DIY Home Spring Maintenance Tips

Home Maintenance Tips for Spring

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Gnome Gnews – Spring Cleaning Edition

5 Spring Maintenance Tips that are Charmingly Easy

 

Life is beautiful when it’s well maintained.
Practical Home and Garden Maintenance Tips from the Idyllic Gnome Glades.

 

Spring Maintenance Tips for the Home

 

Clean Vegetation Around Your Air Conditioner(AC) Condenser.

Problem: Do you live outside the perfect Gnome Glades where temperatures rise above the comfortable? Oh dear, we’re sorry to hear that, but taking proper care of your air-cooling machine can be a snap! You only need to clear away the vegetation that has grown up around your air conditioner condenser.
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Detective Serial featuring Archibald the Penguin by Don Clark

Archibald Penguin No. 1

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Introducing Our New Serial!

Who Ate All the Fish?

featuring

Archibald Penguin, Our Bird,
The Famed Detective.
The Cheeky Penguin who
Loves Fish as Almost as Much as
He Loves Fighting Crime!

Detective Serial featuring Archibald the Penguin by Don Clark

The Players:

Polar Bear —  A Hungry Animal
The Walrus —  A Certain Tusked Mammal
Seal —  A Happy Fellow
Pelican —  A Creature with a Large Mouth
Archibald Penguin —  Our Bird
Henrietta Puffin —  Penguin’s Ever-Present Companion
Shark —  A Miracle of Evolution
Killer Whale —  Poster-Fish for the Misunderstood

Chapter 1

We find Archibald Penguin, Our Bird, on the ice and snow-covered shores of the Southern-Most Continent. He stands near the edge of the water, the cold gray sea continually washing against the frozen ground. His ever-present companion, Henrietta Puffin, is with him. Together they look out towards the sea where there is water in great abundance.

“But there is one thing missing Ms. Puffin.”

“Indeed Penguin. Indeed. What do you suppose is the cause of this?”

“What my dear Puffin?” Our bird spun on his webbed feet to look inland. “Or more precisely who?” The pair looked down at four sets of footprints leading inland. “This cove is normally teeming with fish, but there are none to be seen. What is to be seen, however, are three sets of footprints.”

“Yes,” Ms. Puffin added, “If I’m correct, the tracks of the Walrus, Seal, and Polar Bear.”

“ I concur. I purpose we follow the trail of the Walrus. The trail looks particularly heavy.”

“Laden with a multitude of fish?”

“Perhaps that is so. Let us go and find out Ms. Puffin.”
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Inside the Small Maker DIY Mom and Pop Struggling Business by Happy Bungalow

I’m a Work at Home Dad

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I’m a Work at Home Dad

No, I Don’t Wear Pajamas All Day!

I Work at Home!!

I Don’t Stay at Home!!!

!!&$@+!@=!#!

 

In 2016, once a month, Happy Bungalow will be pulling back the curtain on the wood shop to show what life is really like owning a small / family / crafty / handmade / diy / maker / struggling / mom&pop business (further referred to as SFCHDMSMP business).

 

Inside the Small Maker DIY Mom and Pop Struggling Business by Happy Bungalow

 

Hi, I’m Don; I’m a father and I have job. Conveniently my job is based in my home. I’m a Work at Home Dad. And while I stay at home to work, I’m not a stay at home dad.

Confused? You’re not alone.

Most people who know me personally – I believe – don’t believe I have a real job. It’s possible some, perhaps most, believe I don’t even work. Let me explain, I believe this because –
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The Buffalo and the American Reaper Company-Happy Bungalow

The Bison: Nomadic Wanderer

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The Bison.  Noble Ungulate wanderer traveling across continents.

Originally from Europe, the Old Country, the bison arrived in the New Country millennia before it was known as America (1). In the great open land where, one day, meritocracy would throw off the shackles of European aristocracy. For in this new land it did not matter what station in life you were born to, it only mattered what station in life you desired to achieve.

 

The Buffalo and the American Reaper Company-Happy Bungalow

 

Here there was a new continent with fields aplenty. Vast tracts of untrodden lands to be tamed – a continent to be cultivated and prepared for a great outpouring of human ingenuity that would change the world.

Here in the new world, so much was new that, many immigrants changed their names (2). Some dropped a syllable, other re-arranged some letters. A few changed their names entirely. The Stag became the Buck. The Elk became the Moose. The Bison became the Buffalo.

THE BUFFALO

The Old World, small ancient land that it is, had been tamed and tidied ages ago. Compact little towns hugged cozy farm lands. Tidy rivers ran along beautiful, but small, open spaces. Every inch of earth was ordered and claimed; there was no room for expansion.

This was not so in the New World.

The Buffalo arrived with a strong back prepared to clear the vast tracts of the American West. But there would be no need for the agrarian scythe – not with the Buffalo!
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Committee of Camels designs the perfect ostrich logo

Where Do People Come From?

