Does This Drive You Nuts?

 

Show of hands...  how many of you have ever sat in the operating room waiting room waiting nervously for someone you know and love to come out of surgery?  All of you, right?  And how many of you got more and more anxious when the time the doctor said it would take comes and goes with no word on the patient? Again, nearly everyone!

Yesterday, my son had surgery, which we were told would take 1.5 to 2 hours.  They took him in a 2 PM yesterday afternoon.  At 5:45, we were a bit panicky.  The doctor finally came out at 6:30 to tell us that everything went fine.

I don't know why they do this to us.  If it's going to take 4 hours, please tell us 4 hours!  I just think it's cruel to leave family members/friends hanging for that extra time, wondering "What's wrong?"

Artists With An Amazing Touch

JEWELRY BY NALA

If you're looking for some adornments that are incredibly priced, with wonderful attention to details, you really need to visit Jewelry by Nala.  I actually own the dangley red flower earrings shown to the left and they are stunning!  You can find Nala in all of these places:

Etsy 

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Jewelry by Nala Blog 

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Product Review:  FROG TAPE

I'm sure you've seen the advertising for this new product which claims to give you a 'sharp line every time' when painting.  In revamping our little rental house, we needed to paint the ceilings, but not the wood paneling, and decided to give it a try.

We chose the multi-surface product.  It comes in a plastic tub container, unlike regular masking tape which is usually shrink wrapped.  The cost per roll was just short of $1 more than masking tape.

Application was easy and quick; it's good and tacky, didn't tangle and stayed put.  It was a bit tougher to tear than ordinary masking tape (it seems thicker to us than regular masking tape), but that didn't present any problems.  We went back over the tape edges to assure they were all down flat on the surface we didn't want painted, too, although I don't think that was necessary.

We painted with latex, semi-gloss paint during cooler, but not cold, weather.  We left the tape on the walls for two full days after we painted just to make sure the paint was dry.

The tape came off easily - sort of.  It seemed to have a tendency to tear mid-strip (we guess it just stuck better in some places than in others).  This was more of an annoyance than a problem; it was reasonably simple to scratch the torn edge free and resume removal of the tape.

And here's the big question...  did it give us a straight line every time; was it worth the extra cost over regular masking tape?  Our experience was that it was no better than traditional masking tape.  Yes, we had straight edges, but they were no straighter than they would have been with traditional masking tape.  Up close, we have the same amount of paint bleed we've always had - from two or more feet away, it looks great.

Watching the videos on the Frog Tape website (http://www.frogtape.com/Products.aspx), you'll notice that the demonstrations of their product are all done on flat surfaces.  We masked molding around a ceiling that has a curved face, and perhaps this makes a difference.

In our opinion, Frog Tape did what it was supposed to do but was not worth the extra cost.