Author: greatwallstudios

A new addition to our field of inflatable Halloween characters on the front yard, along with the hanging skeleton, and a glowing serpent. I think we’ve reached the limit on the two plugs on the one outlet now. If we ever go for more I’ll need a second timer and to start using another outlet on the opposite side of the house. The really little kids up the street seem to like it a lot, same with my own children. The new twenty footer is a surprise for them when they get home. It takes a while to fill and even longer to deflate! Such fun! The box for it is pretty sizeable so I’ll have to revisit the storage solutions I have in place.bi have room, just a matter of tweaking the order in which every item gets put away. The serpent and skeleton go over the garage door so this new massive inflatable can go there too I think. I’m in the process of using up nearly all of my cherry wood so I am thinning out the garage contents one project at a time to offset adding in new decoration storage boxes.

I wonder if the increased presence on the lawn will attract more trick or treaters this year? It’s feast or famine around here. I either get a long string of tots and toddlers or I get nobody whatsoever. And I have zero indication which it will be until the night itself comes. I typically stay home to keep an eye on the candy bowl, and to watch Alien and have an evening in. It’s Saturday this year so I wonder if things will be a little crazier than usual with no school in the morning. Sunday of the first the clocks change which is always good for a laugh.

I have a tiny skeleton for the front door I have yet to put up, so I should go dig through our Halloween box to find him/her/it. Once that’s done all that is left are carved pumpkins done much closer to the event day, and to buy the candy we need to give out. It’s best to wait on that because if I know it’s here in the house I will tear into those boxes and gorge myself on Twice bars, Mars bars and Snickers bars like the weak will fat man that I am. Look at me I’m a pear!

Looks like it will be a cool night for the Halloween Haunt at Wonderland, so we best dress warmly. I love the lights and decorations. We don’t typically try any of the actual scary stuff because I’m personally not a fan. But I guess I could try once my eldest gets a little older if that’s something she likes. Only time will tell.

Some of my older posts are doing real well in China right now. Seems to come in waves from different regions of the world. That’s cool. And this go around they are reading or at least viewing specific named articles and not just archives (which tells me nothing). Nothing much compares to that single 1,500 viewer day from Germany that lead to a 2,000+ month of July 2025. But a big regional jump is cool just the same. Those good days of 70-100 views dissipated and have come back down to the more easily sustained 20-30 views per day. I’d love to know where the lower limit is for those who can make money off of this sort of endeavour. I would guess that they need 20 to 30 thousand visits per day to collect ad revenue of any size to be useful. Here I am working towards 8,000 for the year of I can make that happen through sheer force of will and determination. Keep the writing streak going, and look towards the future!

I recently applied for a part time job here in town. I do not know what, if anything, will become of it. I’ll keep you posted if it turns out that I learn more. Ciao Bella!

Cutting in the box joint teeth by hand has been a slow moving process but today I finished section two. Now that these two bits of the upper most shelf are done I can transfer each side to the appropriate leg. That will require some rigging up of suitable clamps to position the pieces correctly so that my transfers are true. I need some painters tape, a fine marker, and then the use of a knife to get blade tight edges do it’s good and snug! I can pull off the tape where I don’t need it and clear our the receiving pins over the next couple of days. There was talk of snow on Friday or Saturday so those would be good days to stay warm in the shop making small cuts and doing chisel work.

While not the cleanest job I’ve ever done I’m getting better. The trick is to not rush. Once I get impatient it all goes to hell, so live to fight another day and all should go well! I hope.

I spent my morning walking the dog, cutting the grass, taking down the swing & slack line and erecting all of the Halloween inflatables and our (now hanging) skeleton. Add in a few loads of laundry and that’s been my entire morning. The decorations took just about 2.5 hours to complete. Welcome to Wednesday I guess.

It has been raining pretty heavily since late last night, so today’s walk was a little hurried and wet. It didn’t last more than ten minutes. Oh well.

In other news an anniversary with my wife is coming up and to surprise her I am going to learn to make a proper French Onion Soup, with yellow onions, unsalted butter, thyme, white wine (Sauvignon Blanc) , all purpose flower, chicken & beef broth (low sodium), salt & pepper, gruyere cheese and toasted baguette. All told it should take me about 90 minutes to prep and make (I hope!) I bought those very specific crockery bowls and they are in the dishwasher getting cleaned while I wash the kitchen counter and stove top before I settle in.

The ingredients list reveal!

If what I’ve read is correct it takes about an hour to caramelize the onions, the rest is pretty quick except while you wait to summer things, or wipe down the pan to deglaze it. I’m no chef so this could get ugly. To top it off I need to toast the baguette slices and shred the cheese and broil the lot in the oven to achieve brown bubbly goodness. So we will see how it goes. Hence why I will practice on my own before I do it for real for my wife. Lots can go wrong if I become distracted or impatient. Cross your fingers for me!

