Boys' room - sneak peek

A quick before and after. 

Trim being installed!

Now I just need to paint the trim around the windows and floor. Goodbye tan! 

Closet number two

I forgot to take a true before picture.  Imagine that their is a makeshift shelf (see the boards to the right of the closet) that is laid across the side shelves.  And imagine that they put a short little clothing rack under it (nailed to the wall with different size nails, of course, because nothing is done properly in this house).  For a while I thought about leaving the lower shelves so the boys could hang up their own clothes, but it just took up too much space.  So I gutted the closet and started from what it used to be.  

Here is a picture of the gross, tan side shelves.  

And a picture of the closet once I removed all the makeshift shelves and patched the holes in the wall. 

After:

Shelves painted bright white. 

Top painted white. 

Bottom painted a custom green (it was from a can of lime green paint from my sister's bathroom that I added some blue and black to). 

Two days. Three ceilings.

Room 1:

Before - Everything covered in plastic.  

Also, everything removed from the room.  

After - WHITE CEILINGS!!!!

They make me so happy. 

Here is a teaser of what is to come in the boys' room.  The bottom is going to be a light blue and the top a dark blue. 

**We still have to caulk the molding and finish drywalling where the wall heaters came off before painting anymore. (Those are Jared jobs - I am not good at either - but our water heater broke this weekend and he spent most of the day replacing that and putting in a dryer vent, so he gets a pass). 

Room 2:

Before - guest room --> soon to be the baby's room

Plastic covering everything and stuff NOT moved out of the room. 

After - WHITE CEILINGS!!!

The walls are going to be a pale pale pale pink (or a pink tinted white). I cut in the boarders today and it is going to be so fresh and clean in there. 

Room 3:

I didn't get a good picture of the boys' current room. But I did paint the ceilings today. Yay! I didn't take out any of the furniture or make them clean it first and I covered about half the room in plastic.  I got braver as I went along with the ceiling painting.  

Before and After:

Banish the tan from the house!

Paint jobs to do:

1. Baby's closet
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

2. Baby's Room
(Off white, pinkish hue)

3. Boys' Room
(two tone, dark blue up top, light blue on bottom)

4. Boys' ClosetFinished: July 3rd

(I want to do something fun like lime green)

5. Guest Room
(no ideas yet)

6. Hallway
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

Possible jobs:
(all the ceilings are still TAN, but who is brave enough to paint a popcorn ceiling?  Me! I was brave enough)

7. Ceiling in Baby's RoomFinished: July 5th

8. Ceiling in Boys' Room

Finished: July 6th

9. Ceiling in Guest Room

Finished: July 6th

New windows

(new on left, old on right)

(Jared working on removing an old window)

We installed new windows in all the windows.  It took about a month to finish removing the old ones (and metal frames), install the new ones, insult around them, and trim them out.  Now they just need to be painted!!!

We would have loved to keep the ones that we had, but they were falling apart.  If the previous owner had painted them and kept them up, then we would have made them work.  However, they were rotting and the glass panes were falling out. These new ones are so much more airtight! Yay! I will miss the frost on the windows in the winter though... 

Picture of the front of the house coming sometime. 

(I really want to paint the front door now)

Painting List for Before Baby Comes

(I kind of like the wood trim - I wish they hadn't painted every other piece of wood trim with that horrible tan color that everything in the house is painted)

Paint jobs to do:

1. Baby's closet
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

2. Baby's Room
(Off white, pinkish hue)

3. Boys' Room
(two tone, dark blue up top, light blue on bottom)

4. Boys' Closet
(I want to do something fun like lime green)

5. Guest Room
(no ideas yet)

6. Hallway
Finished: June 29th
(Linen Ruffle - leftover from various painting jobs)

Possible jobs:
(all the ceilings are still TAN, but who is brave enough to paint a popcorn ceiling?)

7. Ceiling in Baby's Room

8. Ceiling in Boys' Room

9. Ceiling in Guest Room

New porch lights

We did hang these new porch lights. 

So much better than these yellow ones. 

Now if it will just not rain on Saturday. 

Ps. We ordered new windows this week. We will get them in two or three weeks and start replacing them one or two at a time. Hooray for easy to clean windows and lower humidity inside because they don’t leak!! 

