My Little Car got a Makeover!

I might have mentioned that we've been busy trying to get our new business going. ;-) Well I decided that if I'm going to be traveling around doing marketing and sales that I should also have a car that reflects a little about the business. So here are some before and after pictures:

I think she looks great and apparantly she did too, because I noticed a little pep in her step on the way home! ;-)

The big news for today is that you can also link to our Big Frog Store on Linkedin!

Going Back to Work!

Yes, that's right we'll be going back to work hopefully in early December! This time it will be a fun self-owned business though! You can check us out by clicking on my other: blog Or click on: Face Book

I'm Still Here!

I just wanted to let any of you who still check my blog know that I'm still here! We've been busy moving, traveling, settling in, and trying to get our own business started so we've been a bit preoccupied. Hopefully in the next few weeks we can get back to some sort of a regular schedule and I'll get caught up on my blogging! Hang in there and I'll be back real soon!

Mango Margaritas: Medicine or Myth?

So tropical storm Debby decided to visit us for the next couple of days. This is a good thing considering that she's only supposed to produce 15-20mph winds and bring several inches of much needed rain to our area! However, for some of us the lack of sunshine for 2 to 3 days can become an issue. So what can you do in this situation? How about a batch of Mango Margaritas? Looking up the health beneifits of Mangos helps clear the air a bit, let me explain: Mangos provide 25% of your daily needs of vitamin A and 76% of your daily vitamin C. They are also a good source of fiber! So when you combine these with fresh limes, and Tequila you rack up your vitamin C to 100% and get some stress relief too! Now if you add the benifits of a home brewed (unpasturized) beer as a chaser, you brng vitamins B and B-complex into the picture! Then if you drink these magic elixers on a sunny day, unlike today, you also get some internal vitamin D production! So as you can see understanding the health benefits of drinking Mango Margaritas really is as easy as A, B, C, oh and D! ;-)

Good Friday

So I'm standing on the deck watching a full (or near full) moon rise over the jungle, and the sky is perfectly clear with no chance of rain, when all of a sudden the wind whips up into a frenzy and the temperature drops. I hear the obvious "rush" sound coming towards me as the wind pushes though the trees, and as it passes me only then do I hear the scraping, creaking, and almost moaning sound of the trees themselves rubbing against each other and I recognize it. It's the same sound as you would have heard on the deck of a tall ship as the masts strained against the rigging's when the wind took hold of the sails!

So what does this have to do with Good Friday? Just think of how many ships have sailed across the oceans carrying hundreds and thousands of people to see the Holy land!

Nature was merely taking a few minutes to point out the importance of this day, by using the wind and the trees to take me on a trip through history.

Happy Easter!

Kangaroo in Florida?

I got up this morning and it was a bit foggy out so I thought "Maybe I'll see some deer". There was an animal out there, but it looked more like a kangaroo than a deer. I barely got this picture taken when it spooked and hopped away!

Picture Tour of the Inside of the Cabin (finally)

We were finally able to get the loft about 98% completed so we decided to share pictures of the inside of our cabin in the woods with you! Oh the other 2%, well that's the room divider that we still need to finish. When it's done we'll share that too.

I thought we'd shared enough pictures of the outside of the place that you probably had a pretty good idea of the outer layout of the plce so this is simple views from inside.

This is what you see when you walk in the front door

The living room and dining area in the distance

The entrance to the kitchen

The front view of the kitchen

Our bedroom

Our bathroom

The view as you head up stairs, and the wood stove

The landing and a glimpse of the loft

View from the landing

The main guest room

The view from the main guest bed

The guest bathroom

Secondary guest area

The fulll view of the China loft

The view out from the kitchen (what I see when I'm cooking)











I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Daytona Bike Week 2012

This past Saturday we loaded up the bike and headed to Daytona with some friends we've met over the past few months. The air was a crisp 60F when we rolled out of Old Town and headed down the road, but by the first stop it was warming up enough that we had to shed the first layer off. By the time we hit Daytona, about 2-1/2hr later, it was in the 80's(F) so we were down to shirt sleeves or sleeveless as it were.

The first stop was the famous Bruce Rossmeyer's Daytona Harley, in Ormond Beach. There were thousands of bikes/rider's there and all the well known custom shops were there showing off their latest designs. We also got to meet some celebrities

From there we headed over to the Iron Horse Saloon, a must see when in Daytona whether its Bike Week or not!

After that we decided to head to the hotel to get checked in and get out of the heat for a bit to chill and rest up for the next day down town at Daytona Beach.

First arriving at Ormond Beach













Custom bikes and cars





















The celebrities Michael Ballard and Angie
Butch and Teri













The Iron Horse Saloon












Next day at Daytona Beach















After spending a couple of hours with several more thousand bikers at Daytona Beach we stopped in to an oyster bar for lunch before hopping back on the bikes to head for home. It was a great ride, with surprisingly little traffic, and what a great weekend it turned out to be!

The Approach and Passing of a Storm

Around 7pm last evening a thunderstorm came rolling through, so I tried to capture it with the camera.
The sun is still lighting up the trees in the foreground as the storm approached





















All we got out of it was about 15 minutes of rain with a little lightning and thunder, but south of us in Chiefland and east of us in Gainesville they got some hail out of it. It was also a bit strange because it came from the southeast.