Had to make a call to figure out just how brown to let these onions get.

In the end it smells great and I just need to toast the baguette first so it doesn’t turn to mush. Tastes ok to me. I don’t know how authentic it is though.

It’s a long and physical process that includes removing a large tarp, deck boards, and adding guide wires back on to the aluminum frame, and shifting the pivot point into the air from underneath the composite deck boards we lifted off earlier.

You get through that and then it’s time to turn the crank to lift the whole gods forsaken lot up out of the water so that the freezing lake can’t crush it with ice floes coming down off the windswept main lake body. Getting the thing to hang right is a real process.

After that we need to untie the big do I from all three anchor points, separate the pieces, untie the gangway from shore, unbolt the main body from shore and then float the whole mass over into a secluded bay and rig it to shore out of the wind and coming ice sheets. That’s a long and tedious job too. Hopefully the last of the long weekend.

While a cottage is fun they are also a tonne of extra work. Once I got here I had to spend an hour cutting all the grass before we could even start on closing things down and putting our summer gear away. It’s a weekend full of heavy lifting, pulling, pushing and wrangling of unwieldy objects. Not for the faint of heart.

We had our fanciful holiday meal last night so today after breakfast we can get this dock off the list. Anything else is small potatoes in comparison. I pray for no rain/snow nor winds of any sort. Wish us well!

It’s cool, it’s extremely dark and it’s comfortable. Did I mention both fans go full tilt the entire time? It’s a little sleep oasis. While the pillows take a little getting used to, the length of my night’s sleep is extended because for one thing I am several floors down from everybody else, two; there are several other adults here and I am not top of mind to my children, so I get left undisturbed, and Three it’s a trek to get down to this corner and my kids HATE doing stairs into dark basements by themselves, so I am left alone because of that too. All together that means if I have no alarms set, and my bladder doesn’t fail me then I can sleep in until nearly ten o’clock in the morning. Fantastic! By then my bladder is fit to burst so I have to get up anyway. Glorious.

Pretty sure it’s Sunday of the long weekend. Forecast is for rain later today and tomorrow too. We shall see how long it holds off for. I smell pancakes and bacon so I’m going to get dressed and go eat! Happy Thanksgiving weekend everybody.

Inlaws are working hard to get their soya beans up asap so that they can enjoy the rest of the weekend once it’s all done. I am willing to bet that the roads were all a twitter last night as people head out of town to see family or go to events. It’s times like this where we don’t have access to a full line up of buses & trains, trams and shuttles so the roads get congested and it takes hours longer to get just about anywhere you’d want to go. Monday on the roads will be a nightmare because everybody has to come back. I prefer to move about on off peak weekends if I can help it. Save my sanity and a few extra hours of stress behind the wheel. The children’s programming last night was a touch lighter in attendance, so parking was a breeze. It’s like a non fatal Thanos finger snap. All of a sudden we have available seating & parking! It’s terrific.

Once the weekend is done we will clear the lawn once more then I’ll set up all of the inflatable Halloween decorations. That should put us in a festive mood.bi will need to take down the slack line and the swing to make room, but I think it’ll not be a problem. Neighbourhood kids don’t play on it much so it’s no big deal to put it away until next spring.

Huzzah! The rough cuts for the top most portion are done and now I can find my sharpening kit and go to town on getting my chisels up to snuff. A sharp chisel will make short work of this Cherry wood. I’m excited. While this is more technical, and somewhat slow going the end product looks so much nicer than the rough cuts. I will be several days rough cutting and then fine tuning with a chisel these two sides with four mating sections that I have to do. It’s all progress!

Pretty soon this is really going to feel like it’s coming together. It’ll be pretty heavy so I’m going to need to enlist the aid of my wife to move it into the front hall once it’s actually done. Should be this calendar year after all! Moving the dog crate just in time for winter boots, coats and snow pants will be extraordinary timing on my part. If we can get 4 x 8ft of open area to enter/exit the house and store our gear without having to climb over one another that’ll be a massive win in my book. I hope the kids choose not to write on or carve their initials into this completed piece like they did the other one from a few years ago. That was pine, so I didn’t care too much. But this is hardwood with hand cut joinery so I’ll be a little more concerned if it happens again. Still not heirloom quality, but better than Wayfair/Ikea. Real solid hard wood made on the premises. Means more to me anyway.

In other news the paper mache sort of dried but the under lying cardboard is soggy, so I switched to masking tape and then duct tape. It weighs more now, but shouldn’t melt under duress. Next up is cutting out the eyes and mouth, gluing in our plates and figuring out my daughter’s eye level for sight. Then she’s free to paint it and decorate it however she sees fit. With weeks left to go she has not got to rush. I like that.

