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What's New? OK we can't resist, just a little bit about Miss Kitty Kitty our cat. We mentioned before that she was a really good hunter and earning her keep by bringing us many presents. Nineteen mice in just five months is pretty good.
We haven't had any mouse presents for a few weeks so we are thinking that she has reduced or eliminated their population. Just the other day she brought us what looked like a baby mole. We figured that this was great news since we always are fighting the moles.Ken mentioned this so some of his coworker's and they said that what she brought us sounds more like a Shrew! Sure enough we looked it up on the Internet and it was indeed a Shrew. She has since brought us two more. While this is kind of neat we are really hoping that Shrews and Moles both have the same attraction and as the moles start to show up she'll reduce their population too. Stay tuned :-) DigiTalkHard drives have become very reliable but they are still a mechanical device and will eventually fail. There are many other threats for hard drives too. A nasty virus could wipe it clean, a house fire could melt it into a useless blob. Start protecting yourself now by backing up all your important information and pictures onto CD's or DVD's. If you don't have a CD or DVD burner then use floppies although they don't hold much data. If you have a second drive on your computer then you can use that. Make sure though that you really have a second hard drive and not just one drive that is partitioned into what looks like several drives. I stumbled onto a program a few weeks ago that seems to work pretty well for doing backups. You can schedule it automatically do backups at a set time. This helps take the hassle out of having to remember to do it. And the best news is that it's a free program. They have a version that you can purchase that has more bells and whistles but so far the free program is working good for us. Take a look at SyncBack to see if it works for you. You can find it at www.2brightsparks.com. SyncBack SE is the paid version and SyncBack is the free version. There are others out there that you can find by going to Google and looking for "backup software". We just thought we'd tell you about this program because it seems to work pretty good. SITE OF THE MONTH
Ken's brother Ron has been on a solo trip to the Death Valley area for over a month now and will be there for another month. He is doing lots of exploring for old mines, caves, petroglyph's, geoglyth's and craters. About once a week he makes it into town for groceries, water and to upload his travelogue to the Internet. He's doing this travelogue a little different with lots of great pictures and very few words.
In case you haven't heard Death Valley is having one of the prettiest springs in history with billions of flowers blooming all over the place. The seeds have been dormant for years and all the rain they had this winter made them come to life and it's really quite spectacular.
If you've ever thought about visiting Death Valley or wanted a first hand account of what it's like go to www.blabberon.com/solo_trip_2005.html and check it out. There are soon to be five chapters to this travelogue with more to come.
MARILYN'S CORNEREnvelope Organizer Book
Here's a fun project to help you get organized. You can use this organizer to store seeds, sort coupons, keep track of upcoming bills or just about anything else you can think of.
Here's what you'll need:
To make the spine of the book measure the width of your envelope and add 1/4" on both sides. For the length multiply 1" times the number of envelopes plus 2". On your card stock measure in 1" and fold. Now accordion fold every 1/2" and leave 1" unfolded on the other end. The envelopes will be glued in the "valleys" of the folds. The 1" ends will be glued to the covers. Take your time and be very exact in your folding.
 Decorate the envelopes using stamps or what ever you like. Double back tape the envelopes into the spine folds. Make sure that the envelopes are all facing the same way and are seated in the bottom of each "valley". For the book covers use two pieces of matte board cut 1/4" larger all the way around than your envelopes. You can cover the front and back covers using fabric, wrapping paper, card stock or construction paper. Cut the material 1" larger all the way around than your matte board. I decorated the construction paper I used before gluing it onto the matte board just in case I mess it up. Miter the corners so they wrap smoothly over the matte board. Wrap and glue the material onto the matte board using spray adhesive. Cut two equal lengths of ribbon to wrap and tie the book closed. I used two pieces 1" wide and 10" long. Glue about 3" of the ribbon centered to the inside top of the front and back. Double back tape the front and back covers to the 1" edge of the spine along the inside back edges. Make sure the fronts of the envelopes face forward. Cut two pieces of card stock to fit 1/8" to 1/4" inside the edges of the cover. Using spray adhesive glue the card stock to the inside of the front and back covers.
