Flintstones, Physics, and Other Projects

The weather has cooled off as of late which I feel gives the general population that extra "oomph" to get through their day and not only survive, but thrive and enjoy life again.  It has inspired me to open all of our doors and windows and do crafty things.  (No, I don't see the correlation between the two either, but go with me on this.) 

In our home, "Honey-do jobs" are "Honey I'll do it myself" jobs.  (Its just easier, trust me.)  Some of the little projects I've taken on as of late include: staining the builder-grade doors in our house with leftover stain from our porch, covering a 80's gold Chinese-looking lamp with spray paint and rope, building a cover for our ugly meter box on the porch and cleaning out our feedlots. 

Wait, what?  How does cleaning out our feedlots fit in to crafty projects?  I've been taking the 100's of loads of crap, literally, and dumping them in our front yard for fill dirt.  After contouring the yard to my discerning landscaping eye, I've been hauling rocks into our yard as a boundary between the porch and future yard.  Thus, the Flintstone feeling.  Didn't Fred Flintstone haul around rocks?  I'm sorry, its been a year or two since I watched the show.  I was really wanting some large rocks - REALLY large rocks, so I got the biggest tractor we have and started to carve them out of the hill across from our house.  I almost bit off more than I could chew once, but then my physics class from high school came to mind.  (Bless you, Mr. Burkes.)  I could almost here his voice as I stared at the nearly impossible situation I had in moving a large stone before me. 

"Dammit, Poovey, think about it.  If you want to pick up the big rock, you need to balance it out using some smaller rocks for counterweight.  I swear, I should hold the power for mandatory sterilization in this sophomore class.  Why are you looking at me like I'm speaking Swahili?" 

As you can tell, he was a caring, kind man.  I jest.  He really did talk in a condescending manner like that all the time, but he was one of my favorite teachers.  And he got me out of quite a pickle yesterday.

My meter box cover.  I hope the meter man isn't too mad when he discovers it. 

Before: Standard, builder grade door - pale and ugly.

After: Gorgeous and full of character. 

My transformed, tacky gold lamp.  It was spray painted and then wrapped in "jute."  The snooty ladies at Hobby Lobby always take such delight in correcting me when I say "rope." 

The beginnings of my rock sidewalk.  The upper right-corner is filled in with pea gravel that I had lying around. 

Rock sidewalk will someday tie in with this rock border between the concrete porch and grass yard.  Grass will come someday, I promise.  Baby steps...

My physics in action.  The rock was as wide and as long as the scoop on the skid-steer.  Don't tell Wes, but it was so heavy that it even tipped us forward once when I lifted it too high.  Whoopsidaisies.