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!

Cabin Fever...

The last week and a half I've been dealing with a couple of REALLY sick kids...I'm pretty sure it was the flu, which I am annoyed that they had to get now, because flu season is over. We're supposed to be doing fun summer things, not being sick with the flu. *pouty face*

The kids literally lay on the couch (or in bed) for a week straight and just cried, coughed and cried. They both had fevers up to 105 at some point or another - when Ben had his we took him to the doctor, but when Kaylee had hers we were able to get it down quickly ourselves so it wasn't as big of a deal. Guys, it was terrible. I went the whole week with 3 or less hours of sleep every night. One night I was up until 6am without any sleep. It really felt like having a newborn again! And then all day long was spent getting drinks, medicine, blankets, fans, moving kids around, holding kids, putting on movies, cleaning up vomit, and trying to calm them down. There was also one night where Will was gone until 2:30am for work. He worked a 20 hour day, I was exhausted from the kids, and we were both just zombies.

As you can imagine, by the end of this I had some pretty awful cabin fever. To the point where I start yelling at everyone in my family for breathing, or looking at me. (Think I'm kidding? Unfortunately I'm not.) But I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, so I had to come up with something. There is something about little home projects that is sort of like my own personal therapy, so of course that's what I did.

Our outdoor light had been bugging me for a while (like, ever since we moved in). I assumed we would just replace it eventually, but you know I'm all about updating anything I can spending the least amount of money! So here's what I did:

I took it all apart, cleaned it, sanded it, primed it with a spray primer, and then used a black satin enamel for the finish coat. Oh, and I painted our numbers too, as you can see. That wasn't quite as big of a deal though, no tiny screws and glass plates involved there.

Aaaaand I didn't have to buy a single thing for it. It really looks like a brand new light fixture! Yay!

Now the kids are feeling better, I'm feeling less zombie-ish, and hopefully life will be back to normal soon. :)

Aquarium Visit

On Monday, we all went to the aquarium downtown, along with Will's dad and sister, and her family. It was fun! I wasn't sure about it because I'm not a huge fan of zoos and the like (I find them a bit tedious I guess) but I had fun with the kids. We got there a few minutes before everyone else, so we took a little walk and looked for a good place to take a picture of the Denver skyline. It didn't go so well finding a great spot, but it was a fun walk anyway. Someday I'll find just the right place...

So here is a bit of a photo dump from our adventure. Sorry a lot of the pictures from the aquarium are a bit grainy - a place full of water, glass, and sensitive fish is not the best place for flash pictures, so I had to make do with what little light there was (not to mention wiggly kids - tough combo there). Also, getting any pictures of the kid's faces was difficult, they were kind of mesmerized by the fish. Which I didn't mind at all.

After the aquarium, we went out to eat at a little Mexican place close by, and after that we headed home to work on our landscaping. This is the "before" picture.

We've only done a little bit (like taken out a bush or two) but we have big plans. They're going to take a while, so don't get too anxious to see it. ;)

My current decorating dilemma.

What color to paint the door? Black, light teal (not the turquoise that is slapped on there, much much lighter), something else? I refuse to do white, I want to do something fun. My living room colors are, or will be, teal and yellow. Eventually the blue couches will be swapped with lighter, smaller furniture, but that won't happen for a while. The door is probably going to have some sort of sheer curtain on it, too...

PS Isn't my drum shade chandelier awesome? It's a hundred times better than the old glass thing we had.

Ben's Birthday

I am so excited my little guy is 2! He...

- Is learning new words every single day, and he's starting to put a couple of words together.
- Sleeps well at night and *usually* takes a 2-3 hour nap. It's lovely to have a child that still naps at 2. Hopefully we can keep it going for a while yet.
- Started potty training a little bit and he's doing great, but not quite ready to give up diapers, which is totally fine with me. I'm really happy with the progress he's already made.
- Makes a ridiculously loud squealing noise when he's mad and it makes everyone cringe.
- Loves to give people hugs and kisses.
- Is very good at jumping, climbing, and balancing. When he runs it's more like he's skipping, and his tongue is almost always hanging out when he does it. It's hilarious!
- Loves to play with balls, trucks, cars, and trains, and anything with water, dirt, or sand (or all three).
- Is pretty much always dirty. Whether it's food, dirt, or some other substance ;), he is always dirty.
- Can count to three, and say a lot of the alphabet, but not in order!
- Has really started with the tantrums, but luckily for me they're usually very short-lived. He's really good when I reason with him and often seems to understand when I tell him it's not okay to scream at Mommy. (Or Daddy, or Lowes, or the cat, or the toy, etc.) But his favorite word is still "NO!!!"
- Knows the colors blue, yellow, and green, and gets REALLY excited about anything yellow.

