Post #680697 by Bay Park Buzzy on Tue, Jun 4, 2013 12:34 AM

Sunset:

On 2013-05-14 23:30, GROG wrote:
Whatcha workin' on Buzzmeister?

It's been about a month since last post, so: A lot, but then again nothing much? If that makes sense. Here, I'll explain...

After I last posted here, I was moving right along, being productive, and getting in a good routine to get carving stuff done. I started out with a few router pieces:

then I carved this tiki:

and...

Stained and prepped some more lumber:

Which were installed in the hut I was working on:

More pictures of it here.

Just to make it clear, that hut isn't at my house!

Around that time, I got food poisoning and was out of for a little bit. That's where I kind of got off the carving track...

As I was heading over the Sepulveda pass on the way to building the hut, I broke the law and answered my phone and talked on it without using a hands free device. Good thing I took the call, because it was a call back for a job I bid on a while back and kind of forgot about. Months ago I heard that a local hospital was having a Brady Bunch luau themed party, so I got in contact with the party organizer and asked if they wanted some Greg Brady idols. The call back was the greenlight to go ahead make all these for them:

I cannot wait until I start finding these at the swap meet!

making all those guys took several days of being at the worbench in the garage. In between pours of those, I ripped off a bunch of Coco Joes pendants with my leftover casting supplies:

I like Coco Joe's so much, I'm now pretending to be them!

Eventually I made copies off all these classics pieces:

turned a bunch into magnets for Mother's Day:

And I did a few tiki crafti projects with them:

Dollar store frames, tapa scrapa, and some resin ripoffs all glued together

Now I'm wholesaling them out unfinished to etsy craftspersons throughout the world:

After working so much in my work area, it was then in an unworkable state:

A couple days later, and I had my shop work area back:

I went to bed the night I finished with the garage excited that I could finally get back to some carving work the next morning. Those plans were thwarted when a 7am surprise call came that some trees were coming down. I was wiped out of large logs, so I was more than happy to spend the day dragging these guys home:

Those big dudes killed my back for a couple days, so I still didn't get back to carving like I'd been wanting and trying to do for a couple weeks.

Before I dragged all those logs back, I cleaned up my outside work area and back yard real good. That took a few days. I also put up my summer sun shield:

Right when I was totally ready facilities wise to get a carving started, I got sidetracked when I saw this vintage drum set at Goodwill:

It was only $80, and was in damn fine shape. I set about to give it a new life...

So, instead of getting to work, I went to a bunch of pawn shops with Cammo and checked out some musical gear. A few follow up trips later and I had a set of new heads, some new stands, and a pair of Zildjians(21" ride and 16" crash) for it:

It had been maybe 7 years since I played drums last, so even though the set was now capable of sounding very nice, I wasn't able to make that happen. So, I've been spending an hour or so a day banging away in the garage lately.

at that point, it felt like it was a ridiculous amount of time since I carved last, so I decided that I was going to get back to it the following day. I was psyching myself up for a day of carving fun, when I came across a post on facebook about some free sod that was available. So once again, I had a worthy distraction from my plans. Instead of carving that day, I set about to get the yard ready for the sod to be set:


The sod was extra that was sitting for 3 days in the heat before I got it. A little TLC and a few days later I had this:


There was so much extra we were able to fill in the other yards as well:

I'm going to get an ornamental iron gate out front with a giant "G" on it and call my estate "Grassland"

Dog enjoying new lawn photo:

So the shop's clean, my lawn's alive, and I'm ready to work on anything carving related...but, I get the call again and I'm spending another day getting logs. This time I went onsite with the trimmers and showed them exactly what I wanted. I grabbed two just under 8 footers and a another chunky five footer. I have a big log inventory now, if I could ever get to work...

But that wasn't going to happen yet, because in the middle of all that, I had a few theme parties to set up. I started back with doing that a couple months ago. It's been really busy in that department lately. That means I get up super early, set up decor for a party real fast and then wait around until it's over and go back and tear it all down real fast. Last weekend I did three huge set ups and teardowns, and there were two other parties that other crews set up or tore down at the same time. One party we tore down at 2am on Sunday at a Kona Kai fundraiser, and then set that same stuff backup at the La Jolla beach and tennis club at 6am for their party. I usually don't bring my camera to these, but this weekend I had it and took a shot or two of the stuff I threw up at tone of the parties. I'm usually the hut builder guy. I'm also the guy who lies to the tourists who ask me what the event is. I usually tell them it's a secret Jimmy Buffett acoustic concert for a Navy Admiral's daughter's wedding.

Kids game booth huts

Ice cream machine hut:

Other companies bring in tarps and tents and stuff that we cover with our decorative themed stuff

One of my rental tikis there:

He goes to all the good parties!

And pretty much sums up the last busy month I had since I last posted here. I have Don's coming up this weekend, and all I have are a handful of leftover magnets to sell.

I better get to work...
Buzzy Out!