Bowling Balls and Black Lights

The smell of lysol mixed with stale beer, the rhythmic clanking of the pins against the lane floor and the exuberant celebrations by the alley’s participants surround
you upon entering a bowling alley.
And the domestic dispute in the parking lot?
That’s just a reminder that it isn’t all fun and games at the magical place called ‘The Bowling Alley’.

I am a terrible bowler, by every sense of the word. My score has only twice broken a hundred.

However, I love to bowl.
The primary colors throughout the alley are simple and inviting. I am a sucker for anything brightly colored.

The last time that I slapped on a pair of public shoes and claimed a pink ten pound ball as mine, was over a year ago while we were on tour with David Copperfield.
He didn’t laugh when I asked him to ‘make my pins disappear’.
(I thought it was pretty funny.)

This is my beautiful sister-in-law on the left and she married that guy in the hat which is my baby brother. My brother is in the band Bruder with Biceps.

And the night took a slightly weird turn when appendages were suddenly being compared to one another.
That is Biceps’ cute ‘hammer toe’. And that’s our friend Fiawna’s dainty thumb that she insisted looked like a ‘hammer toe’.

I can’t believe they let someone like this in public.

Friend Phillip made me giggle each time he threw the ball from about six feet back.

This is our sweet friend Fiawna, who did a little dance before, during and after every single one of her turns. She’s crazy but we like that about her.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Bicep’s graceful approach. Check out his form, his concentration, the perfectly centered ball in the lane.
Too bad I still beat him.

Halfway through our game, the lights went off, the music went up and my photos were blurry remnants of the evening.

I had no idea just how much fun could be had while wearing public shoes.

After spending our life’s savings on only the one game, we left the lovely bowling alley with its black light glow, truly wishing we could have stayed a little longer.
But ice cream beckoned us, and we wouldn’t want to disappoint it….

Extrude, Dude

Taking a simple photo, I wanted to see what the ‘extrude’ function would do to it.
This is the final product using a couple of simple steps.

Watch out-it’s comin’ at ya.
Below is the original photo.

B-o-r-i-n-g.
Let me tell you how I made the final photo with a few simple key strokes.

First, I made a background of the photo in Photoshop. I cropped it down to just the two basic firework explosions and boosted the contrast. Then, I got crazy. Clicking on the ‘Filter’ tab, I scrolled down to ‘Stylize’ and over to ‘Extrude’.

I don’t normally mess around with the ‘Extrude’ feature. When I had in the past, it made me think of Max Headroom and the 80’s in the not cool sense of the word. I tried out the ‘blocks’ option first.

Pretty cool, I suppose. But, I wanted to see what the ‘pyramid’ option would do for me.

I chose the ‘pyramid’ option and decreased both the pixels and the depth of the pyramids.

Well, isn’t that just purty? Let’s take this one step further.

Clicking on the ‘filter’ tab, I chose the ‘filter gallery’.

I tried several different filters, settling on the ‘fresco’ filter. You can see the brush size, detail and the texture I settled on as well, after messing around with the sliders.

Surreal.

Rebekah likey.

Cutesy & Cheap Mod Curtains

My bay windows gladly invite the 100 degree temperatures into my sweaty office.
Although Cowboy loves to bask in the suns UV glory, I do not.
Searching for curtains and fabrics left me empty handed.
Nothing suited my fancy and my office was getting
unbearable by the second.
Something must be done!

I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands and create a ‘Rebekah original’.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your very own curtains:
A couple different colors of spray paint-I used gold, black & white
Wax Paper
Blue Tape
Scissors
Sharpie
Either sew your own or buy some cheap plain curtains (If found my thermal light blocking curtains at Target for $12 a piece. You can’t beat that!)

I decided to go with a tree theme for my curtains. Ripping my blue tape down the center, I began placing the tape on the fabric at my creative leisure. (Ripping the tape not only conserved the amount that I used, but also gave the trees a bark-like look.)
Only do one curtain at a time so that you can reuse your blue tape!

I wanted gold to be the dominate color on my curtains, so I sprayed the majority of the trees this color.
Let your spray paint dry.
Remove several pieces of your blue tape and create smaller trees next to and even on top of the original ones.

Spray your secondary colors on the smaller trees until you are satisfied with the look.
I used black and white to be my secondary colors.

Let’s add a little pizzaz to the whole tree motif, shall we? Using your wax paper and your sharpie, create a design that suits your fancy.
I liked the simplicity of these little birds and made two different size ‘tweeters’ just to be crazy.

Tape your wax paper onto your fabric and spray paint whatever color you desire.
I used all three of my colors for these little birdies-gold, black and white.
There is no right or wrong way to do this. I did each of my three curtains completely different and loved them all the same.

Here’s the final product after letting the curtains dry. Although, my office still faintly smells of spray paint…
Maybe that’s why I am so loopy.
Maybe.

It is Finished!-The Big Girl Playhouse

For the past month, Biceps and I have been slaving away in the lovely Okie summer heat, building a ‘shed’
for some friends of ours.
Today, we completed the shed, packed up our tools, said goodbye to the dogs and headed home.
It was satisfying to complete the project, but also a little sad.

If you have ever completed a chapter in your life and had to walk away from it, I am sure you know what I mean.
I won’t miss the sweaty days, the sore muscles, the dog poop I have stepped in on countless occasions…but I will miss seeing my friends on a daily basis and becoming so close that I don’t knock anymore.

This is where I left you in week one. We had dug the holes and sunk the posts into the earth three feet deep. Then we had added the stringers, the headers and the beams.
Then we applied Arnica gel for several days and complained to each other about our sore bodies.

Week two we had built the rafters and put on the roof.
I hung from the rafters on several occasions pretending to be a monkey. The heat does strange things to me….

By the end of week three we had installed the windows and finished the roof. We began siding the ‘shed’ with 6” cedar planks. In between late nights of Hubby playing out with his band, the extreme Tulsa heat and my general ditziness, the cedar took way too long to install by my standards.

But today, it was all worth it. The ‘shed’ was finished. I cracked open a can of orange Diet Rite to commemorate the occasion.

The windows have to be my favorite part. Except when you are trying to nail something precariously close to said window and the nail happens to break said windows’ glass.

This view is from inside of the ‘shed’ looking out. It feels so dang good to be in here. Now that I know my friends gate code, I may just throw up a hammock and set up camp when they are out of town.

These doors were from a church in Tulsa. They felt rather blessed while we were hanging them, although Biceps did say ‘crap’ a few times while we were doing this….

I am rather curious if our friends will actually move their tools in here, or decide the space is better suited for fancy dinner parties.

Goodbye, dear ‘shed’. Know that I love you. And although I poured out my life, sweat and tears into you for the last month, know that I am happy you are done and that I can move on.
The Big Girl Playhouse has been deemed ‘completed’. Amen.
If you would like to read more about The Big Girl Playhouse, here’s Part One, Part Two and Part Three.