Jun 28, 2012 | Uncategorized
Summertime…
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| Yes, It’s HOT in Arkansas! |
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| Watermelon! (My grandpa on Father’s day) |
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| Emily- not sharing |
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| Ready for the Hunger Games? |
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| Tap Camp (My dancing queen on left) |
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| Cute (Uninvited) Dinner Guest on our Date Night– and yes, he did jump in my lap |
Jun 10, 2012 | Arkansas, Travel, United States
We went to the Crater of Diamond State Park with our Cub Scouts this weekend to camp and try our luck at mining diamonds. It’s a two hour drive there from Little Rock, and a beautiful drive. We ended up with just three families camping on Friday, but had four more join us to dig on Saturday. For those of you who don’t know, the park is the only place IN THE WORLD where diamond digging is open the the general public.
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| Searching for Diamonds |
Digging is much harder than you’d think. There is a lot of mica,
quartz, jasper, and calcite that confuses you and makes you think you’ve
struck it rich. I found some pretty green rocks I thought might be
jade, but were volcanic ash! It makes for great geology lessons and Cub
Scouts
can earn lots of goodies like: Geology beltloop and pin,
family travel requirements, Webelos Geology pin requirements, and lots
more.
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| Sifting and Washing |
The boys loved getting dirty (but not so much getting hot) so we treated them with a trip to the little water park right outside the digging field. I think that was the highlight for them!
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| Cooling Off in the Waterpark |
Some hints: If you go with a large group they give great rates. We only paid $1.81 for the kids and $3 for adults to dig. You can take wagons, tools, screens, coolers, from home. If you don’t want to cart all that they also rent everything you can hope for there and have a restaurant where you can rest. Take swimsuits if you want to get the kids clean before going home!
Jun 4, 2012 | Uncategorized
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| 1930’s Linoleum (2 layers down)– so cool! |
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| Oak Floors under old linoleum!! |
I’ve been trying to find a natural product for refinishing the wood floors in the new house.
Problems:
- Polyurethane is nasty (chemical-wise has lots of lovely VOC’s) and scratches so badly. We had the floors in our house now redone ten years ago and they have scratches from roller skates, toy cars, dog claws…
- The floors under the kitchen floor we tore out are original but worn to a different color/sheen because they weren’t waxed as regularly. Plus they still have the backing from the 1930’s linoleum on top which needs to be sanded off.
- Wax products you can buy have yummy stuff like xylene and cresol unless you can just use beeswax or another European wax (but they are expensive and not as durable as I’d like)
I just found a product called Rubio Monocoat and think it might be the answer I’ve been looking for! It’s made from flax, and has zero VOC’s. Very safe and is LEED certified.
We’ll have to sand the floors, (but really need to anyway considering the kitchen and patches from floor furnaces and electrical work,) then just paint this oil on and wipe off excess. If we use the fast drying one it’s done in a day! They have lots of colors to choose from but think we will just go with the natural color of the wood.
In the playroom we still have to lay floors (and subfloors.) Since it’s upstairs we want something that absorbs sounds, and still not certain what we’re going to put there. I’m leaning towards wood with an underlayment of soundproof material, or cork (also with an underlayment.) The kids want carpet, but I’m not a fan of the chemicals in carpet or the dust that it collects. Anyone have ideas?
