Spring 2013 has finally sprung here in Alabama and we have been hard at work building out our planting spaces in the yard and putting in the spring crops. Our little ‘Suburban Farm’ is growing in every sense of the word. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave’s attic playroom project is coming along well. We’ve recorded a video update of the progress so far.

New work shown in this update includes chimney brick repair, the ladder for the secret entrance, radiant barriers, new electrical wiring, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Dave is awesome. He and his wife decided to build a secret playroom for their girls in the attic of their house…

…I had to get in on this project, of course!

Here is a quick work-in-progress video Dave and I made last week: Read the rest of this entry »

I once had a video production project that featured the work of Bible translators coming together for a conference. It was anticipated that there would be future productions on the same subject and a sense of branding to tie them all together would be useful. To accomplish this, I decided to create a show opener animation and a package of lower 3rds and backgrounds that could be reused in future videos. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been wanting to get a wooden playset for the girls to put in the back yard. But, if you’ve spent any time pricing new playsets, you’ve probably experienced some of the sticker shock I got. The cheap ones I saw at Walmart (that resembled what I had in mind) go for $900. A quick look online at Amazon shows that most of the complete sets there go for $1200 and more. I don’t want a flimsy cheap playset, but $1200 for a backyard playset is not in the budget. This sounds like a job for DIY Dad! Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the nice folks over at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, we now have our first 2 rain water barrels (55 gallon barrels that transported olives in a previous life.) They run a seminar on rain water harvesting and offer excellent prices on the barrels as well. We purchased one DIY barrel (they will prep the barrels with spigots and screens – but where is the fun in that?) and won the second one as a door prize at the end of the class.

Birmingham Botanical Gardens is an amazing resource center. The gardens are beautiful, the staff conducts all kinds of educational classes, there is an onsite library, and they have some very knowledgeable staff to help with questions about local plants, soil quality issues, and a host of other related topics for people trying to grow stuff in Alabama.

Over the next couple days I will be prepping our barrels for service (adding spigots, screens, and overflow drains) , building platforms to stand them on (when full, these barrels will weigh over 450 pounds), and adding the diversion plumbing to the gutter downspouts. The upcoming week is forecast to be very hot and dry, but the following week is showing lots of rain. So, I want to get the barrels in place before the water arrives.

Our goal is to ultimately have 6 storage barrels capturing water from the house. This would hold about 330 gallons of water for the garden – some of which will be tied to a drip irrigation watering system. For now, we have 110 gallons of storage which should help reduce some of our use of city water for plants.

As the project progresses, I’ll make updates with more details about installing and using the rain barrels. Leave a comment below if you have any questions you would like me to cover. I’ll try to include all relevant info in the upcoming posts as I show how I prep and install them.

Customers love audio products. Whether they are recordings of seminars and teleconferences, one-on-one interviews, or audio versions of print materials, a well produced audio product is a high value item. For you as a product creator, this is great news.

However, recorded audio products do come with a downside. Read the rest of this entry »

Farmer Andy reporting in with news of our gardening results so far in 2012.

The raised-bed garden seems to be off to a good start this year. Read the rest of this entry »

We grow food in our back yard garden. Part of the reason for this is to limit our exposure to pesticides and chemical fertilizers used to grow commercial produce. Ellen and I use organic gardening principles and are always looking for new options. Last week we learned about using white vinegar to control weeds instead of RoundUp. Read the rest of this entry »

Farmer Andy has been busy again building trellises for the Seltz Raised-Bed Garden 2.0.

The Raised bed boxes on the north and east sides of the garden are designated for vine plants that will be trained up a trellis during the growing season. Our pea vines are already growing, so getting the trellises built was a high-priority project. Read the rest of this entry »