Happy Friday of the Thanksgiving long weekend!

I did not get very far on the four edges that will mate with the box joints. I have rough cut only one section of the four that need it. But in order to do the last two section on the leg portions, I need my final sized top panel completed then I can transfer my pins & gaps. And once all that’s done I can measure out my shelves and router those mortises into the legs too. Do a dry fit so that I can notch out the bottom backing plate that is there to stop the dogs toys from getting under the couch and I can dry fit that too. I can take this time to either break all the edges with a sanding block or use the router to round over the edges. I haven’t decided which i’d prefer. Then it’ll be sanding until I’m sick to death of it all. I think I might then go ahead and rub on some Danish oil to make the colour a little richer right off the bat. This avoids the glue accidentally leaving voids where the oil gets repelled and won’t hold. All that’s left is to glue it together, and allow it 5-7 days to offgas in the garage. I can add some rubber feet or some padded strips to the bottom of the legs if I do wish. Save any more scratches of our hardwood floors. Though given how badly damaged they are from the dog’s bones I don’t need to worry about it all that much.

I’ve looked at some new thickness planers and of course the best reviewed and highly rated bench top version is still going to run me $1,100.00 and change. Not to be entered into lightly me thinks. That might stay on the old wishlist for a good many months if there are no sales any time soon. I will monitor the pricing on Amazon, Canadian Tire and such over the coming months to see if the price ever drops. I doubt that it will. It’s better than the cheaper lunch box style planers, so it likely never goes on sale. I could check out Busy Bee but those 15″ wide planers are way out of my league price wise, and are too large for my available shop space. It’s gotta remain mobile and on a wheeled base.

Anyway, progress is slow by moving along so I will consider that a win for today. Nice to be home working and still be able to go out into the shop and tinker with my toys! Why have them if I’m not able to putter around doing stuff.

I started some paper mache today and… good god is that messy! Eew. I only managed to get half the head covered, and it’ll require many layers and I’ll need to be able to flip it over once dry to do the underside. Let us hope the water, flour, salt mixture adheres as well as I remember it. With any luck I can really crank some strips out tomorrow and then we can cut out the eyes and my daughter can paint it however she likes. A big wearable pumpkin head of some random character she likes. Then she can focus on the clothes she’ll need to wear with it. Fun-fun.

As far as I can tell the steps to this process go as follows: Drain the water down to below the jets & intake outlets while cleaning out any leaves and debris. Suction all of the water out of the pipes. Cap the pipes from the pool end. Add three different types of things to the water in an attempt to limit algae, metal corrosion, and one powdered oxidizer. Manoeuvre the pool cover into place and then affix it in place with a rubber weather strip gasket type thin while on your hands & knees bent over the entire time. Takes a couple of hours. Isn’t all together unpleasant but I’m glad we only do it once per year, and then in the reverse order to open it up, but that requires heating the water too so it takes an awful lot longer. Same with filling the pool water level back up, with a garden hose you’re looking at eight or more hours.

Well, it’s now Thursday before the Thanksgiving long weekend and the forecast looks to be halfway decent at least. I think I will try my hand at some joinery today to keep the furniture build progressing at an even pace. I spent a number of hours yesterday hand planing those six boards, and I’m not entirely certain that they are any better than they were to begin with. Ha! I have many hours of sanding in my future that’s for certain.

I haven’t seen enough consecutive early morning frost to venture behind the barn to the last wood pile to start up splitting again. I want to be almost certain that those ground wasps are done for the season before I set up shop anywhere within 300 m of them. All that sweating, banging & clanging with likely raise their ire, and I can do without another swarming attack this calendar year. Never again would be preferable, but I’m not that lucky. Before this I hadn’t had a swarmed attack since 2008 when I built our shed. I was pulling up old posts that were set into the ground as a make shift retaining wall and got jumped by a bunch of yellow jackets or hornets or something. It was very unpleasant. I do not recommend it.

It was unseasonably warm last night so the damn mosquitoes were out in full force too. Seems odd that they never really died down this year. They’ve been a menace since early May. Did the bird flu kill off more birds than we are aware of and that’s why the mosquito population is so high, or was it because we kept having major cloud burst rain fall that likely kept puddles full out in the trees all summer long? When we had the months long drought last summer the mosquitoes practically died off completely due to there being no moisture on the ground anywhere at all. The lake dropped 3 nearly 4 feet by October last year. It was way way up this spring though. Nearly over the shore line at the boat launch. It was crazy high just months after dropping so low some folks had to anchor their boats 50/60 feet out from shore to have water deep enough for their boats draw. Crazy times are afoot.