Doctor Who

I have been on a huge Doctor Who kick and I have been wanting a new purse. So this is what I made on this wonderful Monday.

The Great Urban Race

 On Saturday, my friend and I, undertook the Great Urban Race Challenge. It is an amazing race style race set in different cities around the country. I am lucky enough to live within an hour of one of those cities. I have lived here for a few years, but not gotten to Denver as much as I thought I would. It was a good thing Bridget knew how to get around. All of the teams dressed up in costumes. We were the 80 chicks. That came about when we were discussing what our team name should be. I meant to say we should be the 80's chicks, but misspoke and it came out the 80 chicks. I started laughing, because these costumes immediately came to mind. 

 My son absolutely love Mario brothers, so when he saw these girls he had to have a picture. I was so excited for the race that we left the house way to early and ended up having to wait an hour before we could even check in and then had to wait another hour until the race started. Once we got there we had to fill out the standard "I won't sue" waiver and then got our numbers. We had to put our numbers on our legs because of our costumes. Once 12:00 rolled around we were able to open our clue packets. Usually at a race when someone says go you see a mass of people running, in this race your saw a lot of people immediately sitting. We all had 12 clues that needed to be solved and then you could go. Once we had our clues solved and plotted on a map, we were able to leave. (not a requirement, but a smart way to do it.) We were one of the last people to leave the start.

 One of our clues was a tick tack toe board. You had to do challenges as you were out and about. One of the challenges was to sit on a strangers lap. This poor guys was the first guy to ask us what we were doing. (Our costumes got that question a lot.) After we told him we asked if we could do our challenge. He was very nice about it.

 Our first store challenge was to go into a store called rocket fizz. They had a wall of soda and we had a word scramble. We had to find four different sodas on the wall and eliminate the letters in our word scramble to find the favorite store brand. (It was Jelopeno, I know that's spelled wrong.) At each location we had to take a picture and get some kind of business card, matches, postcard or something to show we were there.

 Our next stop off was in a parking garage, quite a walk from where we were. Chevy was one of the sponsor, so there was a Chevy challenge. We had to solve an equation that had to do with the car behind us. That one was pretty quick, but the elevator ride down was a bit unsettling. Have you ever been on an elevator that starts way to quickly? Getting to the next challenge was quite a walk. I did have to ask Bridget if she knew what a straight line was. We ended up going down a street to far and having to go around the block, but we did get to talk to a very nice woman at the bus stop. She was very concerned about us and asked if we needed anything to eat and if we had water.

 After we got to the next challenge we found that we had a choice of laying on a bed of nails, walking on stilts or snake charming. I found out after I had picked the "snake charming" consisted of holding up a boa. I could have done that. However, I chose the stilts. It was hard getting up on them, but once I was up it was pretty fun. Once you got down though it felt weird walking.

 The next challenge was less of a walk. Once we got there we discovered Bridget had to tape a alkaseltzer tablet to her forehead. I had to spray her with a water gun until it dissolved. I wish we had a picture of that.

 The next one was very close, but, um, yeah, I think we probably added a half mile. We ended up going a different direction and went around the block. This challenge was at a place called Adrenalin. It had a bunch of sports stuff from different teams.  We had to figure out what different teams were represented by a small bit of the team logo. We also had to check in there on face book. If you look closely at the girls behind us in the picture, you can see the look on their faces. There was a guy on another team who was cussing out the employees because he had to check in and didn't want to.

 The next one was right around the corner, thankfully. We had to find this small art gallery and find this artist. Simple enough (except the clue was really obscure and we had to ask other teams if they had figured it out to find the place).
Teams were very nice to each other. This was a great race. We still had not completed the tic tac toe. One of the things we were going to do was give flowers to a stranger, but we could not find a place to get flowers. I told Bridget that if I could find ten strangers we would do the high fiving ten strangers. Right after that I looked across the street and found eight people at a bus stop and three standing on a corner. We asked then if they could help us (because we were in a race) and everyone was very nice about it. (I know when you just counted 8+3 you came up with eleven and not ten, but we did need someone to video tape us).

 The last thing on the checkerboard was to get a picture of us skipping across an intersection. Lucky for us as we were walking back up to another challenge we crossed over the closed intersection that was being prepared for a race that is going on today. We were able to skip back and forth until we got the picture right.

 Our next challenge was to get an acupuncture needle. I let Bridget do that one.

 This next challenge was quite a walk away. We had to buy a few item to donate to the Ronald Mcdonald house.

 For this challenge we had to throw popcorn at each other until one of us caught one in our mouths. The popcorn was very good (as long as you don't choke on it as you're walking). After this challenge we were running out of time and had a long walk back. We decided to take a penalty on our last clue (we were allowed to skip one clue, for every clue missed after that there was a 30 minute penalty).