Porch - slow going

We haven’t really done much because it has rained or we have had plans the last two

Saturdays. Until the porch roof is fixed we can finish the rest of the porch. Oh well. It is getting lots of use.  And we did cut down the big Camilla that was in the way of traffic and ugly. We left the little ones at it’s base and hope to shape them into something better.  You can see where we cleaned out the floor beds and sort of made an estimated start of a path (we will get stepping stones eventually). And we moved the fire pit! Which just flows so much better now and is out of the way from the boys running down the hill. 

I’m loving my grill right off the porch. It is just turned around now so I don’t have to walk out th door of the porch and in the yard. I don’t even need shoes now. And the old

Doorway is the perfect size for the grill pad. Otherwise that piece of concrete looks a bit out of place. 

In other news, the weather has been gorgeous on days not named Saturday. 

And we have spent plenty of time outside walking around the zoo and park. 

And some trails nearby. 

And climbing trees. 

Yay for spring and 50-60 degree weather! It is my favorite. 

Planter boxes and mud

Today we bought tomatoes and peppers for half the boxes. They are color coded with the popsicle sticks. Yellow for cherry tomatoes, red for tomatoes, green for peppers.  The other halves have some garlic that had sprouted over the winter (so why not try to grow it) and some wildflowers (a mix, black eyed Susans, and zinnias). The boys and I planted those last week. Their endurance in gardening is about as much as filling the boxes with dirt. They are enthusiastic, but lacking in endurance. They have to start somewhere. 

We spend most of all day outside. The weather recently has been amazing. I should take them to a park or the zoo or the trails, but they have so much fun running around in the yard and digging in the dirt. 

They are usually covered in dirt by the end of the day and they leave muddy footprints all over the house. Oh well. It is good for their immune systems. 

But this is why the mudroom is the first big project on the list. Maybe next summer... Maybe. This year it is reroof the porch and replace the windows. 

Back porch update #3

I didn't do any of the work this weekend on the porch. But the walls are gone. Thursday night I stepped off a kitchen chair the wrong way and all my weight came down on my right ankle which was sideways. It swelled up a lot, but after a few days of resting it and keeping it mostly up, it seems to be on the mend. 

Here is where the planter boxes will be. The wood for them is sitting on the porch waiting for this weekend! The boys have been waiting since Christmas for this. The older two received real tools and we told them this would be one of their projects. My dad helped Martin build that birdhouse for his birthday. 

Unfortunately we won't be able to open the roof up and have exposed beams. They built the porch oddly, like everything we get into in our house. There are four layers of the ceiling before you get to the rafters. It just doesn't make sense to tear that much stuff out. So it stays... For now. 

It feels so much better out there! We are going to paint everything and finish the posts more decorative. Jared is working on repairing the roof and rotting soffit. And the light we get it the back room now is incredible! I don't need a lamp to read anymore. Hooray hooray for natural light!!!

A little before and after

It is going to look a little top heavy without the top being opened up too. What is that giant roof sections doing balanced on those tiny poles?  But it is better that before. And we will actually use it now. Hopefully when we paint it and finish the posts it will add some weight to the bottom half. 

Oh yeah. It needs new lightning fixtures too. I wanted to tear of the old ones and use that switch as a ceiling fan with the open ceiling. Now we aren't sure yet. That will be one of the last changes. Functional this first. 

Porch inspiration

This is the photo I sent Jared that finally convinced both of us to take the walls off the porch.

Porch update -day 2

So much light!!

I can't wait for a warmer day to be able to sit in the shade while the boys run around. It is a chilly 40°F today and I'm out basking in the sun to warm up. 

So much light!! 

House (yard) project

For two years we have debated the gate of the porch. We never use it. When the boys are in the yard I can't see them from the porch and the exit is on the wrong side to be convenient. Oh, and one corner is rotting so we have to take that wall down and either rebuild it or leave it open. 

And it just ends up being a place to store our stroller and trash that needs to go to the dump. A friend gave us porch furniture this year and we still haven't used it. 

My vote is to tear the walls and low ceiling down, but leave the roof. Expose the rafters. Hang the lights back up and maybe a ceiling fan.  Another project this spring is to put planter boxes (raised beds) around the the ugly septic lids (next to James in the picture on the right). And if we tore down the walls of the porch we could spill out to pick tomatoes and peppers and herbs from the raised beds. The fire pit is in front on the septic lids and eventually we could tie it into the porch and raised beds and make the area all flow as one. 

So it was the first beautiful day of March and the boys got tools for christmas and I let them have at it.  We almost finished the first wall today (I know, it is the shortest one, but you have to start somewhere). Next up, to take my lights down and see what is in that ceiling. Please, don't have any squirrels or racoons living up there. 

