Red Box is All Glossy and Done

I finished getting the fabric applied to this box last night and was able to get several coats of Mod Podge on before I went to bed. And then today I took some short breaks from work to get it sanded and to apply several coats of spray sealant. And now it’s done.

Holy cow! That fabric is so amazing! Another one of my favorite Kaffe designs.

Here’s a bunch of pictures because I just want to keep looking at this!!!

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I’m going to make one more of these since I have the box on hand. The box is sort of a cigar box shape. I’m going to use the Jade color way of Kaffe’s Lotus Leaf, so I painted the wood a really pretty pale yellow.

Oh my god… what a terrible photo! You’ll have to take my word on this… it’s really pretty!

My yard guy came by yesterday to do a bunch of pruning all around my yard. He came back today to finish it all up.

He cleaned up the bottom of my HUGE snowball tree (to the right of the ladder in the photo above), he removed some low hanging branches from my lilac bush and cleaned up the bottom so the trunk shows. He also took some of the lower hanging branches off my apple tree (this is a tree that he severely pruned a couple months ago). There are so many apples on this tree it was overwhelming. He also pruned up a laurel, my purple rhododendron and a couple of large burning bushes.

There was so much debris, he had to made two trips to the dump!

It all feels so good! it’s been way too long since I had this done.

After work tonight I took a drive out to Sandy, Oregon, at the foot of Mt. Hood, to do some dog training with some friends. It was fun to drive out there but it did take some time! I basically had to drive all the way across Portland… during rush hour! On the map below, my house is at the blue star and my friends place is at the red star. It’s about 35 miles, but it took me 90 minutes.

But the closer I got to my destination, the prettier it got. There’s supposed to be a gorgeous view of Mt. Hood from my friends yard, but it was cloudy so there was no seeing it. I look forward to seeing it the next time I’m out there.

Luckily, the drive home was much quicker.

I’ve been noticing some juncos hanging out on my patio, and one particular one perching on the fence around my strawberries. And then today I noticed that two nearly ripe and red berries on the vine were now gone. I’m pretty sure this little guy is the culprit.

The thing that really pissed me off about this is that he also broke green berries off the vines. He killed future berries! Berries that neither of us will ever get to enjoy!

I knew this was going to happen, so a couple nights ago I ordered some netting to keep the birds off my berries. It should arrive tomorrow and I have a plan for how to get it installed on that planting bed.

We came out of our heat wave with enthusiasm! Today it didn’t get much over 70 and it was cloudy all day. It really felt fantastic!

One more day of work and I have a three day weekend. Tonight my friends and I made plans to get together on Sunday to celebrate July 4 with some dog training and a pot luck BBQ.

I’m looking forward to a long weekend.