Category Archives: House

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Blog posts on topics from and about our current residence

How to Show Nintendo Wii Your Love // Video

January 2, 2009 – 8:23 am · Popularity: 10%

This video put me over the top for this Christmas.  They put it up on YouTube (or posted online) so I figure it is fair game all around.  Is this really how much we love our things today?  I am sure the family was happy they got their son something he would like and were excited themselves, but this video was pretty disgusting to me.  This was this boy’s true reaction to receiving a gift of plastic and metal, something the world has created into a level of importance like few other things this Christmas.  Maybe I am seeing it totally wrong, quite possible.  I have a tendency to over-analyze anyway, but to me this video showed where our hearts really are in the world today.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the Wii or Nintendo or anything like that is evil or wrong, heck, I bought my wife a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, but thank goodness she didn’t have this reaction.  It is the reaction we have in our heart, the importance we place items and objects, especially when we give them priority over our Lord for one, but our family, and our sanity.  Anyway, here it is… be for warned, lower your speakers.

So… what do you think?  Not sure what I could give Deb that would make her have that reaction, but then again, she already has the best gift of all, and we tried really hard to focus on Jesus this Christmas, not just the Nintendo Wii.

Update: New Nintendo Wii Video

Seth Godin’s blog picked up this video from the post here, this is a collection of more of the same from the video I posted above. I think Seth is correct, it has reached critical mass.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Faith | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

Hand Feeding a Ruby Throat Hummingbird // Photos

September 8, 2008 – 7:08 am · Popularity: 24%

Did I mention we have some crazy, very aggressive eating Ruby Throat Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) here at the house?  These little guys are not in the least bit shy, and will act more like a hungry dog if you let their food run dry.  These images were taken as Deborah was trying to put their food back on the window.  A family of about 10 Ruby Throat Hummingbirds live in our yard, I think there are probably 10 more or so that live in the close surrounding area, and when you go out to change their food, they dive bomb you.

This female Ruby Throat Hummingbird finally sat down for a meal, and stayed a while.  Usually she is fighting with the males for a seat, and this time, she decided to be bold and take a seat to eat with Deborah.  The males didn’t seems to interested in chasing her off, but not happy she was the only one eating.  She sat, alone, on this feeder while Deborah held it in her hand for about five minutes without getting up (all while flock of other hummingbirds buzzed around her head trying to figure out how to also take a seat at the table).  I have found over time, birds will get to know you, and trust you.  I have also had small wild birds eat out of my hand like the common gray finch, but this was the first time with a hummingbird.

Photos of a Ruby Throat Hummingbird in Flight

Photos of a Ruby Throat Hummingbird in Flight

I did upload a few more images of this shoot in the nature > small small creatures gallery.  One in particular is a wider angle shot that shows my wife and her holding the feeder, not just her hand.  We have had hummingbirds at this house since we moved in and each year they come back to the same window letting us know they have arrived.  They seem to have a great memory (even from year to year) and will return to the same location, feeder or no feeder.

Do you have any crazy hummingbirds at your house?  The season is almost over for them here in Alabama and soon they will be off to their winter home in Mexico, Central and South America and the West Indies.  If you want to see them next Spring, just put out a feeder and they will find it.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Journal, Photography | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

The Pine Bark Beetle Killed This Beautiful Pine Tree, our Friend

July 27, 2008 – 4:16 pm · Popularity: 32%

This weekend was so exhausting and also a little sad. On Saturday we took down about a 50 foot Pine tree we built our house around. When Deb and I picked the spot to build our house, we specifically chose where the house is now built because of this wonderful tree that was always covered with birds. About 6 months ago we started seeing some big changes in our tree as it started to dry out and wither always. Once we realized that it was covered with the Pine Bark Beetle we knew it was to late to save it. It only took a week for it to go from green needles to a completely brown, and dead, tree.

Footprint for the House with tree

Our tree as it was when the house was being built two years ago, April 2006.  We told the builders to not stress out the tree to much but that is like telling boxer to not break this crystal while you fight.  They marked it off like this with 2×4’s and up until a few weeks ago it was doing well, but probably was stressed due to the building of the house.

