I have been a little obsessed lately with the videos of people cutting up plastic bottles into thin strings. Not only are there amazing shots of seemingly effortless generation of crafting material, it is recycling! I am all about making things from no longer needed items, and especially if it is hard to tell that it was recycled. Upcycling is awesome!

I went out to Amazon looking for this magical little device and found entry after entry … all with terrible reviews. Not to be deterred, I tried cutting bottles with scissors. The resulting string was not terribly even and after two bottles my hand hurt! I then did an internet search for “plastic bottle cutter diy”. So many things. I tried a couple different DIY models with little luck. I like the models where the blade is encased, so there is less possibility of slicing myself open, but was even tempted to try the models with an open blade mounted with washers and screws, so badly did I want to experiment with bottle string.

When my husband went to the hardware store, I asked him to pick me up some different blades. He came back with large hook blades (which is actually the only kind of blades they had that we didn’t also have a stash of in the house). I spent some time rearranging the garage so I could use my bandsaw (true garage organization will come after the coop, after a shed, and after we build some book shelves into the house). (FYI, we never use garages for cars. The horror!) I had some 2×4 drops, so sliced one up to fit the hook blade, with different depth cuts for each hook (so I can cut two different thicknesses of “string”), and bent two nails to hold the blade in place. I used a belt sander to smooth and shape the handle. After some fiddling, it worked!

So here is the “magic” behind those fabulous videos. The bottles have to be smooth with no ripples or uneven contours. Some DIYers suggest using a heat gun to smooth out the bottle. Then you need to cut off the bottom of the bottle (this is not that easy and a potential for slipping and slicing flesh instead of plastic). To start the string, I had to use scissors to make a starting cut, then use a pliers to pull the beginning of the string until there was enough to get a good hold. Then, and only then, did the plastic cut smoothly and stream with beauty from the cutter. Until I hit a curve, then it split and I had to start the process over again!

Here are a couple more pictures of the cutter I made. I’m not including instructions because it was mostly fiddly bits and “about there” lines.

We have siding up! Getting closer to closing in the coop, hurray! I’ve read many articles on not insulating coops for winter, so my husband put up asphalt paper first to keep moisture out. We will put hardware cloth along the top and make hinged covers so we can open up the top of the coop in the summer to help with ventilation, since the heat of our summers is more of a concern than the “cold” winter.

A couple days ago my eldest asked if she could stay up to watch the lunar eclipse on Sunday. Um, yes! I found out later that she also gets extra credit points in Science class for taking a picture or bringing a parent note that she went out and looked at the eclipse. We found out that the next lunar eclipse doesn’t occur until 2022! So I pulled out my good camera, the tripod, and coats, and starting at about 10pm, we started going out and taking pictures every 10 minutes or so.

This was particularly exciting, because before our move our luck seeing stellar events was not stellar. The haze, humidity, clouds, and light pollution meant that we hardly ever were able to actually observe much in the sky at night.

Now we are more country, there is far less light pollution, and we actually had a fairly clear sky! Happy dance! And as the lunar eclipse progressed, we could see more and more stars. We were able to identify Orion (which was the only constellation we could see at our old house regularly), Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, and the Big Dipper. (Now that we can see so many more stars, I think it is time to get out the charts again and learn our constellations!!)

This morning I opened up Adobe Photoshop and did a collage of the best of the images (there were many very blurry pictures, hmm, need to work on my moon pictures too apparently). Enjoy!

seems a very good way to start our foray into chicken keeping! We have ordered day-old chicks to be delivered at the beginning of April. Specifically, we will be getting Salmon Faverolles, which are a dual purpose bird (good for eggs and meat) and reported to be very docile. Being docile is good for my eldest who wants chickens to sit on her lap, and for my youngest, who loves the idea of chickens, but is still a bit afraid of them. But being docile also means that they are on the bottom of the pecking order (yes, the phrase originated with chickens because it is a real thing!) in a mixed flock, so we will only have Salmon Faverolles.

My husband is in the process of building us a coop. A hen mansion. A chicken Fort Knox. A little over a year ago he accepted a new job offer and we moved to north Texas. We had a long list of house wants, but top of the list was the ability to have chickens, fast internet, and a good school system. Harder to find than we anticipated! But find one we did, and set about our plans. My Dad gave us a trail cam and we started recording the local wild life: rabbits, armadillos, deer, skunk, opossums, raccoons, fox, coyote, and bobcat all live in our area. If we were to have chickens, they would have to be well protected! As much as the little coop houses available at TSC are cute, they won’t protect a flock from a bobcat. My husband is also 6’5″ and the sheds sold at the local hardware supply stores don’t have doors tall enough. So building the coop became the plan. He has built sheds before, so is embracing the challenge. Here is a photo of the coop in progress.

As you can see, we still need siding and a roof. We have some time before the chicks are here, so here’s to hoping the weather is nicer than today (with wind chill it is 19 degrees F, super cold for us Texans!) No outside work today. Brrr.

So thank you for joining us and reading along with our adventure! Life is crazy, so I make no promises, but it has been fun to get this blog started. Here is to more posts! Prost!