There you have it. The fun projects for the spring. The other one is replace all the windows in the house, which isn't quite as exciting. 

Quilt - finished

How is it February?  I think I missed the entire month of January.  And I just realized that I never posted a picture of my finished quilt.  What a cliff-hanger. 

Here it is!  My brother and his wife were staying down the street at my parent's house the week of Christmas.  So we had to go hide in the back yard on Christmas eve to snap a few pictures of the quilt.  It was cold.  And I forgot to get a picture of the back. 

(and there is my foot and fingertips)

I've never done a sampler quilt before. It was a lot of fun mixing and matching.  And towards the end it was super mathematical/patterny.  I loved it.  I did a lot of figuring out how to use a bunch of scraps up and how to make sure all the blocks were balanced and had a bit of each color. It was a super fun experiment, but also exhausting.  I don't think I'll be making a quilt again in just a month for a while.   But it was fun to quilt again. I miss just sewing for fun.   

(oh look, there is my arm)

I ended up wrapping the seat covers in the old peach crate.  Did I tell you all about my cool peach crates? I bought a bunch from a farm that my siblings used to work for and I have all sorts of cool ideas for how to use them. They are really neat. 

And here is my little brother and his lovely wife opening their quilt. I'm kind of in love with this quilt.  Which is a good thing since I used up almost all of my favorite cream dot fabric on it.  The rest of the fabrics that I used are interesting, but I would have never picked any of them off the bolt.  Some of them are down-right ugly.  But that is the great thing about quilting - together they all look incredible.  

(my parents ordered the quilt on the wall off of eBay - I didn't make it)

Colds

No more Mitten, Morman, and Meems (Warbie's name for everyone).
Now they are Arnie and Ames.
Meem's is finally starting to talk and it is super entertaining.

A cold has hit our house. Everyone is pretty jolly, but we are all moving a bit slower than normal. I'm always thankful for health when we don't have it and I'm grateful we aren't more sick.

I'm also thankful for all these little boys. They are a joy to be around (most of the time).

Some projects

The past few weekends we've been prepping the boys' walls for painting. They should be finished Saturday!! Then on to paint. We've been staring at so many blues and greys. I circled our top choice currently. If it isn't right I'll paint over it. I wanted grey on the bottom, but this light blue has been my top choice the whole.time. I never found a grey I liked as much. 

That will be fun to finally finish. 

Our cushions were getting a bit dingy. So I sewed some new covers from some samples my mother-in-law gave me. Thanks, Cindy! Yes. They are all different sizes because I measured once and cut and messed up the size of two of them. Oh, well. 

At the store we found a music box cookie canister for $1. We ate the cookies. The metal canister is now Warbie's bank. And after doing all sorts of sound experiments on the music box part, the boys took out their tools and dissected it. There were gears and springs and wheels and all sorts of fun things. Unfortunately it was rivited in a few places and so it didn't go back together. 

And look at this cool rocking horse I won at a local charity auction. It snowed the night of the auction and we spent much of the next day outside and the next day. But the horse has had lots of love. We are currently rainy Prince Caspian and the boys are making swords and bow and arrows and riding the horse. 

Books finished: 8 so far

2018 - book 60

Pages: 167

One of our friends lent this to us and we really enjoyed reading this each day during December. It is a fun little story about a boy trying to find his family and in his quest finding the savior born in Bethlehem. Some of his adventures are a little unbelievable... but it is a fun story and they had to keep you interested for all 25 days. The boys loved it. We look forward to reading the other three in the series and adding in a bit more study of history and traditions of the times. The boys asked why they weren’t driving a car... :)

2018 - book 59

Still loving this series. 

Did anyone else realize that Moses went up on the mountain three times and came down each time and shared a message to the Israelites and THEN went back up to get the ten commandments? Somehow I missed those first three trips. 

I also appreciated the reminder to keep the ten commandments in the context of everything else that God says around them in the chapters before and after. And I appreciated that they were given to people that were already redeemed and delivered. They aren't rules to earn our deliverance. God had already done that and he has already done that in our lives. That section was especially.good. 

2018 - book 52

Listened to the Jesus Storybook Bible twice through.
7 hours

I cried a few times. David Suchet does an incredible job of reading the stories.  I really appreciated the overarching message when I listened to the thing straight through (kind of like when I read larger chunks of the Bible and whole books of the Bible in one sitting).

Originally I borrowed it from Hoopla through the library, but we liked it so much that I bought it. So expect to see this show up a few times each year.