Hallway Progress, Painted Door & Plate Hanger

We made some progress in the hallway.  It all started because I painted C's door when she was away at camp.

Here's how it looked before, from the hall.

See the part to the right of the door with no drywall?

  

Here's the inside of C's door.  She's getting rid of some of her One Direction posters- She used to have a huge bigger-than-life sized Niall poster there!

Here's how it looks after.  So shiny and clean!

I also got up the last bit of crown moulding and drywall in C's room!

And here's the hall.  K had to finish up some wiring in the wall and put in some drywall backers and then I got to work with the drywall and putting up some pics.  

I also found how to make plate hanger so I was able to hang up the PEI plate that my mom used to have in her little trailer.

I realize I still have to mud, prime and paint, but I couldn't resist making it look pretty!  Plus, I'm all out of drywall mud... And I have to remember how I painted the top part of the wall.  I think it was just primer and then the light blue kinda drybrushed on... Anyway.  I was glad that I didn't have to buy any frames for the frame gallery.  I think I've finally used up all of them!

Have a great weekend! :-)

Tasty Thursday

Hi again!

C is back from camp.  She had a great time and cried because she wanted to go back.  She was pretty tired yesterday!

Here's our meals for the week.

• Mon- Rapur (an Acadian dish with shredded potatoes and pork.  K picked it up in Summerside), Broccoli, Frozen Pintos
• Tues- Leftovers
• Wed- Chicken Nuggets, Frozen Chicken Breast with Onions, Cauliflower, Carrots
• Thurs- Southwestern Baked Eggs
• Fri- Pizza
• Sat- Pasta
• Sun- K's Soup (?)

Enjoy the rest of your week! :-)

Monday Musings (And a Hall Closet)

Ah, the summer is flying by...

C is off to camp this year with one of her BFF's.  It's her first year to go and it's only for 3 nights.  Here's a pic of C and her friend in their room after they've unpacked their suitcases.

In other, not so exciting news, I got some work done on Thursday.  The kids were gone.  N was at sailing camp and C went sailing with K.

I needed a project to do, so I decided to tackle the "hidden" closet in the hallway.  It doesn't look like much, but I got it done. (Mostly.)

This closet is at the front end of the hall.  Here's a picture from the kitchen with the door open.

And here it is with the door closed.

Here's the inside space before.

It's hard to photograph, as it's only 2 feet wide by 3 feet deep.

I had to frame in the left hand wall, part of the back wall and the ceiling.  I put some leftover paneling from the old living room,

  (The paneling is in the above pic below the light blue wall)

on the ceiling and the back wall. 

Here's a view from the side of the closet taken from the front room.  The side wall will eventually be drywalled in the front room.

Now, tada!  Shelves to hold my totes full of Christmas Decor (3 totes) and Easter/Valentine's Day Decor (1 tote). 

Plus there's room in the front for the vacuum to fit right in. 

And some wrapping paper!

This closet is what I call the Linen Closet, because I always had in my mind that this is where the linens should go.  Before, they were neatly packed into one of the baskets under the bench in the kitchen.

Which was a fine place, although a little out of the way to get to (you had to move the table) especially when the kids were little and needed their sheets changed in the middle of the night or if someone gets sick and needs fresh sheets. I also had sheets in a suitcase above the washer/dryer.

So, this new arrangement is handy.  Here are the sheets- mostly pillowcases! And not that neatly folded - on the top shelf. That black thing below is the suitcase with more sheets.

So, I still have to paint the closet.  Maybe do something fun with the back of the plywood door... And finish the wall on the left, but I'm happy to have made a little progress on one of my projects! 

Have a great week! :-)

Tasty Wednesday

Hi!

We had a busy weekend- with C going to a party Sat and both C & N spending the night at their grandparents' on Sunday.  This meant N didn't have to get up so early to go to sailing school at 9:00 on Monday.  K takes him into town on his way to work, but he has to be there at 8:00, so they leave here about 7:30.  C had her friend from town sleep-over on Sunday night at her grandparents' (which I didn't realize) and then her friend came and spent the night here on Monday!

Here's our menu for this week.

