Justinthetrees: Woodworking with a Twist

I am a big fan of Justin Davies, of Justinthetrees. He is a talented woodworker, but that's not reason enough for me to share his videos here. It's the fact that he includes two of my passions in his woodworking: US geography and cooking. 

This is a poster Justin sells in his store, based on the actual United States of Trees wood map that he made. I love it. 

This is the compilation video from the 50 projects that make up the map. It's long, but super interesting (to me, at least!). 

He's made a second US map, this time based not on state trees, but rather on native trees. 

I mentioned Justin combines cooking with woodworking, which is even more interesting to me than the maps. You're probably assuming he makes cookware, as opposed to actual cooking, but you'd be wrong. There are many super fun videos where he makes tree-flavored ice cream, gelato, cake, candy, and more. I would love to try them. And then there's the time he made bread from sawdust. 

 

I hope you enjoy Justinthetrees as much as I do!

10 Years of Fun with Urban Adventure Quest

By the time you are reading this, our family will have (hopefully) completed our 28th Urban Adventure Quest. We are obviously huge fans of this game, where smartphone clues take you on a walking tour to the most interesting and important sites in a city. We always learn so much during a Quest and every Quest has taken us to places we never would have discovered on our own. 

We solved our first Urban Adventure Quest in Sacramento in March 2016. We were immediately hooked. We completed our second UAQ in Salt Lake City three months later and two more Quests in New Mexico five months after that. One month after that, we served as beta testers for a new Quest for the first time. 

Over the past 10 years since that first time in Sacramento, we have solved Quests in 19 different states. We've done Quests in extreme heat and epic downpours. We've finished Quests with no mistakes and others with an embarrassing number of errors. We've powered through Quests to try to get a good time and we've leisurely solved Quests with no consideration to our final score. 

I put together a map with all the locations we've done (so far). Most of the blank states don't have Quests; here is the current list of Quest cities. 

I'm excited to see what the next 10 years of Questing looks like for the deRosiers!

Creating Your Own Coloring Page from a Photo

Technology makes it incredibly easy to make your own coloring page. Pick a photo you like (one you personally took or that you have the rights to use)...

... and then use a photo editing program to convert it to an Edge Sketch. I used PicMonkey, of course. PicMonkey is a Shutterstock property, so a subscription includes access to a library of millions of royalty-free photos. 

Print your coloring page on good quality paper, then start coloring! I used Prismacolor colored pencils on Neenah Bristol Vellum. You can use the original photo as a guide for the colors, or you can color it any way you want. 

You could use this technique to make a coloring book of images from a special vacation or event. It would make a wonderful gift for anyone who loves to color. 

50 State Welcome Signs

I recently came across this video ranking the 50 state welcome signs and found it really interesting. 

I've never really given much consideration to state welcome signs as an adult. Knowing me, that is actually pretty surprising. The only time I can ever remember stopping and posing by one was when we entered North Dakota, our 50th state in 2023. When we drove into the other states, I've been far too focused on discovering what the Google Maps state welcome icon would be to look for the signs. Now that I know how awesome some of them are, I'm going to shift my focus away from the screen and find the signs. 

Updating the Website for St. Mark's Lutheran Church

After debuting the new logo for our church, it was time to begin an overhaul of the website. My fellow committee member (and friend) Ann and I have been working hard on this task. We are not done, but we've made enough progress that I wanted to share it here. 

As you can see below, the new website uses our brand colors and features our logo prominently. We replaced the 5+ fonts on the previous site with a single, easy-to-read san-serif (Verdana) on the new version. We moved the menu down, and used larger text and yellow buttons to make it easier to read. The buttons are rounded to give it a more warm and welcoming feel. 

I'm particularly happy with our new header. We tried a lot of different ways to incorporate the three logos (our own, the ELCA logo, and the Reconciling in Christ logo) and no matter what we did, it looked really crowded. The logos competed with each other until we shrunk down the ELCA logo and put it the address line, then added a line below that stating that we are an ELCA church. 

We've made updates to the pages as well, but most are not complete. We plan to add a bunch of photos, then fix the formatting and make some other tweaks. Stay tuned!