The Easiest DIY In The History Of Ever

As I detailed in this post,

I have a stack of recipes from Pinterest, magazines, etc.

But when using them?

My counter space can be problematic.

But last week, I totally Lady MacGyver-ed the easiest recipe holder EVER.

BEHOLD!

Yep, a paperclip and a rubber band.

And as a special bonus image,

evidence of my housewife trashiness:

I wanted the cabinet door to be semi-clean,

but I didn't even bother to clean anything that wouldn't be pictured.

Because that's how I roll.

Oh, Yeah!

I've done it.

The Holy Grail of tomato growing.

I give you...

The Rainbow Tomato Salad!

I've got Green Zebra, Tangerine, Abe Lincoln, and Super Bush in there,

topped off with some of my own purple basil.

I can't wait to try it!

Sprinkler Two Boogaloo

So after my sprinkler travails, I was ready to plant, right?

WRONG!

The dang things were all wonky and sputtering and not all of them would turn on.

Sigh...

I blamed the controls, which the previous crack-heads house-flippers

had buried in a hole at the bottom of my hilly yard.

To replace the controls, I spent an afternoon crouched over a small, muddy hole

earning myself a tramp-stamp sunburn...

as I clawed at the dirt like Andy Dufresne and his five hundred yards of poo, until...

SUCCESS!

I finally got the thing uncovered!

NOW I was ready to replace the controls and get started planting, right?

NOPE.

Because the next day, after I turned off the water and cut out the old controls...

the water kept trickling out of the open pipes.

Augh!

I couldn't glue the new controls in,

AND I couldn't turn the water back on for the house until I could get the water stopped!

After unsuccessfully trying something out from the internets,

I plodded across the street to ask my neighbor his advice.

(I have found with projects like this that dudes over sixty are an invaluable resource.)

He said there was a tool I could buy that would help me turn off the water at the street,

and  he was indeed right.

So I turned off the water at the street to the whole house,

because the flippers, with their cheapskate ways, 

had not put in this simple sprinkler shut-off:

Yes, for the price of a vente Starbucks, I could have avoided all this water DRAMA.

But I ponied up the four bucks, attached the shut-off,

turned the water back on for the house and left it to dry overnight.

Time to plant yet?

Noooo, I still had to install the NEW controls.

The next day I got up and blee blah bloo I'm dying from the boredom of this story

I started figuring out the configuration of pipes so that the controls would be

above-ground, not below-ground.

This part was actually pretty fun. It's like I was playing with big ole TinkerToys.

Though I had one horrifying moment, when I accidentally touched THIS guy:

EEK!

The end results were all convoluted and reminded me of the old "Pipes" screensaver...

But I did it!

I filled up the hole with sand and gravel, 

and got to planting!

After three days I only transformed about a sixth of the yard,

and the state of my nails (after two days of scrubbing) 

may lead to me having to turn in my Girl Card...

... but I'm one step closer to a low-water, lawn-free yard!

Woo!

The Path To Home Improvement Never Does Run Smoothly

Since I lazily let the lawn die am environmentally responsible,

I'm replacing the lawn with low-water plants.

(Things are looking pretty trashy right now. 

The Boy keeps daring me to park my car on the lawn.)

But before I could plant, I needed to fix the sprinklers.

I've replaced sprinklers many times before, 
so easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, right?

WRONG.

When removing one of the old sprinklers, the stupid riser broke off in the...

oh, I don't know what it's called. The t-shaped thingy?

I dug away at it with a blade and a screwdriver and whatever other sharp tool I could find,

but the dang thing refused to budge.

I thought, maybe?  I could jam a cork in it and try twisting it out?

NOPE.

(Oh, my Lord.  Do NOT do a Google image search for "Nope."

You will see things -- giant spiders and eyeball stuff and freaky ghost children -- 

that you cannot unsee!)

I poked and fussed and dug at the thing

until I finally just lied down on the sidewalk and cried a little.

But I rallied, and hit the internets,

and found there was a tool that was supposed to help.

I headed to Home Depot, and picked up one of these...

... and on the way home decided to get some comfort food:

a smoothie and fries from MacDonald's.

And why is this a comfort food?

Because when I was a kid, in the pre-Happy Meal days,

my mom used to let me order a shake and fries for lunch from MickyDees.

HA! 

 I love sixties moms.

They're all, "Carrot sticks are for dirty hippies!"

Anyhoo, I jammed the ewww-named "Plastic Nipple Extractor" into the opening,and...

 nuthin'. 

 I had managed to make the whole situation worse

with my previous fiddling and digging.*

Noooooo!!!

Sigh...

So I ate my highly-nutritious meal,

and decided to try again in the morning.

The next day I went to an actual plumbing place, 

and the guy there pointed me to something called a "slip pipe."

I cut out the old pipe...

...glued the slip pipe to one end...

glued the new t-shaped thingy...

and then TELESCOPED the pipe over to the other end!

WOO!

I HAVE ACHIEVED SPRINKLER!

Now, let me get to some planting!

* To be fair to the Nipple Extractor,

 it DID work on another broken riser that I hadn't worried like a dog with a bone.