 There was a costume contest also, but we didn't win. I think we got the most looks around town, but it was judged by just the people in the bar.
Look back into the right hand corner of the picture, you will see a bride in white and her bridesmaids in yellow. This was kind of her bachlorette party. She promised if she won she would throw her bouquet.  She did win and sh did throw and guess who caught it......

My son.

The kids had been asking me all day if they could eat a peep. They finally got to at the end. It was a fun, fun day, but now I am sore and exhausted. So when can I sign up for next year?

Design Wall Monday: Route 66

This is my Route 66 quilt. It's a small wall hanging that was entered for a challenge and traveling exhibit. I found out a few days ago it was selected. I'm so excited. It will be traveling for three years and then if they can find a permanent  place for it it will stay there. YAY! I just have to finish sewing down the label and hanging sleeve.

Finally finished

We are finally done with the coop and the chicks have moved into their new digs. I think they like having more room to move around.

This is the entrance to the run.

This is the front and nest box side. Those are eggs painted on the lid.

My kids painted a yoshi egg, chicken nuggets and a drumstick on the side of the nest box.

The kids are loving the chickens.

And so does Lucy. She is very good with them. They have gotten so big and are only six weeks old.

Another weekend of coop building and my design wall

We had another wonderful weekend of coop  building. It was so hot and nice. We had a small shower in the middle of the day yesterday, but after it passed over we were able to continue.

This is the start of the nest box

The front has been added

And the divider

Finally the lid.

We had to hammer the tips of the screws because they were a smidge to long

This is the inner coop door

We have doors to the run that we made. I was relieved that we had just enough of the hardware cloth.

This is our ramp up into the coop. We haven't put it on yet. That will be the very last thing.

We also made a window to close during the winter so it will keep the heat in.

My kiddo and her dog. She is writing a story.

Here are the run doors installed.

It has a roof!

This is the fixed doors. We added flat panels on the sides of the door and put on flat brackets. Can you tell I am a bit paranoid about something getting in?

The asphalt paper for the roof.

And the tiles. These went on a whole lot better and easier than we thought they would. We also got these for free. We were on a walk and saw some people working on a roof and asked what they were doing with their old tiles. The guy had two packs of these tiles that were the wrong color and her gave them to us.

Beginning the painting. The chicks should be outside in the next few days.

On a side note, yesterday I went into my basement and found one of the chickens running around...outside of the brooder. I think it is time for them to be out. They are now over six weeks old.

This is my design wall piece. I am working on a Challenge Quilt.

My last two days

   

I am so exhausted and I think my husband, Mike is too. We spent the last two days working on our chicken coop. Last time we were only able to get a small rectangular frame finished but we got a lot more done this time. This post is very picture heavy and I will tell my story through the captions.

My son sitting in the frame. We had the frame done before and at the start of the day yesterday we got the six legs up.

Then we added the coop supports. We had to use flat brackets for part of it.

Henrietta is checking out the new digs.

We added the top frame.

Here is the side view of it.

We added hardware cloth to under the coop before added the floor. Much easier to get under that way.

Mike is added notches for the floor to sit flush.

Here are the notches.

He had to cut again. We had measured the floor too big. Oops.

The floor is finally in.

Mike is cutting the wood for the roost supports.

All of our pieces of wood. We had Lowes cut all of the wood for us. All we had to do was cut all of the angles (and fix our measurement mistake)

Here are the roosts. They stretch the whole width of the coop. About 4 feet.

We made sure to sand all of the edges. Lost of splinters.

Mike is adding the wall where the nest box will go.

My son got to help cut the door stops.

Here is the door stop for the coop doors.

And the stops for the run doors.

 We had all of that done last night. It was a very long day and we were both very tired. However, my husband was awake most of the night trying to figure out how to put the roof trusses on. He was successful in his thoughts and today we were able to begin on that part of the project.

These are the boards for the roof trusses

We had to get the angles just right.

They went on nicely.

The Angle brackets really helped.

We needed to cut a window for one side.

And add hardware cloth. There will be a plexiglass window over this, that we can open and let the fresh air in.

We added the large side panel. It has a vent hole and a door hole. We will add a door we can close at night.

Here is the side with the window mesh.

Make sure to charge your drill when you are doing a big project.

More mesh over the vent hole.

Here is one of the coop doors.

These are the doors attached. We actually need to figure something else out, because the doors stick out and don't close properly.

And the last thing, was putting on the final roof panel. 

 

 

We are tired and we are not done, but we only have a few more steps to go. They will have to wait until next weekend, but we'll get them done. On a side note, here is one of the things I am working on. A basket quilt. Obviously I have not gotten much done in the last two days. :-)