Category Archives: house stuff

Sidewalk Chalk & Landscaping

We’ve been tearing up some of the landscaping in our front yard, so it’s been a good reason to get the kiddos outside now that the sun hasn’t been blistering hot. I’m making a note that our next house has to have an entrance that doesn’t have full afternoon sun, or at the very least it has to have some kind of porch or overhang so that you don’t have to wear a glove to open the front door.

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Anyhoo. We’ve just always been more play on the deck types because the deck is right off the kitchen and provides an enclosed area where we don’t have to keep a close eye on the toddler. However, since we’re trying to move a ton of rocks from the front landscaping to replace with mulch, it’s a slow process (mostly for Josh), but it was a nice day so I took the kids outside to watch him and to play with sidewalk chalk.

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Enzo obviously loves sidewalk chalk, and Phoebe would love to just stick it in her mouth… like my shoe. Whoops. (Don’t worry, I immediately moved my foot when I realized she was really going to go to town if I let her).

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She also insisted on tasting the driveway as well.

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Thankfully Enzo is past the stage of putting everything in his mouth so coloring with crayons and chalk is a lot more fun. He had me write their names and draw different shapes, which is thankfully all he asked for because that’s really the extent of my drawing capabilities.

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Now that we’ve finally reached that time of year where the air is going to start feeling more and more like Fall, we should probably take advantage of these nice weekends we have left.  At the very least we have to get all of the shrubs with invasive roots pulled and areas prepped for bulb planting (which I’ve never done, so let’s hope that goes better than the rest of my failed gardening this year).

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Enjoying the deck.

Weather in Minnesota this year has been… interesting.  Winter seemed to drag, and we’ve been getting so much rain.  I haven’t taken any pictures of the flooding, but we’ve definitely had to take several detours so far.  It’s hard to complain about having too much water when other parts of the country are going through droughts… it’s really too bad we couldn’t just share. Aside from rain, we have had some really nice days, and we’re making good use of our deck considering playing in the yard hasn’t been much of an option because of the amount of mosquitoes. I think we’re going to have to call someone and just have the yard sprayed because it’s getting kind of ridiculous.

(Before plants)

(Before plants)

Anyhoo, we have been able to take advantage of the deck, and are really glad we decided to get a larger table and umbrella for the space. Enzo still has plenty of room to run around, and it’s nice to have the option to eat outside.  At the very least, having the umbrella means we can easily sit with Phoebe so that she can watch her brother splash around in his water table and not have to worry about putting sunscreen on her. Since she’s sitting up so well, we can probably see about just putting a blanket outside for her too.  Our old deck didn’t have a lot of room, but we had a little tent that we’d put Enzo in if we were out on the grass.  Granted, when we tried that with Phoebe earlier in the year, a TON of gnats got inside anyway.  Definitely thinking about spraying.

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Daddy’s Little Helper

We recently bought a cheap love seat (from IKEA, of course) for our upstairs living room… more like play room, and this weekend Josh and Enzo put it together.

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As hard as this age can sometimes be, I do also love it because Enzo gets so excited about so many new things, and he definitely wanted to help his daddy put together the new couch.

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Granted, you still have to watch him fairly close because for some reason every new thing has to go into his mouth, like bolts, washers, etc.  And even when he spits it out and makes yuck face… he’ll still put it back in.  Toddlers.

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Even though Josh could have finished much more quickly on his own, he was very patient and let Enzo help him put bolts in the holes and since we’ve been working with Enzo on “Please” and “Thank You” a bit, when Josh began putting together Baby Girl’s crib later on in the day, he would hand each bolt/screw to Josh and say, “Tank Ooo.”  Pretty much the cutest thing ever.

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Perhaps we should get this kid a play tool set or something since he’s been eyeballing the real ones all week, and has thrown a tantrum or two when denied the hammer or measuring tape.  With the walls painted, we’ve been trying to get things in order around the house now – I think I’ve hit the nesting stage or something because I haven’t been this productive in… well, it’s been a while. We won’t dwell on just how long. 😉

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Raffia Cream, Surfer and Indian Paintbrush

I wonder who gets to come up with paint color names… it seems like such an easy gig, but in reality, I don’t think I could be nearly that creative.

So, the before pictures are really just to show the old colors… which is why you see corners and not big room pictures of the present disarray our house is in. 😉

PaintBefore1

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And now, here is the awesome.  We still have to finish getting furniture in place, but aren’t the colors pretty (not that the camera and evening lighting really do it justice).

PaintAfter1  PaintAfter2

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Week 26

Well, aside from one active little mover and shaker, not much else is new as far as Baby Girl goes. We are, however, getting closer to starting on her room. Today we had painters come and paint our entryway/living room/dining room/kitchen and we’ll have them come back and do the bedrooms and bathrooms.  While we could probably do the bedrooms and bathrooms ourselves… we decided to spend the extra money to save on time and sanity otherwise we’d have to paint when Enzo is asleep and we’d be lucky if we got one room done a weekend – if that, with the way things tend to work.  Plus, this way we spend fewer days amongst paint fumes and it’ll take painters 1 day rather than the several weeks it would take us.

 Week 26

I’m really excited to make the house look more like ours and even more excited to get the kids’ rooms all decorated.  Eventually we’ll probably repaint the office downstairs and the guest/game room, but for now we’ll leave them as is.   I’ll post the before and after shots later… hopefully I can get the books back on shelves for the after shots, but it’s really more about the color of the walls than the décor, right? 😉