Little Helpers...Big Changes

 I've wanted to change the color of our feature wall in our living room for quite some time now. If you know me, you know that I love love love changing our house around. I would love to actually move every few years just for the change, but out of respect for my husbands sanity, I get my "fix" by switching around rooms, painting walls, re-doing the landscaping in the yard, etc.

Just before Christmas, like the tree was up and everything, I convinced Jeff to move our computer desk to a different room, so this left a big open space in our living room. After re-arranging the furniture in that room, I noticed some areas where the paint on this wall had chipped off. Since I didn't have any paint to left to do touch ups I had to repaint the wall. Oh darn. :)

Friday was my last free weekday before starting winter semester, so I enlisted the help of these cuties while the littlest one took a nap. They actually did really well. No major spills or mishaps.

 The finished product plus two cute little ladies.

Extending the Patio & Sprinklers

I am so so so glad to finally have this project checked off our to-do list. The awning went up two years ago. We extended the awning past where the patio came to an end with plans to extend the patio to the edge of the awning at some point.

Prepping the area for the extended patio.

Concrete poured. Then the rain came--reason for the tarps.

The lawn drops down a bit from where the patio was, so we decided to put in some stairs on the side. I think they turned out great!

 

 We also (FINALLY) had sprinklers installed in the back yard. So very glad we don't have to water by hand. It was hard to get used to it though. There were several nights when I started to head out, then remembered that I didn't have to.

We finished off the transformation with rock. I am looking forward to our plants getting bigger.

Awwww Awning

We've wanted to put an awing over our back patio since the first summer in our house and we finally did just that this past Saturday. The back of our house faces West, so we get the full afternoon sun. In the summer, we become vampires, closing all our curtains in order to keep the house somewhat cool. 

I think Jeff finally got sick of my whining. He recruited a few people to help, including his uncle Dave, who was the real expert in the whole process. We (I mean Jeff) couldn't have done it without his knowledge! We owe Dave BIG time for all his help.

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 Underneath side, which we will eventually cover with something that will look better.

 Cooper

 Mason, who we found out is afraid of heights.

 Bill and Jeff, roofing the awning.

In the end, we decided to extend the awning past our patio and will most likely make our patio bigger next summer, as we've realized the size our our current one is not quite big enough.

All that's left to do is the underneath side of the awning to make it pretty and add stone or brick to each post.

Shiloh and Kinley's new room.

 For those of you who are friends with Jeff on Facebook, some of these pictures will be a repeat for you. 

We began framing in our loft back in January. Jeff and Bill, our brother in law, did most of the work on Saturdays. I am happy to say the project is FINALLY done and Shiloh has been sleeping in her and Kinley's new room for almost a week now. More importantly, there were no serious injuries during construction. Jeff only got shocked and had a small piece of drywall fall on his head. I think there may have been a few other minor injuries in there somewhere, but I can't remember. All I know is, Jeff had something happen to him every time they'd work on the room. It became quite the joke during construction time.

Framing:

 

Wiring:

 Drywall:

 

   

 Mad and tape:

  

Texture:

 

 

 Priming the walls:

 Painting the walls:

 

Closet rod and shelf:

Painting the inside of the room all girly:

The finished product:

 

 

 

We will be getting a bunk bed to go on this wall soon too.

Crafty-ness

 Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a Super Vinyl Saturday my friend put on. I made this really cute count down to Christmas out of wood blocks, paint, scrapbook paper, and vinyl letters/numbers. I love it and am so happy with the results.

My latest project around the house has been this wall. After getting new family pictures done, I knew I needed to re-do this wall. I added a few more bigger pictures, painted a few wood frames black, made the "Borders Family" sign with vinyl, as well as the 13th article of faith subway art with vinyl. I am loving how it all turned out!

Earth Day

Earth Day is a funny holiday to me. Don't get me wrong, I am not a planet hating, oil spilling, littering fool by any means. Why do we set aside one day a year to do something good for our planet? Shouldn't we be doing good things for our planet every day? Recycling? Not littering? Picking up garbage we find?

Anyhow, we did do something good for our planet, not because it was Earth Day, but because there were some good sales and we had to take advantage of that!

So thanks to Earth Day sales we got an Autumn Blaze Maple tree for our back yard. They are suppose to be fast growers, hopefully that is true, we could really use some shade in the summer time.

Here it is! The boys were so excited that they got to help plant it.

This is what the Autumn Blaze Maple will look like eventually.


Also, Lowes (where we got the Maple tree) was offering a free tree, so we got that one too. It is just a seedling, so we recycled the plastic container the Maple tree came in and put the seedling in it. See I do love our planet, I recycled the plastic container. The seedling is a European Larch and will spend the next year in the planter. Then we will have to figure out where we what it. It will most likely go in the back yard to give us even more shade.

Here it is in it seedling glory.And here is what the European Larch will look like all grown up.

Oh and we have an extra European Larch seedling if anyone wants it, just let me know and it's yours!

Shelf

We have had this shelf for quite some time now. It is part of our computer desk and file cabinet set. When we moved into our house, we painted our night stands and now use them as end tables in our living room. So this shelf became Jeff's night stand until we got our bedroom set this last February. Since February this shelf has sat in our spare room, empty and unloved. Yesterday I cleaned out a bin of pictures and other misc. things Jeff used to have in his office at work. I figured out that I had enough books, pictures and other things that I could display them on the shelf. Now the shelf sits in the room with the computer in it. I am really happy with the results and I've always thought that the spot I put it in needed something there.

The funny thing is that I don't think Jeff noticed it yesterday when he got home from work. I guess being away from home for 14 hours can make you a bit oblivious to everything around you.

Garage Shelf

Right now we have six houses being built on our block. After the framers are completely done Jeff goes over to their big garbage pile and finds perfectly good 2'x6's (if you don't mind if the wood is bowed and has a few nails in it). He has also found whole and partial pieces of ply wood. Jeff figured that if he "dumpster dived" after the framers were done with each house, he would soon have enough wood to build a shelf in our garage. Plus we had lots of left-over screws from other miscellaneous projects. So today he built this shelf (with help from the professionals, me, Mason and Cooper of course). The only things we had to buy were 8 joist hangers and 1 box of 4 1/2" screws, which cost us just under $15.00!!! Doesn't it look awesome! Jeff did a great job! Thanks Jeff.

Play set extravaganza!

Every time we go to Costco, Mason begs to go look at the play set they have set up. He sits in the cart and drools over the play set, much like adult men do over hot rods, until I push the cart away from the play set (with lots of whining of course).

I really liked the play set, but HATED the price. We looked around for another, cheaper play set, but were disappointed at how cheaply made they all were. We found the same exact play set they sell at Costco at Spokane Discount, for much, much, less. So, we bought it last week.

Saturday morning we began the process of putting the set together. The instructions stated that it would take 18 hours to assemble, if only person is doing it with one adult helper. Jeff and I worked on it together for about 14 hours, Jared and Michelle came over and helped for 6 hours and Michael came over for 5 hours. And we STILL have a few hours of work left to do.

3 1/2 hours in5 hours in
6 1/2 hours in
Ethan helping out
messy Cooper
Mason man and his mommy
12 hours in

I wanted to post another picture of our progress made last night, but my camera is not working at the moment, thanks to a little boy with the name Mason...

hopefully the carmera will be working when we get the play set all done, so I can post a picture of the final product.