Month: April 2019

Recycled Wall Art

Mosaiced wall using old broken plates and tiles.

A couple of weeks ago, we did a blog on my friend Ginny’s garden swirl that she created out of cement rubble. This weekend, she repurposed some broken crockery into awesome wall art.

In a home full of people things tend to get broken—plates, cups and bowls especially. Because she’s an arty soul, she hoards stuff like that so it can be reused.

First she drew a picture on the wall with chalk. Chalk is great because you can rub it out and start again if you don’t like it.

Then she hauled out her stash of broken stuff.

Wearing gloves, she laid the big shards out carefully, figuring which pieces would work best. Crockery is awkward, because it has ridges underneath which can make some pieces difficult to stick on the wall.

She has tile cutters, but also uses easy-to-find tools. She puts the broken plate into a sturdy see-through plastic bag and taps it hard with a nice smooth rock. She taps and chips until she has the size she wants. (Yes, sometimes the shape of the flower changes because she taps too hard.)

She used two old broken floor tiles for the vase. Those she simply put in a bag and smacked them with the handle of a spade.

A word of caution people – these shards are sharp and you should work with care.

Ginny didn’t. She didn’t have plasters either, so she used toilet paper and masking tape. That works well enough too.

The wall was green. Reusing an old plastic margarine tub, she put in several spoons of white tile grout and then mixed two teaspoons of Powafix green cement oxide into the grout. Slowly, she added some Tile Magic tile bond (adhesive and grout additive – also makes it waterproof) and stirred it up well until it was a gloopy porridge texture. If you put too much liquid in, just add a bit more grout until you get the right consistency. Don’t make too much grout at a time because it dries out relatively quickly.

An old ice-cream stick works well for putting the grout onto the plate before you stick it onto the wall. Ginny had enormous fun sticking the broken shards onto the wall to make her picture.

See for yourself—a bare patch of wall turned into a work of art.

Monday the 22nd of April was Earth Day—up-cycling is fun people and every bit helps.

Sibo

Be Safe on the Roads Please.

It that time of year when people take to the roads, but in order to get to your destination safely, you need to drive properly.

A reminder of the major rules when using the road:

  • Buckle up. Make sure everybody in the car is wearing their seatbelts before you even set off.
  • Do not drink and drive. You might think it is okay to have a few toots and then get behind the wheel, but your concentration is impaired and you are not as responsive as you usually are. Anyway—it’s illegal!
  • Pull over if you are tired. Falling asleep behind the wheel is the ultimate danger to yourself and everybody else on the road. Don’t let yourself get to that stage. Pull over and have a nap. Or do what my Dad’s friends do—whenever they are going on a long road trip, they take turns driving, one hour each. It sounds a very short time, but it breaks the journey up and makes the whole thing more doable and much safer.
  • Stick to the speed limits. This is a biggie. Every year people die on the roads because some wally thinks it’s okay to speed. Those limits were not put there to irritate you; they are there to keep you safe. Just obey them, okay!
  • Do not use your cellular phone when you are driving. Unless you have a hands-free kit that is. No answering calls, definitely no texting, no checking your inbox quickly, no taking a pic of that gorgeous sunrise or sunset—it might be the last one you’ll ever see if you do.
  • Kids—no shouting, arguing or playing the fool in the car when your parentals are driving. It can cause them to lose their concentration which is dangerous.

There are also rules for walking on the road too.

These are only a few of them:

  • Always walk facing oncoming traffic.
  • Don’t ever run across the road.
  • Wear bright clothes at night time if you are walking on the road so that the cars can see you.
  • Don’t walk and text using your cell phone—pay attention to what is going on around you.

Remember, you can brush up on your road safety skills by reading our book, Sibo Looks Right. Thanks to Nash Nissan and other fabulous people, it’s always available 24/7 as a free read on my website just click on the cover.

Lives get lost on the roads. Make sure yours is not one of them.
Mike Ward (Nash Nissan) and Ginny Stone

Be safe people and happy holidays.

Sibo

Rubble Rousing

Use your imagination… things do not have to be as they are.

Gardening can be an expensive hobby, but does not have to be.

My friend, Ginny, has become an avid gardener.

When they first moved into their house the front yard was bare. Obviously, the people who had lived there previously had tried planting grass, but then a water shortage hit and it died. There were a nice variety of succulents along one wall, with various bits of droopy vegetation decorating the fence.

