Kids Pump Track

Our entire last few weeks consisted of working on the bike track and smoothing out the rest of the lawn. Progress shots:

The top part started to get some shaping and packing after a good rain and a lot of tamping.

 Here's a view from the top. It's kind of hard to see but you get the idea.

Yard Plans

Sometimes, when Cameron is away on business trips I keep busy by drawing and planning. Here is what I've been working on:

This is the plans for the new cleared lot. The aerial view looks good but I'm trying to figure out lots of the little real life details. This is what I still need to figure out:

1. What kind of ground cover I will use between berries, bike track, and fruit trees. Our current lawn is Bermuda which of course is really aggressive so I won't be using that. I'm leaning towards Fescue right now because it looks good. But some other possibilities I'm thinking about for ground cover are are mulch, gravel, or a spreading perennial (i.e. wooly thyme).

2. What fence we will use around the garden. I would love, love, love to fence the whole yard and quit with all the individual fences but we found out to built a permanent fence to code around here it would have to slice through almost half the new lot- which would ruin all the plans.  Right now there are no trees up front and since it will be a while even after planting trees until we have full privacy I would like the fence to look nice. I love black fences because they sort of disappear from far away. And they just look better. It has to be deer, rabbit, armadillo, and groundhog proof!

For inside the garden in the paths, I decided to do a combination of gravel and bricks.  This is my inspiration picture.

 I'm pretty sure I will still do cedar raised beds, then bricks to edge the gravel. I couldn't find a picture of exactly what I'm going for but I know what it will look like in my head.

I feel really far away from the finished product but we are making some progress. Top soil got dumped last week.

Here is is after the kids ran all up and down it!

We have our work cut out for us!!!

And the painting continues!-- The shed

The good painting weather is still on! Friday I started painting the shed during Noelle's nap in what I thought would be a quick job. Note to self, get the right paint roller for the job. The shed is heavily textured which I knew but the thicker rollers for that are more pricey and I got the smaller one. It took too long and I got a good arm workout from pressing so hard.

Before and afters:

 Before

 After

 Before- Note the door. It wouldn't ever shut without considerable force and lifting. Cameron fixed it and put new trim on.

 After

 

 Before

After

Trim is Behr- Alabaster and Shed color is Behr- Mossy Oak. 

This is the last painting project for a little while. I'm so burned out!

The Painted Deck (Finally!)

One of our first projects when we moved in was fixing the deck so it was safe for kids. Fast forward to almost two years later and we finally painted it. The weather has been better for painting and I couldn't stand the deck the way it was any longer.

I spend 3 hours scrubbing the dirt off the deck and the mold off the posts (since it took us so long to paint that part). I just used TSP, bleach, and water.  That was Thursday night. Friday I went to Sherwin Williams to get "Super Deck" paint so I could paint it all Saturday. The guy was nice enough to tell me of an upcoming sale with 40%off all paints. So I had it mixed up and waited to pick it up one week later when the sale was on. The only trick after that was keeping the deck clean for a week after all that hard scrubbing. It stayed pretty clean but on Friday I had Cameron power wash it off just get the last of the dirt off.

On to the good part, pictures...

 Here is a before. It looked so horrible!

 The boys earned some play money by helping.

Before and Afters:

 Before

 After. I had it color matched to Behr's "Mossy Oak". We are going to paint our house the same color soon. Its a little darker and warmer than what is on their now.

 Before

 After

 Before

 After

 

Before

 After. You can see the test color on the house. 

 Before

 After

I don't know how we lasted so long the way it was. Cameron was sitting behind me on the couch as I was uploading these pictures and saying how disgusting it looked. He was so used to it, he didn't notice how bad it was. I was like yeah, we had a birthday party for Kian and had people over and it looked like that. And he was like "oh nooo!"

I'm kind of glad he realized that, because I'm always the only one who is embarrassed about the condition of the house! Only 247 projects to go until it's not embarrassing anymore :)

Garden Update- August

 {Whoops! I wrote this post last month and realized I never posted. Better late than never!}

The kids have affectionately started calling the garden the "Garden Jungle". And rightly so, as it literally has become a sea of overgrown green plants.

 As you may remember, I was going to experiment growing pumpkin up a trellis. Truth be told, it grew too well as it took over the entire garden. Well that and pumpkins just take up a ton of space. I recently cut it all back but took these pictures prior to that.

 My sweet potatoes decided to run a muck as well but I use sweet potatoes all the time so I don't have the heart to cut them out of my aisles. I hope I get a bunch!

(They are in the back bed in this picture)
Now you can see why garden #2 is necessary. I like to grow too many things.

Here's one of the pumpkins. They stay green and have been pretty squash bug resistant.

I planted this bed of raspberries this year and they are producing now. They really need a trellis but with the million other projects we have, we haven't built one yet.

The kids eat them as fast as they come!

And it was all yellow

I've been waiting until the perfect painting weather came along to paint our front door. A few weeks ago, it was time! I normally would try 5 swatches of paint to test but I knew I wanted yellow and I not a super bright yellow. I went with more of a buttercream yellow that I saw on the "Exterior House Colors" book for Behr at Home Depot.

We took the door off and I painted over the previous blue color with four thin coats. The we flipped it over and painted the other side too. It was at this point that I started to freak out because it was way too light. Cam told me to wait till we got it reattached to the door then decide if we need to get a darker yellow (more like a gold). It actually got too cold and the paint wouldn't dry as fast as we needed to get the door back on so we could sleep. Consequently, we moved the door into the garage and I blow dried it dry, then added the last coat.

Cam put the door on and that was a whole other story. Long story short, the door is steel and when he had it propped up against the wall it tipped over and feel into the opposite wall leaving a HUGE hole in the sheet rock and chipping the light switch. We patched it up but you can still see it in the photos.

 Here's the interior door with old floors and baseboards

 Here it is new baseboards and door trim. 

And here is the after. I ended up liking the color on the interior. The color is called "Early Harvest" by Behr. We just spray painted door knob, lock, and hinges and oil rubbed bronze.

 Here's the exterior right before painting.

And here it is now. Cam was right, once we got it up the color looked darker and better with the house than I thought. Whew. I love it now!

Dining Room- baseboards and pictures

 Here's another way before picture. Dining room is in the same room as the living

Here wall paper is off and popcorn ceiling gone.

 Here it is now. We are on the hunt for a table/ thinking about making our own. I'm not sure what we will do yet. I have a new fixture in mind for the ceiling but I'm waiting for the table first. Pictures on the left are recent portraits of the kids and their baby pictures underneath. The frames were just cheap $3 front load ones from Walmart. I'm happy with how they look for that cheap! As you can see in the photo we still need to finish up the corner baseboard that goes into the kitchen. I painted the windowsill in here too.

On the opposite wall I have a print from a favorite artist, who I also got to take a workshop from, Mike Malm. It's small but I love it.