Day 117: Yard work day

I woke up a little before 7:00am, which is good because I set my alarm early so I could get to the market early, but I forgot to think that I had my alarm to only go off M-F. Either way, it didn’t matter. I picked up breakfast, a few things for dinner tomorrow, soap and herbs for planting today.

After breakfast, the entire family headed out for the flowers. Mac took James to look at other things, and Ada and I wandered through the flowers. She did well to stay near me and to not pick the flowers. She did keep taking dirt out of various pots that we passed and putting it in the pots we had picked out.

It was already time for lunch when we returned, so we ate again, and then I set out to get flowers planted with Ada’s help. She did pretty well. She saw me do my herbs first, which come in the pots you can plant. She kept carrying all the pots from one bed to another, trying to push them in the dirt. She had her tiny trowel, and moved dirt from one planter to another to a bed. And then I brought out the watering can so she could water. I got most of the front yard finished.

Mac and I got to go out tonight. As Mac called it, “First Date Night of the Year.” It may have been, actually. He took me to see the new Ewan McGregor movie. It wasn’t that phenomenal, but we were able to leave the house. Without children. Next time we have this opportunity, I say we do food and drinks.

Time for bed. I’ll have to proofread this tomorrow. Or not at all. *Yawn*

We have unfinished storage underneath our stairs, and I really wanted to hinge the stairs to turn it into a door, so you go in the storage closet, crawl underneath the stairs, then lift them up and crawl out. Mac doesn’t seem to like any of my house projects. He turned down my idea of hiding a skeleton in the walls when he finished the big storage area which is now our office. He didn’t like my idea to paint ciphers on the sides of the trim and hiding the key to decrypt it somewhere in the house (preferably with the skeleton in the wall of the office). I did get to paint stick figures inside a vent when painting a wall^*. I just need to finish my stick figure story by painting more in the rest of the vents.

One thing that would be not only cool, but useful, would be staircase drawers.

Our house is a total mess. We have kitchen stuff stashed in the dining room and living room.

So, back to work so we can get things back in order.

Oh–7 days until StuDay^TM!

Holy cow! I’m thrilled!

Also, along with all the other home improvement tools we have picked up, we are the proud owners of an appliance dolly. As Mac was told when he was loading it up to bring it home, we are now everyone’s best friend.

Range! W00t!

We also have the first coat of paint almost done*. I was worried about us painting over the wall paper when in fact the previous owners already have done that. The entire kitchen was at one time covered in that hideous blue wall paper.

We have a new light fixture for the area by the refrigerator. We did a test stain of the inside of one of the cabinet doors. It looks great, so we are going to take all the doors off and start sanding and staining. We bought new door pulls, light switch covers and outlet covers. We just need the new sink, faucet, laminate and to figure out what we are going to do with the tile. Will we get this all done before Christmas?

Oh, we also bought the paint for our bathroom and walk-in closet. I bought new closet organizers awhile back, so we will tear out the old one, paint and put up the new.

Ah…new toys…

Now, though, I must go to bed. I cannot wait until the stove gets here.

We went to Home Depot this evening for some tools and took Ada with us. She was good almost whole time! That’s another first. We also looked briefly at faucets. I’ve already picked out the new sink, but not the faucet. We are also thinking about replacing the countertop. Well, after we cut into it for the refrigerator and the stove, we may have to replace the countertop. I was drooling over the granite ones, but I don’t really want to spend that much money for this house. The appliances we can take with us, but not the countertops. I picked up some laminate samples while we were there. They had a lot of choices. Laminate has come a long way.

Mac has been working all day Saturday and now has to leave Sunday afternoon for another week in Vegas. I have to work Sunday as well. Our chosen careers don’t always mesh so well for having a child. Ada will have to spend about 7 hours tomorrow with her aunt and uncle.

Slowly, we will get the house in shape.