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Where do people come from?

Our children are always interested in where they come from. We do our best to explain. We show them baby pictures and old scrapbooks. This leads to more questions. So we speak of parents, then of parent’s parents, and so on. Eventually our children ask the question that we’ve all asked. The question that, aware of it or not, always lingers in our mind. It is perhaps the first question ever asked.

Committee of Camels designs the perfect ostrich logo

Where Do People Come From?

We have an answer, my wife and I. It’s not universally accepted, and try as we might, we have located no “hard” evidence of its truth or exact origin. But we believe in this answer. For the answer is a story that speaks in the quiet of the still darkness that is the Truth.
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Wooden Safari Toy Camel handmade from Sassafras by Happy Bungalow

The Camel, Nomadic Dessert Wonderer

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The Camel, Nomadic Dessert Wonderer

I’ve always been a bit unclear on those words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and have different meanings.  Are they homonyms?  Something like that, I forget.  But what I’m 100% certain about is the camel.  You know, the dessert wonderer.

The animal who dreams of sweet deliciousness.  Cake, pie, cookies, and perhaps even pudding.  We’re guessing camels are wondering about desserts while wandering across the desert.  It’s so dry and endless – I’d think about cookies too.
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Inside the Small Maker DIY Mom and Pop Struggling Business by Happy Bungalow

Inside the Small Crafty Maker Business aka Inside the SFCHDMSMP Business

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Inside the Small / Family / Crafty / Handmade / Diy / Maker / Struggling / Mom&Pop Business.

Inside the Small Maker DIY Mom and Pop Struggling Business by Happy Bungalow

It’s a new year! Hoorah!

We resolution that running your own business is downright hard and it’s time we talk about it.

In 2016, once a month, Happy Bungalow will be pulling back the curtain on the wood shop to show what life is really like owning a small business. Well, that’s not totally accurate. Small business doesn’t quite describe us.

How about instead we call it a small / family / crafty / handmade / diy / maker / struggling / mom&pop business (further referred to as SFCHDMSMP business). We plan on showing everyone our accomplishments, just as we’ve always done, but we want to give some consideration to the struggles, disappointments, and hard work that is required to be successful (whatever that means).
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The T-Rex and The Chicken relationship explained

The T-Rex and the Chicken

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A Tale of Distant Relations

-and-

A Consideration of Abbreviations

 

The T-Rex and The Chicken relationship explained

 

Once there lived the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex. King of all the dinosaurs. The beast who made up for the smallness of his arms with the doubled ferocity of his ripping bite.

Or so we assume. Scientists are hard at work figuring out all the details; there’s a lot still to learn.

A century ago when there was even more to learn? That’s when the Tyrannosaurus Rex was named by those with a flair for the dramatic, the Tyrant Lizard.  His cohorts? The triceratops, stegosaurus, brontosaurus, and all the other sauruses? They were called the Thunder Lizards.
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Dinosaurs and Chickens, Long Lost Cousins

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Dinosaurs, meet the chicken.

wood toy dinosaurs, t-rex, brontosaurus, stegosaurus, and triceratops

Chicken, meet your cousins, you’ve never met them before, the dinosaurs.

wood chicken farm animal toy

Hello World

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Hello World!

Hi world, I’m Don. Nice of you to stop by.

We’re introducing ourselves (myself really) as though this is our first blog post, but

This is not our first blog post. We’ve been at it for four plus years now, with varying regularity. But we’ve never had a real solid plan for what we’re doing with the blog. Nor has there been contingency for how to regularly publish when we’re super busy in the shop. In the shop making toys, miniature furniture, and yeah, the best card holders east of the Ozarks.

However!  All of this lost-in-the-blogging-woods ends in 2016.

We have a publishing schedule, and more importantly a writing schedule. As this is written in December 2015, we have half of next year’s posts penciled in and outlined. We also have all of January [nearly]ready to publish.

This is a bit of those public-deceleration, crowd-accountability deals, but also a big of a warning . . .

A bit of a warning to those living in the future who are reading backwards through our blog looking for more articles like you see in 2016 and beyond. Those articles do exist on this site before 2016, but we were still finding our blogging way, so every post isn’t a gem of internet goodness.

Boy, who’s that for a sales pitch?!

Pre-2016, most articles were written on the fly. Typically they started with the idea of selling a toy and wherever the post or story went, it went. Now though, ideas are roughed out, stories outlined, drafts revised, etc. etc. We’ll have more on this in a future blog post specifically about the business.

Here’s some of our favorite pre-2016 posts though:

Circus Dinosaurs and the Thunder Lizard that Never Was

This post was the inspiration to create a series of upcoming stories

The Daring Adventures of Riley Justice episode 1

This was the story that inspired us to write a series of serials.

 

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