Tree after attack from pine bark beetle

The tree in April 2008 after the pine bark beetle got to it.  From my research into the work of the pine bark beetle, they tend to go after a weak tree or one that is prone to disease.  Once they get where you can see them in the bark and all the little holes they make in the bark, it is probably to late.  The big issue is they can move from tree to tree rather easily and kill large stands of pine trees, but usually healthy trees can fight them off.  Hopefully the surrounding trees here can do that since our entire property is covered in pine trees.

Tree after cut down

The tree as it stands now, the future home of a garden, patio, table, something nice.  We didn’t know what exactly we wanted to do with the area yet so we left the stump rather high to be able to come back later and cut it down.

Scott cutting up a pine tree in summer

You can see this tree in just about every photo of the building of our house as it progressed (see Footprint for the House), but we knew when we built the house that just the pounding from the building equipment might weaken the tree. It gave us more than two years of great pleasure watching countless birds and squirrels, while providing some nice shade. It was A LOT of work to bring it down and cut up all the branches, especially in 90 degree weather. The video is the tree falling. The tree of course was only feet from our house and we had to bring it down in a small area where it, wouldn’t take out the gutters, the garden, the car, the house, and anyone standing around.

We hit the spot pretty close but it was a tense few seconds when it was finally coming down just to see how close we would get to the mark. It really wasn’t as dramatic a fall as I thought becuase all the branches basically caught the trees fall. Something nice will go in its place, but not any time soon, my muscles hurt.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Journal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

Planting Red Crape Myrtles and a Weeping Willow Today

May 11, 2008 – 7:46 pm · Popularity: 30%

Lightening in Alabama StormWow, what a busy weekend (including Friday here). We stared off the weekend Friday night with the most wonderful thunderstorm. Since we hadn’t seen any rain here in what feels likes years it was a pleasant site. I took several photos of the lightening, one is in my post, Lightening in the Sky Tonight, and another is just above here. What a great site for an area of the country that hasn’t seen a lot of rain lately.

One of my favorite types of photography, just not one that you can go outside and say, ok, today I am shooting lightening shots. To see the larger version just click on the image above. The bolt actually started out of the top of the clouds in the upper left corner and winded its way to the ground.

Saturday - Trees, Trees, and Trees

Saturday was a pre-Mother’s Day tree planting day. Deborah and I had planned to pick out several Crape Myrtles trees to plant along the driveway (which is about a 1/4 mile long), and a Weeping Willow tree at the end where the driveway turns up to the house.

We went to our local Plant World which usually has a huge selection. They didn’t. There was a great Weeping Willow we would come back to get, but it was off to Lowes (in the rain) to check on the other possibilities. We found 8 red Crape Myrtles that were going to look just great planted on the driveway.

Planting Crape Myrtles

After discovering how hard it was to plant trees in rock hard dry ground we were looking forward to something a little easier. So, off to plant the Azaleas we got on Friday for the walkway. It was a long and exhausting day, but in a few years the driveway should be very pretty. In total, we planted 8 Crape Myrtles, 6 Azaleas, 1 Weeping Willow, and left of bunch for the next day.

Sunday - Choosing our Words and Some Veggies

Sunday started off about 3am with a wild bit of lightening and then the power went off. Don’t mind right now, but come summer that will be a hot hot night. It was off for about 2 hours, finally came back on right before we got up. Good thing, we are on a well system, so without power, we have no water. We had a wonderful service on Sunday, see Acceptable Words in Your Sight, and tried to spend the day relaxing. What was left the Saturday was to get the Sweet Potatoes in the ground. We picked up about 16 plants on Saturday and had to get them in the ground.

Everything Else

I did receive a bit of new music on Friday. Sort of a strange mix today, but on the list for this batch was:

  • Sting - The Soul Cages
  • Green Day - American Idiot
  • Nickelback - The Long Road

These all came from my music trading pals over at lala. A bit of an administrative note for this blog. I have decided to post a daily digest of my Twitter conversations here on this blog. Simply for me to see what transpired throughout the day. This information will not be posted on any of my other blogs. This week promises to be a busy one with work and a few other things going on in the middle of the week.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Journal | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A Nature Kind of Day Today

May 5, 2008 – 4:55 pm · Popularity: 13%

Our House at Night in the StarsIf you are new to my blog, welcome, glad you came by. I usually do a wrap up of the day, called my daily post, and this is it. Not always the most exciting post in the world, but sometimes, days are just normal days.

