Summer Fun!!

Usually when I think "summer fun" I think of: swimming, popsicles, road trips, s'mores, lots of sunshine, going to the playground, things like that...and while we've done a lot of those things, our summer has been a different kind of fun - and BUSY. First, we took our deck out. What a job! It had to go because it wasn't built very well so it was coming apart at the seams (literally), and it wasn't connected to a door in the house - in other words, you had to go outside, through the grass and up the stairs to get to it. We really want a deck that is just straight out our back door instead. Here it is before we did anything:

I also took out all those bushes! YAY! They were too big and took up so much of the yard space. I was very pleasantly surprised when I was able to get all of the stumps out by myself. (I think Will was too.)

This is what we had left...

ALL THAT WOOD!!! Okay, so, maybe it wasn't the best wood. Perhaps it was a little soft here and there, a little warped, and cracked in some spots. But I could never let all that wood go to waste! I got some wood filler, wood glue, and rotten wood repair and went to work. 2 weeks later I have this:

Isn't she beautiful? We have been in need of an outdoor seating space for...well, forever, so I thought, why not? I already have 4 other things I'm planning on making with all this old wood, so stay tuned! Oh, and don't mind the nasty looking grass. Fixing the sprinkler system is on the to-do list...

We've been spending a lot of time outside, even when I'm NOT working on fixing wood or building picnic tables.

The other day we made bear cookies. Ben doesn't look too happy, but he had a lot of fun putting M&Ms all over his bear face.

Floating Shelves

I've seen a LOT of open and floating shelves in kitchens lately, and I kinda love them, as long as it's not the entire kitchen (those look a little "busy" to me). I decided to make some for myself! This part of my kitchen really needed some love. It was so boring and...well, empty. Ever since we moved in, I've been itching to do something with it. More specifically, put up a window treatment and some floating shelves. IKEA has some similar, very inexpensive shelves, but unfortunately I needed very specific sizes here, so making it was the only way to go.

Here is the before picture, complete with my mess:

And here are the first set of shelves up (get the tutorial here if you want to see how I did it, they are actually really simple to make!):

Yes...if you look out the window, you can see our neighbors' perfectly landscaped backyard, and our huge pile of brush in our not-landscaped-at-all backyard. One day, that will be cleaned up. One day.

Here they are! I think they balance out the kitchen very nicely. They have a few rough edges because I hate sanding (who doesn't??), but overall they turned out exactly how I pictured them. Now I just need to decorate them. The best part!