A Blog Award

Jill, at Blessings of a Stay at Home Mom, has bestowed upon me the Versatile Blogger Award.  Thank you so much, Jill!

Normally, I have an aversion to blog awards, because 1) I never know who to pass them on to without slighting anyone else, and 2) my circle of blog friends is small, so by the time I get an award, most of my blogging buddies have already received it.  Makes it kind of difficult.  But since this is the first award I've received for this blog, I'll give it a try. 

I think 15 is an awful lot of people to tag, but I did manage to come up with 12.  If I tag you, and you've already received this one, or just don't feel like participating, I understand completely.  On the other hand, if I didn't tag you, but you'd like to play along, feel free to tag yourself!

Here are the rules for accepting the award:

1) Thank the person and link to their page

2) Select 15 bloggers who you follow regularly or have recently discovered & share the award

3) Share 7 things about yourself

4) In their posts of acceptance have them include this set of rules

5) Let each blogger know they have been nominated by leaving a comment on their blogs.

First, the tags:
The Cookbook Junkie
Don't Read This; It's Boring!
A Mom, Money and More
Better Me, Better World
Premeditated Leftovers
See The Woods and The Trees
Quiltgranny's Shoe
Osage Bluff Quilter
Life On Hackberry Road
Mom's Sunday Cafe
Sew Not My Day!
Easy Frugal Living


Ok, now the 7 things about me that you may not already know....

1) I was a math geek in high school and I probably still have the medals to prove it.

2) I will NOT...ever...under any circumstances...sing karaoke, but I will be the first to make a fool of myself on the dance floor.

3) My eldest sister named me.  (Not Annie, but my real-life name).  She found the name, suggested it to my parents, and they went for it.  BTW, I do not know even one other person who shares my real first name, although there seem to be a lot of women who do when I search it on FB.

4) In keeping with the name theme, my blog name Annie comes from my middle name Ann, which was also the middle name of both of my grandmas. Annie is the name I used to give to guys in the bar when I didn't want them to know my real name, and it's still the name I give when I order coffee at Starbuck's because it's so much easier than using my real name.

5) Although I don't/won't get into politics on my blog, I step down firmly on the liberal side of the fence.

6) I think I learned to cook via osmosis.  My mom never required me to help in the kitchen, yet when I set up my first household when I was 20, I knew how to cook almost everything she did.

7) I am not a strong swimmer by any means, but of my parents' six children, I'm the only one who learned to swim at all.

So there you have it.  I'm a geeky, liberal, cooking, swimming, dancing fool who lies about my name.  Yet a few of you still agree to be seen with me in public.  Imagine that...

Making Music

While Shane was working out of town for so many months last year, he decided to take up the guitar to combat the boredom of sitting in the motel room in evenings. 

We had picked up a cheap youth guitar at a garage sale last spring when Kat said she might want to learn.  She quickly found that the fantasy was better than reality, so Shane started out by taking that youth guitar with him.  Soon, though, he wanted one more his size, so he bought a good used one Eleca from a pawn shop in the town where he was working.  It's not a big name brand, but it sounds and looks nice.

6-string Eleca on the left.

While scouting for online lessons, some of which are on YouTube videos, he ran across something called a Diddley Bow (aka, primal slide guitar).  Of course, he had to make one, just to see if he could. He messed around with that for a little while, but was soon back at the "real" guitar.

That's when he found his nice little Martin Backpacker guitar at a really good price on craigslist.  Isn't it cute?  We actually have it hanging on the wall in our bedroom and it looks surprisingly attractive there.

Martin Backpacker.

 More recently, Shane and I both read the book Made By Hand: My Adventures in the World of Do-It-Yourself by Mark Frauenfelder.  One of the things he mentioned among his attempts to garden, keep chickens and bees, and supercharge his espresso maker was that he made a banjo from a piece of wood, some guitar strings and a tin can.  Of course, Shane had to try it, and actually ended up making two.  (By the way, we both recommend this book.)

That was Saturday, and on Sunday we visited my dad, who is a junker/reseller of the highest order.  He picked up this 1970s Ensenada 12-string guitar, sans the strings, for $3 at a garage sale.  It was priced at $5, but of course, he had to bargain a little for a better price.  My dad spent another $25 getting it strung and tuned at a music shop and had plans to sell it when he realized it has a physical flaw that could keep him from getting very much for it.  But it's still playable and sounds good, so he is letting Shane borrow it for as long as he wants it.

Old Ensenada 12-string.

Thus the story of Shane's instrument collection.  And now the good (or bad) news, depending on how you look at it.  I thought our camera only recorded video, but I learned it records audio, too.  It just doesn't have audio playback capability; I have to play the videos on the computer to hear them.  Why would I consider that bad news?  Because I usually can't be bothered to watch embedded videos and maybe you can't, either. 

If you do (want to be bothered, that is), just watch these.

Happy and New

Welcome to the New Year and welcome to the new blog.  I'm Annie.  Some of you already know me from my old blog (you might find some useful stuff still sitting over there, but in the interest of fresh starts, I'll not link this blog from that end.)

The new blog will be a lot like the old one, but I hope you'll notice some differences.  I'm aiming for a more casual feel here, with less concern over ending a sentence with a preposition and less worry over whether I'll offend someone by being too this or not enough that.  I figure you're all able to decide whether or not you like it here and smart enough to move on if you don't.

Just like before, I'll be posting recipes and food ideas, ways to save money, gardening, tips for reusing and recycling, do-it-yourself projects, and other odds and ends.  As a family, we aren't focusing as much on bottom-line frugality as we used to.  Shane and I are both frugal and I can't imagine us being any other way, but having reached some of our financial goals, we're loosening up a bit.  Instead of just buying the cheapest, we're now making some of our spending decisions based on qualities such as packaging, area of origin, nutritional value, and expected durability.  Expect to see some of our new priorities reflected in the posts here. 

One last thing:  We know not what we do.  Thus the title of the blog.  Some people have told us we're impulsive; we think we're just quick to do some basic research and make our decision.  More than that, we're unafraid to act once we've decided on something.  We succeed or we fail, but either way we learn something.  We think learning this way beats reading a manual any day.