Floor Pattern

Hi!

We had a good weekend.  The weather finally cleared and we had glorious sunshine! :-) DS spent the night at his Grampie's on Friday. (Grammy is still in ON.)  DD had 2 friends over after school Friday.  Then Saturday was spent picking up DS, running a few errands and movie night!

Sunday, I got to stay home and play!  HH took the kids to swimming, then DD had a birthday party to go to at the movies, so both kids stayed in town and Grampie brought them home after!

Here's what I did.  I drew a design on the front room floor.  I thought I should go ahead and get it painted before winter and before we get too used to using the front door.  The idea is from a Debbie Travis book I found at the library. I must check it out again to get some tips!

Here's to the right of the front door. I had to move some things around:

And here's to the left with the saw moved.  Beside the little stool is an angled board.  The board under the stool has to be removed for our angled wall  to go where the angled board is.  Then you'll notice another door leaning on the left.  That's where our closet will go with the 2 striped doors.  (Another project I'll be working on this week!)

Here's the left Before:

Here's standing at the front door looking to the right:

And here's the Before:

I also re-arranged the living room, but my pics aren't uploading....  I will have to add them later!

Here's the tv wall way Before:

Before:

And Now:

Here's the back from the kitchen way before:

Left

Right

Left

Before:

Right

And Now:

Left

Right

Have a great week! :-)

More Doors

So, what did we do this week? We hung 2 doors!  One to the front room (in the back of pic below) and one to the master bedroom (to the left) (DD's door is on the front right) This pic is from the kitchen looking into the hallway:

 Here's a closer look.  Notice we put up 3 glass blocks above that came from the old Dr. Pepper Factory in Dallas.  We bought them from a record store after they tore down the old building.  They used to be in a concrete/wood/glass block coffee table.  I'm so glad to use them again!

 Here's the door from the other side, from the front room:

Center

Left

Right

Here's our bedroom door from the bedroom:

And here's to the right of the outside front door, all set up for coats!

Have a great weekend! :-)

Side Chair

Wow! Put in one full day's work and have dreams you're in over your head!  Actually,  I woke last night and couldn't go back to sleep for what seemed like hours.  When I finally did go back to sleep I dreamed we had a giant house filled with other people's stuff.  One room was massive with 2 couches, a bunch of shelves, a weird sewing machine/embroiderer (?) and a lot of empty bottles.  I figured I could at least start by taking the bottles back for the deposit!  As I was looking around at the 20 foot ceilings and walls covered with a dark particle board paneling, that's when I thought, "Oh, no there's no way we're going to be able to do all this ourselves!"  And I also had the thought that our cottage now had been so do-able!  So, I guess that's good!  (HH and I were talking last night about how our little cottage has expanded so much and by doing it in stages has made it so much easier on us.  If we'd started out to build something so "big" it would've seemed too much!) Back to my dream, I noticed there were a bunch of Halloween decorations in a sort of hole in the floor.  I thought I could go thru them with the kids and we could put a few out.  But not too many because the house was a bit creepy.  Then I noticed a strange life-sized clown doll come to life and start coming into the room.  At this point I called out and HH woke me up!  AAHH!! Just after I'd fallen to sleep!  But I was able to go back to sleep again, although I did still wake a few more times before the alarm went off at 7:45!

Yesterday, Toast went well.  The new kindergarteners are cute! They're so little!  We had lots of volunteers, but it ran a little late, being the first day and all.  Then the kids had Art till 4:30, hence the full day's work!

So, I really got all dressed and ready to go walking, but it's just too cold and misty again!  I will try to finish up this post and hopefully the weather will be better.  Yes, it's another cold, rainy day! Again!  I'll be so glad to see the sun whenever it comes back.

 (Update: Yes I did my walk. It actually wasn't as cold as I thought, but so windy!)

Ok, onto my "old" project.  It's another old chair I re-upholstered!  I bought it at a garage sale in May 2011.  I'd stopped at it to maybe buy some wicker furniture, but it was too old and I got this chair instead:

Cute, huh?  But a little worn:

 Here's the back:

How shall I re-do it? With an old table cloth we sometimes use outside in the summer?

Sideways, with part of an old couch slipcover that I had to cut up because it had some stains on it?

Nope, still thinking.... But here' the back all torn apart:

And the front.  Good solid construction:

Here are all my notes so I'd know how to put it back together.  As you can kinda see I paid $10 for it! 

Here are the legs getting primed with Bullseye 123:

 And here's the chair today:

 It stays in DS's room.  (Isn't that a cute bear?  When I was first pregnant with DS, my dad sent that Vermont Teddy Bear to me wearing a little maternity top with a belly!  I thought it was sweet.  Since then, DS has had the bear. It used to wear a little LSU shirt, but then it got lost (or maybe put away for safe-keeping! ;-)). So,  that sweater came from a doll of DD's and it fit so it wears that now.) 

 Here's the side.  The fabric came from the roller blind covers I used in the kids' room when they shared. I had red yarn X's on the side to match DS's quilt and also pink rick-rack to match DD's quilt.  (I'll have to see if I can find some pics...)

And here's the back:

Now for the fun side by side:

:-)

Tasty Tuesday

Oh, I didn't want to go on a walk this morning!  It's another misty day and it's cool.  I had to wear my rain jacket, although no mittens!  The geese are overhead getting ready to fly south. I guess they just hang out on the ground during the summer. You don't see them much except in the fall or spring.

