We Made a Concrete Lily Pad and Frog

With a little time off from work and some rainy day boredom we once again attempt a cement DIY project.

We still have all kinds of odds and ends of concrete mix and masonry that we picked up for free several months back at one of the big home improvement stores. Here's the sneak peak of the finale.

Well, this stuff has been sitting in my garden shed for some time now and the place is far from waterproof. The first partial bag was all chunks and pieces. Mike worked hard to get this slightly usable. We ended up just throwing it into this old plastic planter and starting with a fresher bag. No problem, we'll use this somewhere.

Just like before we decided to do it with a depression sand mold. (It looks like black dirt but it's just really dirty sand.) And since it was a rainy day we just threw down an old shower curtain in my garden shed.

Next, like before, I wanted to use plant leaves to make a pattern in the mold. I picked up some sea grape leaves and cut them to kind of resemble lily pads.

Here they are cut and placed into a giant lily looking mold.

Mike managed to mix a good batch of cement, poured it in and smoothed it out.

Next up is the frog. This is an old lighted electrical frog. We used masonry mix for this and it was a lot of fun (read challenge) to get this to stick to the frame.

But I think we got it done although it's going to be very brittle.

 There's a bit leftover so I plopped a bunch into this shell shaped plate and also attempted to make a lily flower. My lack of artistic skills ended up making a sort of sun figure instead. lol

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Que the "Jeopardy" music while all this dries overnight.

I'm looking out my window and I see this sliver of the moon and Venus really bright in the sky.

I'm just outside the front door and I'm being eaten alive by mosquitos but on a lark I focus on Venus.

And out of nowhere it just POPS into my viewfinder big and round. I'm clicking like hell... clicking and scratching and clicking and scratching...

Venus - Swoosh!

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And we're back!

Everything slipped out of their mold like a dream.  The frog seems pretty solid, too.

Time for some paint!!

I also had this Flamingo bird house thing that had been sun bleached to death. So I painted it, too. 

We chose were to place it and used a fat piece of PVC to set it up on. There was this moment that we looked at it and thought it looked more like a toadstool than a lily pad. (Next project, I guess. lol)

Here's Mike working a coat of bright blue paint on the lily pad.

Painted and OMG I think we nailed it!

Meanwhile the re-painted flamingo brings a bright spot of color. I may paint this more later but the day was HOT and we were melting.

Odd, but pretty?!!

Frog and the Sunshell.

A coat of paint on the PVC... looks really good.

I brought another frog into the mix. (I love frogs!)

Here it is all together.

That's it, kids. We made a cement lily pad with a cement frog new area. 

It really pops, don't you think?

Losing Focus

The times they be a changin' and with that comes uncertainty, confusion and lack of focus. What does this mean for us? What's our next adventure?

 

Sanibel Island Day Trip

Here we go for more local sight seeing. We've lived here 10 years and had never been to Sanibel. Everybody knows I'm quite frugal (read cheap) so the fact that one has to pay a $6 toll just to get on the island rankles with me. That might have something to do with it.

But we loaded up the car with our beach gear, paid the toll and over the causeway we went.

First stop was the Ding Dang Gosh Darn Darling Wildlife Refuge. (Ding Darling, really) This is right up my alley for photo opportunities.

Sandpipers? Gulls? 

You pay $5 per car and you can drive through the park. It's pretty much just a nice paved road through the backwaters with the occasional open area like this. 

We were there at high tide and I understand there is less to see at that time but we still found a few things to amuse us. Mike likes to stick his fingers at things.

We watched this Ibis fishing for crabs for a while.

Pretty bird...

We would stop here and there, get out of the car and wander around.

What!?

Reddish Egret doing some fishing.

Sheepshead fish. 

We also saw some dolphin fish but the picture was too dark, backwaters

A tiny little crab and once again Mike has to touch it.

It pinched him.

Toes in Sand! Beach time!

Next we're off to Bowman's Beach for some shelling and swimming. Now Ms. Frugal kicks in again. $3 to park... per HOUR! 

The snowbirds have mostly gone home but it's still tourist season so the beach was reasonably busy.

Other than the people watching (German's, it's their season and they like speedo's) the highlight was seeing a few dolphins swim through.

They would come up out of the water and splash their tail on the surface chasing fish.

Cool to watch.

I'm trying to do some shelling but the water was rough. 

Not much luck here, lots of tiny broken shells.

So we went to a place called Blind Pass at the very end of Sanibel, right before you go onto Captiva and had much more luck. The beach is covered with shells, wear shoes, ouch!

Mikey doing some shelling.

Selfie on the Beach!

 (Now why does that sound dirty? lol)

We had lunch at the Blue Giraffe. I had the Grilled Grouper Kaiser (delicious) and Mike had ... yeah, you guessed it... a burger.

We drove all the way back to the other end of the island to see the Lighthouse and spotted this osprey up in a tree.

Beautiful bird!

And there's the Lighthouse. I don't quite understand the attraction but there it is!

A quick stop at Pinocchio's for a huge waffle ice cream cone (about 14,000 calories) and back over the causeway where we spotted these two wind surfers. We were exhausted and sun-burned. Long day.

Here's our shell collection. Not a whole lot and nothing big but I was being picky. I did find one medium sized nice shell but he was occupied and I had to throw him back.