I try to keep up with a quick daily post for myself as much as anything else. Looking back, I can remember things I never could have remembered before without writing them down. So, in a nut shell, that is what this post is all about.

I took this photo of my house, late late last night, so I thought I would go ahead and include it for today’s post. The sky was clear with no moon. First time I have attempted to photograph our house at night, I am sure it won’t be the last (you may have to click on the larger version to see the star trails, if interested).

Please do excuse the boxes on the patio, thanks.

May 5, 2008

Today was a day spent at the office without leaving, which is fine, since I work out of my home. I got pretty much a little of everything done today, but it was mostly work with a little Twitter. Tomorrow will prove to be a very busy day as we take all our processed orders from today into town and do all our various tasks when we hook up with everyone in Auburn/Opelika.

Nature in View

Today was a nature viewing kind of day. It started off with three deer wondering through the pasture and into the pond. They did a nice slow walk all the way across the width of the property and ran off across the road to a graveyard near by.

After they left, we had a very loud pair of Canadian Geese they landed like a bomber without engines into the pond. They managed to take a bath leaving a ton of feathers behind when they left.

I had a headache that just wouldn’t let go so I decided to take an early walk around the perimeter and once back into the deeper part of the woods here I came up onto a Whip-poor-will sleeping in the leaves. I had never seen one before, and apparently they are not easily seen since they are nocturnal.

Seems I was walking in his sleeping area. As I made my second lap he was still up in the trees moving around from branch to branch waiting for me to leave no doubt.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Journal | Tagged , | Comments (0)

What is a Patio Without a Fire Pit, Not Much To Us

May 4, 2008 – 1:04 pm · Popularity: 18%

Scott Looking at the Patio Fire PitThis weekend was busy but relaxing. Saturday was supposed to be a day for outside tractor work and various yard things we all seem to have to do on the weekend, but, it RAINED. Who’da thunk. We haven’t had rain in the southeast in what seems like years after last summer’s drought (in fact I think it has been a year). It was a nice rain shower and didn’t last long enough to rain out the entire grass cutting day.

The rain did let up enough for us a have a nice fire in our fire pit on the patio. We had this built into the patio when we moved in and we use it all the time. There is something about being able to sit outside around a “camp fire” that makes for a great and relaxing time. We sit around the fire pit on our patio all year round and enjoy it very much. If you don’t have one built into the concrete then you can do what we did before we moved in. Get an old washing machine tub from a junk dealer (they will gladly give them away) or just dig you a nice whole in the ground and surround it with bricks.  When we were building this house, the fire pit in the patio was one of the must have’s of the house, but really it is just a circle in the concrete.  You would think such a thing would be an easy thing for a builder to get his hands around but nothing seemed to go that way with this house (see the category for house if you are interested).

The photo to the left here is actually a self portrait.  Something I don’t do all that often but I had the camera flat on the ground and used the timer to trigger the shutter.  The photo below is one I took of Deborah later on Saturday night. It is completely dark except for the fire in the fire pit. The image doesn’t show the fire because it would be to bright for the exposure, but you can see the spark trails of the fire just to the right side of her face. I did have her sit a little closer to the fire than she normally would so she was ready to move since her knees were a little warm.

She did real well to sit there through a 15 second exposure without moving. Thanks hun.  It is a little spooky (not Deb of course) with the fire glow as the only light source but I love how it turned out.  If you haven’t tried sitting absolutely still for 15-20 seconds at a time shot after shot after shot, you should try it some time.  Deb did great as a subject with fire on her legs.

Cold Night by the Fire

Sunday, May 4, 2008

We had a very nice service that completed the current series on missions. I plan to update my faith based blog, d.amasc.us soon with more information. The rest of our Sunday was spent enjoy one of the most beautiful Spring days here in the lower south. We can now finally eat out on the patio without freezing to death. There is a new moon tonight, and I will try to take a few star trail images and see how they turn out for tomorrow’s post.