Our New Grandaughter

Baby Leona, sleeping with big brother Trey and Pappa Dude next to her

New Grandaughter, Last Night's Dinner, and Firewood

On Friday morning we were awakened by a phone call from Germany that we had a new Grandaughter! Little Leona Joy Wise was born around 1:25am (EST) and weighed in at 8.25lbs and 21.6 inches long. As soon as I get some photos that I can upload to Blogger, I'll share them!

We decided to try a new recipe for Sheppard's Pie last night and it came out fantastic!

Golden whipped 'tators on top and underneath meat and veggies











Then this morning I helped out a friend, and bartender at the OTT, by cutting and splitting up an oak tree that had fallen in her yard. This thing was huge and it was a good thing that another of the patrons had a hydraulic splitter or we'd be splitting for the rest of the month.

We divided the wood 3 ways and this was still my portion. I think we're set for next winter!











Next week we'll get back to the decorating of the loft so we can get some more photos of the inside of our cabin posted.

First Glimpse of the China Loft

I mentioned our strategy for retirement in an earlier post about taking 1 task and completing it by noon, but today we worked a couple of hours of overtime. I think this shows that it was worth it!

The first glimpse of the China Loft guest suite












We built the bed frame from scrap cypress wood left over from the house and then took an old headboard and upholstered it with silk that we brought back from Beijing. It was quite the undertaking for us, since neither of us had any experience at either one of those jobs!


On another note, this was dinner last night.
Shrimp curry with homemade naan!
















The curry we've done before, but this was the first time we've tried our hand at naan. I think the recipe is good, but we still need to work on our technique.

Well it's quittin' time now so I think we'll get cleaned up and cruise around with the top down. We'd take the bike, but it's in the shop getting the 20,000 mile check-up to get ready for Daytona bike week!

Grillin' Pioneer Style and Other stuff

So as I said in earlier post's, without the luxury of a nice Weber grill I've reverted back to cooking pioneer style over the fire pit. There's good points and bad points abut this. Good: Nothing like wood fire grilled flavor, back to nature, a sense of accomplishment when it turns out right. Bad: You need to plan about 4 hrs ahead to let the wood burn down into coals, You have to make sure your grilling poles don't get close enough to the fire that they become part of the fire, The wind will always change direction in order to blow the smoke in your eyes at exactly the wrong time during a critical step such as when it's time to turn whatever your cooking over (in this case porter house steaks).

Oh yeah, "....it's what's for dinner!"















Luckily we have plenty of falling branches (and trees) around here so there is no shortage of grilling poles! Oh sorry, grilling poles are what you use to hold your grilling surface over the coals to cook when you don't have a Weber (and no I'm not getting paid by them for advertisement, well at least not yet!).

At any rate the fire did what it should and the dinner turned out great!

So on to the other stuff!
I was cleaning up a few of the dead trees that had either fallen on their own, or with a little help from me, and stacking the logs out at the edge of the clearing so I could use the truck to load them up and stack them over by the fire pit. The stack couldn't have been there more then 10 min before I came back to start loading it into the bed of the truck and when I reached down to grab the first log this little guy ran up to the top and looked me square in the eye as if to say: "Hey buddy, get your own stack this is mine!". So I tried not to hurt the little fella' and tried to grab some of the logs to the side and this little bugger would jump onto whatever log I would pick up, so I grabbed him and brought him up to Lightnin to get a picture.




Believe me this little guy was powerful and I was trying to hold him gently, and yet firm enough that he couldn't get out of my grip.

















Here he is on our deck rail asserting his dominance over us!
















So that's what's happening around here.

Sunrise and the North Florida Brewery

Up with the sun to get things cleaned up from the double batch brewing.

Sunrise in the jungle














Yesterday's brewing session didn't quite go as planned, to say the least! Sure I was able to tap into the spare gas connection that was installed for this purpose, but I didn't test fire the burner to make sure there was enough pressure. So we had to do the boil in the house, therefore the double batch actually ended up being 2 batches! We were finally finished at 9:30pm so it ended up being an 11 hour session.

Lightnin hung in there with me till the end and lent (no pun intended) a much appreciated hand in the operation!

This is the current North Florida Brewery, but I'm hoping to upgrade to a more user friendly system in the near future











We brewed a double batch of cream ale and by the looks of it in primary fermentation it should be a beautiful golden color! I always sample the unfermented wort to get an idea of what it will come out like and this one should be nice, light, and just slightly bitter at the end. We'll see how it comes out over the next few weeks!

Random Stuff

Spent 2 hours trimming weeds around the deck this afternoon and realized that I hadn't blogged in quite awhile. So I thought I'd share a few bits of random stuff.


Here's one of our little dragons out on the hunt. These little dudes (or dudettes) spend most of the day sunning themselves, but they are also voracious insect eaters. A few of them are finally getting used to the idea that we come and go and don't have any interest in eating them!







This is a breakfast fritatta that I whipped up awhile back. It came out really nice!











This is the view of 12 lbs of wings just before they went on the fire pit. We munched on them while watching the Daytona 500 on Sunday and Monday. What a bizarre race that turned out to be!







Lightnin and I are putting some final touches on stuff inside the house and then we'll take pictures to give sort of a photo tour of the place in the near future!