We had been talking about adding an arbor or trellis for our grape vine to climb on as it grows.  Originally we planned to make it an archway over the entrance to our garden - however logistics seemed to point me away from that idea.  I pictured all these grape vines (you know how they get) and all these spiders,wasps and bees swarming around your head as you entered into the garden… no thank you.  I will save the screaming like a girl for more memorable occasions in which I have to run into spiders - not on every single trip to the garden.

Anyhow, Saturday morning I was up a the butt-crack of dawn… actually about 5:30 so it was prior to dawn, it was dark.  I had about 10 cups of coffee and was feeling them and started to design the arbor for the grape vine on a piece of paper.  My Grandpa always uses napkins on his table to plan his work (he would rebuild houses and things of that nature) and I guess this was the “Grandpa” coming out in me.  Anyhow, before I knew it I had a pretty good schematic of what to do and had gauged my lumber, materials and all that.

By the time Shala woke up, I had it all finalized and she caught a glance of it while I was grabbing breakfast and when I got home she said…

 ”Damn son, you’ve been doing work.”

I laughed, knowing what she was talking about by the sound of her voice.  Here is the “blueprint” of the grape vine arbor so you can see what it was supposed to look like.

This wasn’t the only thing we had planned for today.  We had a busy morning running to various garage sales and a couple estate sales were on the menu too.  I know, we are so classy eh?  We like rummaging through other people’s shit ok!?!

After hitting up those, I will let Shala fill you in on what we got and how much we spent, we went by Lowe’s to grab the supplies needed to build the grape vine arbor.  All in all we picked up about 90$ worth of supplies, however I bought more than needed, since I wanted to do a few other things as well while we were in the mood.  I went ahead and picked up treated lumber so it wouldn’t warp and retard itself into some foreign object in a year. 

Started working on it about 12:30 on Saturday, had to pick up some post hole diggers, since we didn’t have any in our set of yard tools just yet.  Dug the hole for the 3 posts, and got them staked down so they were level and wouldn’t move - then poured the concrete to hold them in place.  All of that took about an hour tops - multi-tasking as always we had started watering the front & back yards and had a million other things going at the same time.  Thats how we like it.

After pouring the concrete, I decided to build the top and side pieces seperate and then attach them to the posts afterwards.  I felt this would be easiest, since the posts hadn’t set just yet and I didn’t want to wait all that time to start.  So that is what I did, built the top first part, and then the two sides.  My Mom & Stepdad came by at about that time and we visited with them and I had him help me put it atop the posts and screw it in.  It all was up in about 3-3.5 hours.  Which to me isn’t bad at all. 

I had some extra supplies left, some 2×4’s and lattice - so we threw together a few pieces for the flowerbeds that hug the garden itself just to tie it all together.  They were simple and quick to make and really they turned out pretty cool.  We have some climbing flowering plants in those flowerbeds, so they will enjoy climbing all over that stuff this summer. 

You will notice a few hanging baskets in the picture below that my wonderful wife did all by herself.  I was so proud that she was able to run that electric screwdriver that I am dreaming up other things she could put together next weekend.  I am not sure the flowers in those, we will update this post with that information later.  We planted the two vines one on each side and will string some wire between eye-hooks (is that the right term?) near the bottom so the vines will have something to climb on early in life.  The two vines will take years to be that big, but it is all about building something for the future right?  See the picture below for the finished product.

Update: Looks like this article has been pulling in tons of search results.  Most people are looking for grape arbors, grape arbor design, grape trellis and grape vine trellis design.  Summer is quickly approaching and people are looking for ways to get active in the yard or garden and building a grape vine arbor is a great way to do just that.  Welcome Googlers, feel free to ask any questions you might have regarding my design and I will do my best to answer them.  Also be sure to sign up for our RSS feed and keep updated on Double Danger.

Tags: Design, Gardening, Pictures by James
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I’m not a “master” BBQ-er… at least not yet.  ;)  However, one of the first things I learned how to barbeque was a rack of ribs.  So if nothing else, my ribs have more experience than anything else I smoke.  In other words - they are good.  Good is an under statement.  Consistently mouthwatering, tear-off the bone, primo smoked, patient, entertaining, flavor-filled, smile inducing, can’t take your eyes off, no sides please - I am saving the room for ribs… good.  Yeah that does it a bit more justice.

Please find my recipe and techniques to barbeque ribs below.  I have included pictures to help walk everyone through how I make my soon to be championship ribs.  The biggest thing I must stress is that you need practice but expect if you follow my instructions to barbeque pork ribs… you will produce some of the best ribs you have ever smoked (if you are an honest novice).  Be sure to have fun and trade your tips after reading in the comments.  People love sharing recipes & BBQ tips, it is part of the love we all have in regards to BBQ.

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Tags: Cooking, Perfect BBQ Tips, Pictures by James
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Who knew that our 5 month old puppy was such a design freak, it must be all that trading spaces and flip this house that we watch on the weekends.  I thought she was snoozing that whole time - but looks like she had us fooled the whole time.

Sunday we went to grab a bite to eat and when we got back we found Izzy walking around with these neat little booties on, let me link the picture some you can see it as we saw it.

Now some of you might say… whats the big deal?  My dogs always get dirty and that looks normal.  Well, this dog is never dirty like this and so immediately we were suspicious of what had went on while we were gone.  As we start looking around, we realize that Izzy had taken her design ideas and made it a reality.  This is what we found.

We had just watered the new flowerbed, so it was basically flooded when she decided to frolic around like an idiot.  Notice the giant horse-like paw prints in some of the pictures.  Also it seems like she was playing some kind of game like “whack-a-mole” or something.  Some fo the smaller Vincas were just pushed straight down into the ground,  I had to pull them back up into the world again. 

