawers are inset into the frame & Ana did a great job with the design.

Categories
Date Night Eat

Date Night Dinner: Balsamic Raspberry Dessert

Balsamic Raspberries and Vanilla Frozen Yogurt

If ever I had a signature dessert, this would be it.  While I can’t claim total originality on using a balsamic reduction in a dessert dish, this is one riff that I haven’t run across yet, so it’s as close to it as I’ll probably ever get!  The balsamic reduction has hints of dark chocolate and wine and combined with roasted raspberries over frozen vanilla yogurt, this makes a truly unique and killer dessert.