Ginny and her lovely husband jumped in and decided a raised bed would be the way to go. They made a round one and filled it with teensy spinach plants. The spinach flourished… but the birds devoured most of it before they could. Summer arrived and it shrivelled up and died despite being watered. They decided to wait a while before planting anything else.

Then my friend had a run-in with cancer and to keep herself occupied and turn her brain off, she attacked the front garden.  She sculpted, laid and dug, all by the seat of her pants. So sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn’t. The garden shop lady nearly died laughing when she discovered that she’d laid garden paths with gravel but had no weed cloth underneath. She bought the cloth but discovered it was nasty to work with and did not, in fact, actually do the job. The weeds still appeared.

Fast forward eight months. Ginny had been ogling out some building rubble up the road from their house.

“I want some of that,” she declared.

Her not-so-lovely husband rolled his eyes. “No! You’ll have to find somebody else to help you steal rubble from the side of the road.”

So she enlisted her daughter’s help and they raided the pile. But there was a dude at the house who gave them the thumbs up, so it wasn’t actually stealing after all.

She laid out that rubble in the same raised circle bed that they’d originally planted the spinach in. Piled blocks on top of each other until it looked appealing. Then she mixed a sloppy bowl of dark brown Tile Magic grout and tile bond liquid and gave the whole structure a quick wash of colour. Luckily they also had lots of compost from all the leaves and garden refuse to fill it up with earth.

The end result… a fabulous swirl in the garden full of herbs and flowers.

Get creative folk!

Sibo

There is NO excuse not to read.

Reading makes you smart!

These days eBooks make reading incredibly easy. You don’t need fancy equipment and special readers, like you did a few years ago either.

If you are reading this blog in the African Reporter, then you can read. If you are reading this blog on-line, then you can not only read, but you also have access to a smartphone, tablet or computer and the internet.

Even for those people who have difficulty reading, audio books are available. You can listen to them when you are doing something else. Boring stuff like cleaning the house, ironing or travelling in public transport.

There are many different platforms on-line where you can access books.

If you join Amazon or Smashwords—and it’s free to sign up—there are books that you can read for free. Good ones too, you just have to take the time to search for them. Many of the classics are available and often authors have promotions. They give their books away freely to increase their readership.

Of course there are millions of books that cost money too, but they are still cheaper on-line than buying a print copy.

The great thing with eBooks is that you can load lots of them onto your electronic device and carry them around in your pocket or handbag (in the case of a smart phone).  You can’t do that with piles of books.

This is also an awesome time for writers. They no longer have to struggle to try and find somebody who will publish their book(s); they can publish them themselves, on-line.

That’s free too.

You do, however, have to market your own book. It doesn’t sell itself. No matter how good it is (and it better be good) because there is loads of competition out there. You definitely don’t want to be publishing shoddy content.

My friend, Ginny, is known for her Sibo Series, but she’s also written a few other books—do you remember Fudgie, the dog from the blog? She’s busy collating all those blogs into a series of books that are available on-line. You can follow her author profile on Smashwords.

One thing you might remember when you read books online, consider taking the time to go back and leave a review. Writing a few lines is a way of thanking the author for the free book—or even for the books you’ve paid for.

Read more people!

Sibo

Scary Power Failure

ESKOM makes life interesting!

Mum and I had an interesting experience when we went shopping last week. As we walked in, I said “Oh oh there’s load-shedding here!” I could hear the rumble of a generator.

“Don’t be silly Sibo,”mum responded, then stopped, cocked her head and reluctantly agreed.

I smirked a bit because mum hates to be wrong. There seemed to be no problems, so we grabbed a trolley and carried on into the store.

About half way through our shop, the noise of the generator suddenly died and the store went dark.

Dark is not a very accurate description.

It was so pitch black you could barely see your hand in front of your face. One never really thinks about the fact that there are no windows in big supermarkets—there’s a lot of artificial lighting in use.

There were a number of yelps and squeaks. I’m not a fan of the dark either so I sidled closer to mum and hung onto the trolley. Mum, on the other hand, clutched her bag tighter so that nobody could sneak up on her in the dark either.

After a few seconds, people hauled out their cell phones and the pitch black was pierced with random holes of light, which made it less scary. That torch app is pretty useful in a situation like that and if you don’t have one installed on your phone, maybe it’s a good idea to get one. They’re mostly free after all.