Most of it was salvaged for the most part.  I don’t think any will die due to the trauma, but they definitely will be watching their back and screaming each time the lion we call Izzy strolls by.  Poor… poor guys.

We love our dogs… yesterday though, Izzy got one of these looks…

Tags: Design, Gardening, Living Green, Pictures by James
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Since we were fortunate enough to have last Friday off we decided to get up early and go have a little breakfast at IHOP. 

Hmmm that doesn’t seem right, let me try that first sentence again. 

Since we were fortunate enough to have last Friday off and since James thinks that he will die if we sleep late, we got up and had a HUGE breakfast at IHOP. Yep, that’s better!

We had been talking about going to garage sales for a couple of weeks, but had yet to make it to any.  So while eating our breakfast we grabbed a paper to see if any caught our attention. 

There were a few that we decided to visit on Friday and even more that we wanted to visit on Saturday.  We had limited time Friday morning since I had plans to have lunch with a friend at a very girly place that James will not take me to.  It was amazing by the way and we had a great time!  Right Kendra?

We stopped in and had a quick look around at a couple of places and decided to call it quits and just wait until Saturday.

Saturday arrives and we were up before the crack of dawn, because if you live at our house that is what you do.  We threw some clothes on and set out to have a quick breakfast at Chick-fil-A, one of my favorite places and a whole lot better for you than the breakfast at IHOP.

After our first couple of dud sales I was becoming a little bored and was glad that there were only a couple of more on our list.  As we were driving to one of the last ones we found a sign for a sale that wasn’t on our list.  James busted a u-turn, because he loves u-turns (they are so much more practical than just turning down the next street) and we headed to the sale. 

Pulling up it didn’t look like much really, but it came through for us and showed us that one person’s junk really is another person’s treasures.

The first thing that caught our eye was this cute little McCall’s Garden Book.

As you can see the price was 10 cents and it was too cute to pass up.  If you read our blog then you know that gardening is a big deal right now and this book has a ton of information about flower beds and vegetable gardens.  On top of all the information I love how cute it is, it is such a throwback.  The copyright date is 1961 and it certainly looks like the ’60s.

After that book we had to keep digging.  James picked up a Great Recipes for Good Health cook book then scurried off to check out something else.  I kept looking at books and picked up Betty Crocker Cooking Basics and Recipes from Grandma’s Kitchen.   Maybe these will spur me into cooking more.  We’ll see about that.  I decided that was enough books and walked another step or two and saw that there was a whole other box of books and I couldn’t help myself, I had to dig.  I picked up three Danielle Steel books that I don’t have, yes I read Danielle Steel and I LIKE IT!

At this point the lady running the garage sale looks over and sees that I am carrying 7 books and kindly asks if I would like for her to set them down for me.  Yay! Free hands to dig some more!

After the books I spotted a whole box of yarn.  Since knitting has become another favorite hobby of mine, I decided that I just had to have some.  All of the yarn was the cute Fun Fur yarn that is normally between 5 and 7 dollars a skein and was priced at 50 cents.  Too good to pass up right?  I was going to make an offer for the whole box because that is what you are supposed to do at garage sales, but someone had brought that over, so the lady running the sale couldn’t give me a discount.  I looked through and picked out 12 skeins that I thought I couldn’t live with out.  Unfortunately James didn’t get a picture of these since they aren’t important to him. haha  Let me tell you they are cute and all you guys out there would be soooo jealous.

I’m sure you are wondering where James is at this point and I turn to look for him and see that he has an arm load as well. 

He found some old children’s records that he thought we could sell on eBay.  Tip for all you fellow bargain hunters: DON’T BUY CHILDREN’S RECORDS.  You can’t sell them on ebay for a great amount of money. haha.  James wanted to throw them away but I just can’t.  I want to keep them because I am a hoarder and I need to go on Oprah.

Here’s a picture of all of our books along with the records.

James also found the cutest little table to go in our office.  Its very light weight and has a loop at the top of the triangle so that you can pick it up and hang it on the wall to get it out of the way.  I doubt that we ever actually hang it on the wall but it’s a neat little feature.  The legs were originally black and the top looked like old counter top, so James sanded it down and painted the whole thing to match perfectly with our other stuff.  The table… 50 cents.  Thank you very much.

The last and probably the best buy of the bunch was a garment bag for 3 bucks.  James has been needing once since he travels for work now and has to wear suits.  We have looked around for one and they are all over a hundred dollars, so this was a steal.  It’s in great shape, just needs a little cleaning up and it will be as good as new!

Our grand total at the sale was $12.10!  We were both happy with our garage sale-ing skills.

I think that we have decided to hit up a couple more garage sales and even a few estate sales this weekend.  Honestly we probably shouldn’t because we have enough crap, but what if there is something that is just for me and I miss out because I didn’t go.  Just look at all the cool stuff Megan over at NestMaker picked up at an estate sale this past weekend… we need some cool crap like that.  haha

Tags: Design, Funny, Pictures by Shala
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When I first realized that I was going bald, I was really upset.  Funny thing was, when I was in high school I shaved my head the entire time.  Back when I could have had a full head of hair and done anything I wanted with it… I chose to shave it.   All this time since starting my decent into baldness I resented it, now as I look back at being bald in high school I think it was readying me for this.  Maybe I always wanted to be bald, but for a while I didn’t know any better.

At this point I have nothing to do but accept the fact and roll with it.  Over the last year or so I really have come to terms and in fact I am rockin’ the bald look 100%.  So if your balding, don’t worry - shave it all off and be comfortable.  Bald is the new black.  Check out this list of reasons why going bald isn’t all that bad.

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Tags: Health, Self Help by James
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