 Now you're ready to put your items into the envelopes and tie it up. We made our Envelope Organizer Book for the garden using a garden theme. These are great for organizing wedding and showers, travel, shopping coupons or anything you can think of. They can also be used to organize those old photo negatives you have laying around. Glue a photo or write information on the outside of the envelope and put your journaling and negatives inside. We hope you enjoy Marilyn's Corner and look forward to all the fun things she brings you each week. If you have a fun project that would be suitable for our newsletter we'd love to share it with our readers. Just contact marilyn@runnerduck.com and we'll do the rest. Remember we have all of our past projects archived on our web site at www.runnerduck.com. Just click on the Projects or Kids Only Eggs.
Kids Stuff
Start shopping now for huge discounts on action figures, dolls, games, stuffed animals, video games, and tons of other recently marked down toys that we've just added to our Toys Outlet! The Tempos
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THIS WEEK'S FREE RECIPE
Ingredients:
Make 1" balls and place on wax paper. Melt The Chocolate Chips and dip the cookies. Drizzle melted White Chocolate Chips over the top. Refrigerate 20 minutes. Makes 30 large cookies. Remember, if you have a recipe you'd like to share please send it to marilyn at runnerduck.com. We'd be happy to post your favorite recipe on our Kitchen site or in our newsletter and give you credit.
Every month we post a new recipe on our web page. Be sure and check out the New recipe at the RunnerDuck Kitchen Store.
COOKBOOK
"Recipe Hall of Fame Dessert Cookbook" |
| 1" X 12" X 36" | |
| Name | Dimension |
| (3) Shelves | 10 1/2" X 10 1/2" |
| 1" X 4" X 48" | |
| Name | Dimension |
| (3) Vertical | 1 3/4" X 38" |
| (1) Vertical | 3" X 38" |
| (8) Cross Members | 1 3/4" X 8 3/4" |
| (1) Hinge Support | 3/4" X 38" |
| 3/8" Dowel | |
| Name | Dimension |
| (4) Lower Dowels | 11 1/2" |
| (4) Middle Dowels | 11 3/4" |
| (4) Top Dowels | 8" |
The cross members are attached to the vertical supports using mortise and tenon joinery. I got a new tenoning jig for Christmas and this will give me a chance to use it.
I got mine at Woodworkers Supply but other stores have them too.
For the complete instructions on this project go to www.runnerduck.com/fs.htm. We have everything you need there to build this nifty shelf. Thanks again to Joe for the project idea and pictures.
We hope you liked this project. If you build it and your friends ask where you got such a clever idea, please tell them that you got it at RunnerDuck.com.
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If you have a project that you would like to share please send us an email and we'll help get it published in the RunnerDuck review. We are looking for woodworking, gardening, crafts and kids projects so send us your thoughts at projects@runnerduck.com.
Even though we are getting some rain it's going to be too late to make a big dent in the water shortage we are having. In hopes of keeping our plants alive this summer we are storing water in our 55 gallon drum. It's a plastic drum with a screened over fill hole on top and a water valve at the bottom. The screen keeps misquotes out and the water valve allows us to connect a hose for watering.
It's nice to have a rain barrel but what good does it do if you don't get any rain? Well we fill ours up with all the water that we would normally dump down the drain in the house. We keep a bucket near the kitchen sink and we put unused water in there and then pour it into the rain barrel.
If we want to have hot water at the sink we put the bucket under the faucet until the water warms up. We like to put hot water into our thermos to heat it up before we put coffee into it. We pour that water into the bucket. It's amazing how fast you can save water with just a little effort.
Oh yeah, just in case you thought it took a lot of rain to fill a 55 gallon barrel it doesn't. If you captured the run off from the roof of a 1,200 square foot house you'd fill the drum with just .3 inches of rain. Now do your part and get to saving!
If you have a conservation tip please send it to conservation@runnerduck.com and we'll post it in our newsletter.
duckmaster@runnerduck.com
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