By Scott Fillmer | Also posted in Journal | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Home Invasion or a Plague of the Ladybugs Has Arrived

November 14, 2007 – 6:08 pm · Popularity: 14%

ladybugs I love ladybugs (or as Scott refers to them, manbugs). However, this is ridiculous! There are millions of them on every window, inside and out. This was the best shot I could get, but trust me, they are everywhere. On the bright side, we had NO mosquitoes this year so this is a wonderful alternative!

When I was little, and I found a ladybug, it was customary to release it after making a wish. Somewhat like blowing all the seeds off of a dandelion. Man, if that really worked, I could have anything and everything today!!

We have started to suck them up with a shop vac and slowly deposit them out in the yard somewhere but that just isn’t going to do it at this point.  There really are just hundreds and hundreds of these lovely little lady bugs and they can creep and crawl into any tiny little crack anywhere and they are covering our bathroom and bedroom which are outside walls in the house.  They are cute, but this is a little rediculous.

By tiger | Tagged , , | Comments (11)

Taking the First Amature Radio Test, What a Ham

June 20, 2007 – 3:45 pm · Popularity: 9%

Scott took his technician ham license exam about three weeks ago and passed without a hitch. We have been waiting for his call sign to be issued. Now I can finally introduce to you KI4WLR.

Shhhh…

Congratulations!!

He installed another antenna on the house and now we are just trying to figure out the first radio to purchase so he can put this new license to good use. The house is beginning to look like a NASA station of some sort. I can’t wait until we put up the tower. That should be a blast.

Antenna

By tiger | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Installing a Ham Discone Radio Antenna on the Roof

May 6, 2007 – 12:10 pm · Popularity: 12%

This Saturday we installed what is to be the first of several radio antennas on the roof of our house. Scott climbed to the top of the roof and mounted the mast and antenna while I ran around on the ground fetching tools and lending moral support. After it was installed we went into attic to retrieve and feed the wiring from the antenna on the roof down the inside of the wall of his office and then out at the base of the wall by an electrical outlet. Hot doesn’t even begin to describe the temperature in the attic!

The hole saw’s that we own have been used for years and are quite crappy so after fighting with the hole drilling for a while Scott decided to bring out the big guns. I retrieved the new sledge hammer and it did the trick. Now the scanner is working great with the new antenna installed. It does look a bit sci-fi though.  This antenna is called a Ham Discone Radio antenna and Scott is going to be using it with his Radio Shack Pro-2052 (dual truncking) scanner until he get a 2-meter ham radio.

Check out the view from up here.

Don’t fall!!

The right tool for the job!!

Installed

Can’t wait to see what configuration the next one has. Hopefully it will be a little cooler the next time we try this.  The heat was just incredible today and Scott probably lost 10 pounds just trying to feed the wires through the attic into his office.  This antenna can now be seen quite a ways off, maybe we can use it some day to put Christmas lights up with a star on top, you will be able to see it from Birmingham.

By tiger | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

We Now Have a House Filled With Nothing But Books

April 25, 2007 – 9:09 pm · Popularity: 7%

There is a history to that statement. You see, in any of our business enterprises we have undertaken my mother and dad have always been there to help as, jokingly, free labor. Mom has always learned how to do tasks associated with the business and dad has made many of the products we have sold. When we had the quilting business and traveled the country my parents would meet us in their motor home and help us work the shows, as well as make the products we sold. We moved into the bead business and mom was there to help count all those little packages of beads. We have moved on again into the book business I really haven’t given much thought to what their roles would be now.

That is until last week. After we had the pallets of books delivered to us (previous post) we began preparing to leave last Friday on a trip to Florida to look at a sail boat. On Thursday afternoon we collected another donation of about the same amount of books that we had received earlier in the week. The books were delivered to our driveway and when we got home around 6pm we had to move them all into the house before we could pack for the trip. AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

From the photos below you can see why I want my mommy!!

THERE ARE BOOKS EVERYWHERE

book1.jpg

book2.jpg

book3.jpg

book4.jpg

book5.jpg

By tiger | Also posted in Business | Tagged , , | Comments (0)