The situation didn’t last long. The genny hummed, the lights flickered back on, off and then on again. Everybody resumed their shopping.

“Let’s hurry up and get out of here Sibo,” mum picked up the pace of her shopping.

I was quite impressed with the way that everybody just stopped, stayed where they were and did not panic or do anything stupid. Although I wondered if the shop experienced losses with some dodgy people taking the opportunity to pop items into their handbags or pockets.

I was also curious about what happened at the tills. Did the whole system crash? Did they have to start ringing up everything again?

Being a nosey person, I asked, and the lady at the till said that their system just carried on like normal. It was only the lights that went out.

At least the power seems to have stabilised again… for the moment.

Sending love and light people.

Sibo

It’s a Crazy World

Watch out for your possessions people!

Last Saturday, my friend Ginny had her cellular phone stolen, right out from under her nose! Well, not quite, but close–out of her handbag.

She and her husband were shopping and they were in the fruit section of a local supermarket. She noticed that some women were talking loudly, pointing at those little bags of herbs. She thought that they were probably having a heated discussion about what was needed for a certain recipe.

The next thing she knew was that another woman had rammed a trolley into her, pushing her into the veggie rack. She was wedged between the trolley and the rack and her bag was squished behind her shoulder. Ginny stood there, half expecting an apology, but at least expecting the lady to move the trolley off her foot.

But instead, the woman pointed to some bags of onions on the veggie rack and asked if Ginny would pass her some.

She picked up the one bag, but the person shook her head and pointed at another one. So Ginny passed her one of those. She asked for another one too.

Then she barely thanked her and moved off down the aisle.

The whole thing was a little weird and Ginny wandered around for a few minutes, thinking about it and then put it aside.

Later on, she looked down and saw that the side pocket on her bag was open and her cell phone was missing. Of course, she wasn’t too sure if she’d actually picked it up off her desk that morning and put it in her bag in the first place. Her husband called the number and it went immediately to voice mail.

Her stomach sank—she knew it had been stolen. It had a full battery and there was no reason for it not to ring first. But they went home anyway, to check.

On the way she was racking her brains as to who could have had the opportunity to sneak up, unzip the pocket and take her phone out. Then she remembered the crazy incident in the veggie department.

Her phone was not at home.  They schlepped back to the supermarket and reported the incident. Turned out, upon viewing the video footage, some women had followed them into the shop; probably others did something to distract the security guard (who was right there). Whilst Ginny was helping the one lady, the other lady helped herself to Ginny’s phone.

It’s a jungle out there folks. Be alert!

Sibo

Breathe Deep People

“I’m going home to watch some TV and de-stress!” How often have you heard this? But lying like a couch potato in front of the television doesn’t lower blood pressure at all.

The easiest way to de-stress is to do some deep breathing exercises.

They recommend around half an hour a day, but actually, even a few minutes help.

What a bargain! It doesn’t cost anything and we all do it anyway.  Even better, we don’t need a special place or fancy equipment. In fact, if you catch a taxi, bus or train home, you can do it on the way and be all nice and relaxed and de-stressed by the time you get there.

There are several different methods of breathing to relax but the American Institute of Stress recommends a technique called the “Quieting Response”. It only takes 6 seconds to do and apparently it works like a bomb.

First, you smile inwardly, with your mouth and your eyes. We all know the benefits of smiling outwardly, but this is something different, it somehow makes you relax. (Go on; try it quickly while you are reading this.) Then they tell you to imagine holes in the soles of your feet. As you breathe in (a nice deep breath) you visualize hot air flowing up through your body to your lungs. You relax each part of your body as the hot air hits. Then you breathe it all out again, imagining it flowing down, down, down—back out through the holes in your soles!

Pretty darn easy, right? I’m going to try it next time I’m stressed. Kids get stressed too you know!

True story, often when we are stressed we tense up and it takes a concerted physical act to release that tension.

Did you know?

  • If you opened up your lungs flat, they would cover an entire tennis court?
  • In people, the left lung is smaller than the right lung. Why? So that there‘s space for your heart.
  • The average person breathes around 27 litres of air a minute.
  • Children laugh about 300 times a day whereas adults only laugh around 15 times. We’ve talked about laughing before – it releases all those good hormones.
  • Last bit of useless information… when you sneeze, the air comes out of your body at around 16 km per hour!

Take time out to sniff the daisies people!

Sibo