This kid cracks us all up and it's so awesome to have him in our family!

His backhoe toy plays a song when you push a button, and every time he hears it he jumps up and down in circles.

I made him a train cake!! It was a pain, but it turned out okay. I never feel like I'm very good at making cakes, but that's alright ;) If you've ever tried it's REALLY hard to frost cut sides of a cake...unless you do it right, which apparently I did not...but I managed I guess. It was just a lot harder than I think it could have been.

                                                                                                            Cake zombie!

Project: Sink cabinet

When we moved into our house there was one thing in particular that was bugging me - the cabinet floor underneath the kitchen sink was warped and nasty. It was nothing like our old house sink, but it was musty, and it was getting really obnoxious to try to put cleaning supplies and things down there - they would all fall on top of each other from the warping. And it was just, yucky. I hated putting anything down there, and forget any real organization. I considered cleaning it, but every time I thought about it, I changed my mind. It was beyond help - there comes a point when something is simply not worth the effort of cleaning.

Anyway, it was one of those things I kept telling myself "Eh, we'll get around to it eventually." Yesterday, I opened the cupboard and decided that I was going to fix it. Boom. Just like that. Will came home for lunch right when I had emptied the cupboard out and was watching a youtube video about it. I asked him where the jigsaw and sawzall were, and he found them for me, ate lunch and went back to work. He didn't even seem remotely concerned, and I think I'll just take that as a compliment.


Step 1:

I took out the old wood! It was really easy to get out. I drilled a couple of holes, cut it with a hand saw and a jig saw, and at the end I just used a hammer because the wood was literally falling apart. It popped out on all the edges, but it doesn't always do that. Sometimes the wood continues all the way through to the next cupboard, and you have to cut it along the edge as neatly as you can. In our old house we used a sawzall for that part, luckily I didn't need it this time. (Those are one of the scarier kinds of saws, in my opinion...)

Step 2:
I cleaned everything up, wiped it down with bleach and then painted Kilz oil primer on the subfloor. This was more of a precaution than anything else. There was no visible mold, but it smelled mildew-y and had some stains.

Step 3:
Set up the base supports. I needed the supports to be 6 inches up from the sub floor, so I used six 2x4 pieces that were 6 inches long and put them in every corner and in the middle front and back. I also made a "beam" that went down the middle, for extra support. The six 6" pieces I used a bit of wood glue to attach them to the sides, and for the beam I didn't use anything to attach it, it just sits in the middle. It was pretty sturdy without any fasteners, and that way if I need to later, it'll be super easy to take out! You can see from the picture it's just two 2x4 32" pieces, with three 3" pieces of 2x4, put in vertically in between the two boards. I used countersunk screws to put it together.

Step 4:
I measured all the way across the cabinet, and divided it by two. I used a circular saw to cut the boards to the right width, and then length. I measured from the cabinet side wall to the plumbing fixtures (there were two - the hot and the cold pipes) and used the jigsaw to cut holes for the plumbing. I cut it out so the hole actually goes all the way to the back of the cabinet, like a U shape in the wood. It's pretty small and since it's way in the back, it's not a big deal to me. It may or may not be possible to detach the plumbing and feed it through a hole, but I wasn't about to mess with that - just not worth the time, for me.
After I had them all cut, it was just a matter of fitting them in and making little changes where they were needed. When they fit nicely, I put white contact paper on for protection and ease of cleaning. After I had them both set in place, I put another strip on contact paper over the seam in the middle. That way if it leaks under the sink, if we catch it relatively quickly it'll be very easy to clean up. And that's all! It took me about 4 1/2 hours from start to finish. It was a really satisfying project. Now I can finally have my cleaning supplies in a non gross area, and hey, I might even decide to do some organization now, too. Although, that part is debatable. ;)