Wood-Carved Hands! or Bit of Joy! or Ghost Rockets!

FYI: I wrote this earlier and scheduled it to post at 7:00 tonight.

This morning has been great. I had a good night's sleep. I feel rested and after two cups of Donut Shop Coffee—I've cleaned The Cabin. Not a bad way to start out my day.

It is only 11:05 and I have just finished taking care of my daily rescue ranch business and I am fixin' to go over to our new place to do some painting for our new, upcoming kitchen sink counter top. 

Weeks ago, I found this beautiful picture of a rustic kitchen island and I fell totally in love with it, because I've always wanted our kitchen to be an open area. And I want our kitchen counter tops to look like this with no cabinet doors—just wooden shelving for pots & pans, etc.

Anyway last week, because I wasn't blogging, Tony and I went over to our new place and we spent several hours staining some lumber, to build our kitchen counters. And we wore these, tight-fitting, green, ugly, throw-away gloves to apply the stain, but our hands and fingernails still got stained. And no matter how much we've been scrubbing our hands they still look like we have wood-carved hands. 

Side note: Several years ago, we went to one of Ron & Nita's Ponderosa Ranch parties, in Dripping Springs. After we had eaten a delicious BBQ dinner—we got out our instruments and started jamming. There was Jerry on fiddle, his sweet wife Kathy on guitar, Ray on dulcimer and Joe, Ronnie, Willis and me on guitars. It was a full house and was so much fun.

Anyway, Ronnie started singing the song "If I Were A Carpenter" that Bobby Darin made famous and we were really sounding great playing together. Well, when Ronnie sang the lyrics "If I were a carpenter and you were a lady. Would you marry me anyway. Would you have ..."

Before he could finish singing the line, I interrupted him and blurted out, "My wooden baby?"And to say the least everyone burst out laughing. And because Ronnie was laughing so hard I felt for sure that my big brother was going to throw his back out and blame me. Anyway, that thought just jumped into my head when I wrote "wood-carved hands."

Now where was I? Okay, I remember now. We cannot afford granite counter tops or wanna-be granite counter tops which is totally fine with me which is also great for our belt-tightening remodeling budget. And on top of that, literally speaking, about two weeks ago I found this cool picture of a painted, distressed bench, on Pintrest and I instantly knew that's exactly what I wanted to make for our rustic kitchen counter tops.

So I spent over an hour watching YouTube tutorials, instead of blogging, on how to distress furniture which was time well spent, because today I am going to start working on distressing our kitchen counter top boards. So please wish me luck with this project.

To finish my post on a good note I want to share this great, short, YouTube video that my dear friend Mari sent to me this morning and I am still laughing about it. So if you want to laugh please read this and then watch this great feel-good video.

"When you think of riding the subway, laughter and joy aren’t the first words that spring to mind.  It’s a cramped place full of grumpy people either coming home from a bad day at work or are just generally upset. Yet if you’re lucky enough, sometimes you can find happiness in a subway train.

One such magical moment was captured when a Belgian advertising agency working for Coca-Cola hired an actor to randomly start laughing on the train.

With the tag line, “Happiness starts with a smile.”  Their new ad aims to bring a bit of joy to everyone’s day.  Just watch and we dare you not to let out a small giggle, too!"

Y'all have a great day and keep on laughing!

5:15 Update: My friend Cathie, North Texas, sent me this photo titled: Ghost Rockets with the caption below it. She told me that she watched a show on UFO's last night and these Ghost Rockets were one of the UFO subjects.

"Also known as the Scandinavian Ghost Rockets, the Ghost Rockets were UFOs sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden. About 2,000 sightings were reported between May and December 1946, peaking around August. Over 200 sightings were verified and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to the ghost rockets…"

So now I consider this picture and caption as proof positive that "thing" in my photo, behind the giant locust or Leprechaun, was actually a Ghost Rocket! This is so exciting! In fact, I am so thrilled I am going to go back over to the property to tell Tony!