• Mon- Rice Noodles, Carrots, Celery, Beets, Canned Salmon Thai Peanut Sauce (I used the recipe in the link, but used peanut butter and soy sauce instead of almond butter and tamari.  I didn't realize there was another Peanut Sauce recipe here.)
• Tues- Baked Whole Chicken, Raw Snow Peas, Pan-fried new potatoes, Summer Squash (Yellow Zucchini)
• Wed- Coconut Curry Red Lentil Soup (La Dolce Vegan pg 106), Broccoli
• Thurs- Moroccan Salmon, Cauliflower
• Fri- Pizza
• Sat- Southwestern Baked Eggs
• Sun- BBQ Hamburgers? (C to camp!) Scooters Dairy Bar

Enjoy the rest of your week! :-)

Front Porch Gable/Ceiling Styles Plus Playhouse Progress

Now that the bottom half of the front porch is getting done,

 it's time for the top part of the porch.  

Here are some inspiration photos.

From here

From here

From here

From here

As you can see, I'd like an arch on top! :-)

Oh, and guess what I did?  I painted 1/2 the porch rails without primer!  Oh, the horror!  For 1/2 of the porch (the left) I used the light blue paint+primer that I mentioned when we did the playhouse.  But then, I used it all up and started using the white paint+primer I had.  When I started using it, it seemed super thin compared to the blue, but I went on painting.  Well, it turns out, it was just Exterior Paint with no primer.  We'll see how it holds up.  I did about 3 coats.  I guess in a couple years I'll have to re-do it... Wah, wah!

In other news, we are moving the playhouse over towards the office.  You may have noticed this picture

in my post on Monday that the playhouse looks a bit crooked.  Well, it is! Because we were moving it.

Here's where it used to be.

Here it is mid-move.

And here's where it's gonna end up.  About where that white storm door is on the ground in the background.

Notice that tall plant in the garden?  It's spinach that grew from seeds from last years' spinach.  I also got lettuce to grow that way. I always find it interesting to see where things grow when you let them go to seed.  I never ate any of the spinach or lettuce from this year, I just enjoyed seeing them grow. 

 The playhouse is in a spot now that's leveled and C can play in it, but it still needs to be scooted over about 2 feet towards the office and back a bit.

In order to do this, I had to clear some of the old wild flower garden in front of the office. This is a picture from last year.

 The white flowers (that I guess are perennial as they seem to grow in the same place every year) are staying, but I transplanted some pretty flowers over to the fence behind where the playhouse used to go.

The rest of the dirt, where our junk used to be by the fence and where the playhouse used to be,  I've planted with grass seed.

I also leveled out a little hill of dirt by the corner of the office.

And I pulled up the random spinach and lettuce from the garden. It didn't do that great there and we're not really having a garden this year.

Plus, I moved some of the junk behind the playhouse over to the side of the office to consolidate our junk.

(Man, we have a lot of junk!)
Here's a picture from the front, back in May.


Now I've just got one more area of screen doors/ windows/plywood junk over on the pond side fence.

(See the white daisies? :-))
We want to move that fence forward (in the fall?) and use the windows in the treehouse, so I may leave that there for now.

My MIL got the Magnetic Screen Door (as seen on tv) for the playhouse door.

The other screen we were using was a bit cumbersome as you had to velcro it shut.

That's all the junky news for now!  Have a great weekend! :-)

P.S.
Here are some pics of C when we went for our bike ride on Wednesday.  It was fun!

Riding the bike trail by the Summerside Harbour.

Using the exercise equipment.

The view at the end of the trail!

:-)

Tasty Tuesday

Hi!

I've got to get used to more driving around this summer.  During the school year, I usually only go to town (Summerside, about 25 min away) once a week for my shopping.  Sometimes twice a week, if I have to take the kids to their grandparents' or swimming or somewhere.  This week I'll be going at least 3 times!  Oh, goodness! ;-)  I went on Sunday to the Garden Show, yesterday for shopping, and today to bike ride and pick up a few extra things I forgot yesterday (like salt for Kimchee. The grocery store had Napa cabbage so I got 2, thinking I had everything at home to make the Kimchee, but I don't have salt which I need for soaking the cabbage.) and for bike riding with C because yesterday K had the bike rack in his trunk so we couldn't go.  I guess all this driving around is good because it means the kids (& I) are busy and not bored sitting around at home.

