The doll bed moves in!

There's nothing quite like Christmas morning with children. Especially GRANDchildren. Emily and Jack were delighted with what Santa brought them--a Calico Critter dollhouse and a John Deere outdoor riding tractor. They waited very patiently for the rest of the family to arrive before opening their gifts.

The last item opened was the doll bed. I'd wrapped it without a name and Emily had shown great curiosity about it when it first arrived on Christmas Eve. It had, however, been shoved to the back of her mind with the advent of all the other goodies.

She was quite pleased with it but didn't "move in" until later in the day. After we went home, her parents moved it up to her room and her dolls moved in. Her mother reports that after lights out, Emily and Jack were up playing with it!

Yeah!

The doll bed is finished!

Complete with mattress pad, sheet set, three pillows and reversible comforter. All times two.

Whew!

Now... how am I going to wrap it?

Seeing what I'm missing with my new toy

Just to get you up-to-date on the doll bed before I start the fun with my latest gadget, days 3 and 4 have had to do with hand sanding. I'm using aluminum oxide paper which is like sanding with not-so-finely ground black pepper, and I've taken the ridges off at least two of my fingers. I'll go over the bed with some finer paper and steel wool and then that baby is getting painted!

But back to my new toy: a Bushnell trophy camera! Tired of knowing the wildlife was about, but not being able to readily trap it (although I do have a fairly good track (trap?) record), I thought this would make a good addition to my arsenal. So to speak.

I didn't buy a very expensive one, I'm not hunting deer for the meat locker after all, but it does do amazing things: takes video or still, color photos with enough light, it's infra-red and motion detecting. With the current SD card and resolution, it'll take over 4000 shots! What fun would that be? I look at it every morning.

First of all, I set it up in the small house we use for storage. I know there is a cat who lodges there and enters through displaced floor boards. Come to find out, she has lots of company during the evening hours: over a three night period, there were two other cats--one of which is my neighbor's--one or two raccoons and a possum! A possum! Haven't seen one in ages and there it is, rooting around the floor boards.

That fun being over, I set it up outside the patio where I know raccoons have trod, especially since I came nose to nose with one last week when I opened the back door to feed the outside cats. Rocky Raccoon was either going up or down the pillar, but went up with the advent of me. Eventually I caught him eating the cats' breakfast and I chased him from the yard.

But I knew he'd been back (dirty water is a giveaway) and so I set the trap and the camera.

Night one, he sniffed around it. Night two, I mis-set it and he wandered in and ate the grapes. It's all on digital film, but tonight is night three and I've done a much better job of setting the trap.

I hope tomorrow morning to see Rocky R in person behind bars and then be able to view him later!

The doll bed, Day 2

Alas, not any better than day 1.

The weather was turning cool, uh, cold and the northern sky was dark blue, ie, a Texas blue norther, except it didn't get that cold. At least not until tonight when they're seriously talking frost.

Therefore, I thought I'd best take advantage of the last warmish temps to complete the stripping of the doll bed.

So naive.

I'm now on my third can of stripper. And my last I might add. I got so disgusted--and "burned" off the left thumb of my neoprene gloves--that after I gritted my teeth and thoroughly washed my red/raw hands in soap and water (who says Lamaze training doesn't last a lifetime?), I turned the power hose on the doll bed. Some paint actually came off.

Now I'm going to sand. And sand. And if that doesn't work to my satisfaction, I'll completely give up on the idea of staining it and go back to painting.

So I take (almost) all the old paint off only to repaint? Looks like it.