I'm not going to post lunches anymore.  It's too repetitive and I don't have anything really planned for this week anyway!

Here are the dinners for this week:

• Mon- Salmon in the skillet (my fav), potatoes, baked broccoli
• Tues- Tofu with Indian Spiced Sauce (125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes, pg 64) Frozen pitas and green beans
• Wed-Chicken Nuggets, Black Eyed Peas, Carrots
• Thurs-Baked Mac & Cheese, Peas
• Fri- Amy's Burritoes (easy dinner! HH will be in class) Pizza (DS gone, 2 friends of DD here)
• Sat- Pizza (another easy dinner with HH gone) Amy's Burritoes
• Sun- Creamy Corn Chowder (125 BVSCR, pg 55) biscuits, greens Leftovers (kids in town)

Here's last year's dinners:

• Mon- Chicken Nuggets
• Tues- Lasagna with Bechamel (HTCE pg 164)
• Wed- Chinese Out (MIL's birthday- she's headed to ON today, so won't be here this year for her bday)
• Thurs- Egg Sandwich
• Fri-Leftovers
• Sat- Pizza
• Sun- Stew

Tomorrow the breakfast program starts up at school. I call it "Toast".  I'll be helping out.  Plus Art Lessons start up again after school til 4:30.  A local artist teaches it.  DD said she didn't want to go because no one else in her class went last year.  I went ahead and registered her and haven't really mentioned it again since she doesn't have a choice to go!  She makes such nice art there!  DS is also signed up, but  he likes to go. And he makes nice art, too!

I'm going to get dinner started in the slow cooker, then I'm off to run errands.

:-)

Monday Mornin'!

Mornin!

I went on my walk this morning.  It was supposed to rain all day today and I was kinda hoping that I wouldn't have to go! ;-) However, the sun came out so I couldn't stay home!  It was actually misting on my way down to the PO, but not too bad.

We had a good weekend.  The kids started swimming lessons on Sunday.  DS is in level 4. His lesson is 50 minutes long from 11-11:50.  Then, DD, who is in level 2, starts at 12 for 30 minutes.  So, it's a nice long time at the pool!

I didn't do much work around the house this weekend.  It's so nice I have all week to do my "work" then I have the weekend off!  HH got some wiring done under the house.  When we moved the microwave and toaster oven to their new spot:

from their old spot by the back room: 

(DS's 10th Birthday!)

they were both plugged into the same extension cord!  We couldn't run both at the same time or they would blow a fuse!  HH fixed that problem so now they are plugged into actual wall plugs on 2 separate circuits. I can microwave and bake simultaneously!  Yay!  

Have a great week!  :-)

TGIF & Back Deck

Hi!  There's no school for the kiddos today, so I thought I might have to fight them for computer time! However, a last minute call to the grandparents and it's just as if the kids are in school!  We had a late start this morning, though.  It was nice for everybody to sleep in a bit.  DS and DD both have colds (back to school always brings new germs!) and DD got bit by a little yappy dog last night!  :-( She was at a friend's house and just before I was to pick her up, their dog grabbed the back of her pants by her calf and broke the skin and gave her a bruise!  She was pretty shaken up about it last night, but was fine this morning.  The friend's mom was quite apologetic and said they are going to have to give the dog back to wherever they got it because it's just been too unruly!

So, guess what I was working on outside... No, not the treehouse, but it's kinda related.  It's the back deck.  Here it is way back in 2008 before we added on the back room.  There's the old breezeway and screened room with the trellis. The old railing for the stairs is behind the red wagon.

Here's another view from the side.  There's my mom's little trailer!  We built the back room out to the deck.

Here is the same deck with the back room built out to it.  I realized most of the pictures I'd taken of the outside back room didn't include the deck.  Hence the pictures of the wingback chair and the dyed fabric.  The chair is actually sitting on a small 2 foot addition to we put on the deck sometime, but we can't remember when!

 So, back to the project!  DS needed more boards for his treehouse floor and we decided to use the deck boards since we were eventually going to replace it anyway.  Our long-term plan is to put a screened sunroom back there.  But for the meantime it now looks like this:

Here are some in progress pics.  The deck is gone and the old steps going down to the yard are just to the right of the door behind the grey chair. (Those steps are by the railing in the top 2 pics.) (Also, I found a big black toad under the deck! He (she?) hopped over to my parent's trailer. I hope he'll be happy over there!)

Here I've moved some patio stones over from our big pile in the back corner of the yard.  I didn't want to move too many as we will eventually have to move them again.  They are big 2'x2' stones and they are heavy! (When digging out the dirt I found a blue/black salamander, just under the dirt like a worm!  Unfortunately, my shovel cut it in half.  :-(  We've seen these before, but I didn't realize they went underground!)

 Trying to figure out how to make the path over to the trailer.

 Trying out some plants from the front temporary garden.

 Notice the bush in the righthand corner.  That's been there for so long! I had to dig it out to make both sides look the same width. Before the old deck stuck out on the left-hand side. I really wanted to even out both sides.

The bush is gone, but I still need one more patio stone on the right.

And here it is "finished" again:

Not sure what we'll do with the hill on the right.  The last patio stone is just balanced on an extra 6X6!  Not very safe!  I'm sure HH will safen it up before winter!  I still need to put some fill around the stones and maybe remove the last 2 6X6's from the old steps that are still in the ground. Also, the cinder block steps will have to be replaced!

Have a wonderful weekend! :-)