Ok, here's the menu plan for the week.

• Mon- Rigatone Pasta with Tuna & Tomatoes
• Tues- Beef (+ Lentils) Tacos
• Wed- Cod, Fresh Corn on the Cob, New Potatoes
• Thurs- Classic Tuscan Beans (All About Vegetarian Cooking pg 85), Rice
• Fri- Pizza ?
• Sat- Frittata
• Sun- Soup

Enjoy the rest of your week! :-)

Weekend Stuff

Hi!

Here are a couple pics from last weekend.  

N with the pilot he flew with at COPA.

N & C at Victoria by the Sea by PEI's largest tree!

N got back from camp on Friday and had a great time.  Today he starts sailing camp.

Yesterday my FIL's garden was featured in a Garden Tour.

Here are some of the visitors.

Here is my MIL with the wine and cheese table in the garage.

These are people walking around getting a tour.

We had a tropical storm (Arthur) blow through on Saturday.  We got a lot of wind, but not too much rain.  In the background you can see a pretty big branch that fell from our neighbor's tree.

 And here's another that fell over our side fence.  

Other than that, and some leaves and sticks on the ground, we made out ok.  Some places had their electricity out for the night!  (Including our church which was without power during the service on Sunday.)

Have a great week! :-)

Paint, Paint and more Paint

Hi!

Summer has gotten off to a great productive start.  N is at camp this week, so C decided to paint the playhouse.  Here's how it looked before.  

It came to us a barn red (maybe 6 years ago) and I spruced it up with some leftover paint from our old red front door.  

Here's how it looked inside.  There's a broken green chair and a yellow chair and plastic patio table on the back left side.

Here's looking up to the little loft on the front left.

The right front side.

And a kitchen set on the right back.

 Plus, I stored the fire pit in there last winter and there was soot, dirt, spiders, etc.  Yuck. 

I cleaned it up, put screens on the windows, made little curtains from leftover fabric, and put in the leftover vinyl flooring from our bathroom.  C put a little bed out there. Here's how it looks inside now.

This is the left back.

  Left front.

 Right back.

 Right front.

C picked a super bright green to paint the outside (CIL Ext. Latex Satin with built in primer- Crayon Green from Canadian Tire) and had a friend over to help her start painting.

We bought 1 quart of paint because I remembered that's how much we had for the door, but the back never got done.  I figured that would be enough paint for the front and the sides and we'd just do the back another color.

However, it became apparent that bright green over dark red, would need more than one coat.  In order to stretch the paint I added white.  C was very upset about this because you can see below on the side, it turned out yellow.

(See all the junk in the yard?  That all came from inside the playhouse!)

So, since Tuesday was a holiday- Happy Canada Day!- we waited til Wednesday to go back to the store to get another can of paint.  I only wish I'd thought this thru because I could've used some old exterior light blue paint + primer for the base coat and then I think we could've gotten away with one quart.  

Here's how it's looking with the 2nd coat on the front. 

Here's a close-up of the window screen.

So, what else did I paint?  The breezeway windows! (They also got caulked.)

Here's the before.

And the way before.

I like how the breezeway windows sorta match the windows and door on the back of the house. 

Should I put window boxes under the breezeway windows? 

Notice we have the pool out.  We're thinking we might need a bigger one!  It's been really hot the last few days- up to 29C (85F) with a humidex of 36C (97F).

  Meanwhile, in the front there's more painting going on!

I touched up the shed trim.

Here's how it looked before.

Then I decided to go ahead and paint the front trim (? Is that what you call the rails, spindles, etc?).

Anyway, because I had a shellac based primer to seal knots, I started with that.  Here is the spotty primer look.

 I also caulked the seams on the corner posts. 

Here's how it looks all painted.

And here's how it looked last fall!

Much more welcoming now!

Lotsa painting going on!!  Enjoy the rest of your week! :-)