Summer Projects

The coolest thing about summer besides the warm weather (ha! pun!) and all the time you get to spend with your family, is all of the projects you can get done. Here is a fun list of all the things we got done this summer, that have been on our list for "like two years ago" (said in a french accent):

1) Painted the inside of the front door. I repainted the living room two years ago from a teal color to a tan color. The inside of the front door was a reddish color, and I wanted to repaint it white. I got as far as putting primer on it, when my friend Jessica and her dad came to visit. So I packed up all my painting stuff so that they could have a nice place to visit with me. Then I got pregnant. No paint fumes allowed. So for two years (one year of pregnancy and one year of baby), that darn door sat there with primer and no paint, including the green painters tape around the windows and door lock!!! It was so annoying. Now, it is properly painted white, and finally the green tape is gone!

I actually really loved the red door and blue walls; it had an artsy/beachy feel to it. But Charles always hated it, and in some lights of the day it didn't fit, (it was best in the early evenings), and the darker colors made the already small room seem smaller.

The biggest difference which you probably won't notice in the above photo, is that the windows have window sills and trim. They were just bull-nosed windows before Charles worked on them, which to me, was more fitting to a modern house than our 1930s bungalow.

2) Moved the fence in our driveway. Initially we built a tall, solid wood fence across our driveway to close off our backyard completely and to give us a small patio.

When we bought the house, there was a tiny picket fence across the driveway which offered no privacy at all. But when the girls got their fancy-schmancy swimming pool for their first birthday from dear friend Stephanie, we wanted to have a place to put it. Plus when we had parties, we found that the only shade was on the side of our house where the driveway was. So, Charles took down the first fence he built (and moved them to other places that needed protection from the girls), and built a new, even taller, gorgeous fence closer to the street. This gave us about 20x6 feet of additional real estate on our outdoor patio! When we first bought the house, the only windows that were completely private to our backyard were the bedroom window and our laundry room window. Now, all of the windows on three sides of our house look directly to parts of our backyard! Full privacy! The only drawback to the extra space is that we can now only park one car in our driveway, but since we had to park tandem, it wasn't really worth the hassle to move two cars and we always ended up parking on the street anyway. So it really wasn't much of a loss.

This is our patio. This was all we had before Charles moved the fence. The old fence used to be  from the edge of the house (on the right) across the field of vision in this photo. The old fence was re-purposed next to the garage (on the left of the photo) where we have storage that we don't want the girls getting into.

3) A Lawn! In addition to having a taped up front door, the backyard was another consequence of starting something and not being able to finish it.

Old back yard. With our newly paved driveway (it was gravel before) now acting as a patio, we really didn't have a need for a second patio out in the yard. Plus the sprinkler system was busted in the lawn.

Charles dug up the backyard patio and grass two years ago when we had planned to redesign it with better access to the house, getting rid of lots of random gravel pathways that were there (and only grew weeds), and changing the broken sprinkler system that was there.

Charles in his tractor.

But, when I became pregnant, that was put on hold as well due to money. So, we had half of our yard dug down 2 feet (for sprinklers) and the other half was at normal level (for the garden). Then follows a rainy season. 2 foot deep gargantuan hole + other yard at a high level + lots of rain = The Poltergeist swimming pool (as my brother Matt named it). Seriously. We had a board over some bricks from the driveway to our garage where we would "walk the plank" over a foot of water in order to get extra toilet paper....For two rainy seasons....It was miserable.

Putting in the new sprinkler system. Charles rented a trench digger for the trenches, but did all the other manual labor himself this summer.

So getting a sprinkler system that works, a beautiful (and smaller) lawn, plus a small flagstone walkway to the garage was a HUGE improvement that we accomplished this summer! We now enjoy so much time outside with the girls. It is safe for them to play outside, and fun for us to have them out there. We even got a sand table at the local thrift store that they use to play in outside on the lawn.

Rolling the dirt nice a flat.

Charles and I laid the sod ourselves. This is back-breaking work. If you are ever lucky enough to hire someone to do this for you, give them lots of water or Gatorade and thank them profusely!

You can see some of the rock borders Charles built on the left. Garden is starting to bloom in back.

We had extra sod, so we decided to use it for our side yard; a weird strip of land that was never used, but now is a "running pad" for the girls and connects our front lawn to our back.

4) A fence and arbor dividing the lawn from the garden.

We wanted the lawn to be a fun place for the girls to play, but at the same time, be a safe place to play. The lawn was definitely safe, but the garden area was not always safe. First of all, we have an entire brick patio stacked there from when we took it out to put our lawn in there. Second, there are lots of stakes and irrigation pipes, and tools that Charles uses in the gardening areas. Plus, we didn't want the girls to pick off leaves or fruits from the garden before they were ready. So, Charles borrowed a planer from a friend, and planed down some old fence boards we had from when we initially bought the house. We used those boards (now redwood showing instead of white) to form the new fence. Charles had to buy new wood for the fence and arbor posts, but that was about it. 

5) Plants and gardening.

Charles found some old shelves that used to be in our laundry room, and he hung them outside our windows to make a type of "window box." Then I put a lot of my smaller patio pots up on the shelves (as the girls were getting into them anyway), and va-va-voom! We've got plants outside our kitchen and living room windows!

This is the added "real estate" we got by moving the fence toward the street. We used to park our car here, but it is so narrow that it was always hard to get in and out. Plus we had to park tandem so one person always had to move their car. It was a pain. Now we have an outdoor play room!

6) Cook Book organization.
I have had recipes collecting forever in a binder with sheet protectors. But it was a pain to find recipes in there because there was no particular order to the recipes. Then my friend Erica showed me this recipe book she found at a thrift store, where there was an index in the front, alphabetically. Every time she added a new recipe, she would write in under the letter for that recipe (i.e., Peach Cobbler would go under "P"), then she would add it to the back of the book and then write the page number next to the entry in the index. How simple and brilliant! So I went through all my recipes. If it was a recipe that I tried but didn't like, I threw it out. If it was a recipe that I have had for over two years and hadn't tried it, I threw it out. If it was a recipe that was tried and we liked it, I put it into this system in my binder. This actually took about 4 hours total (to sort, and then write everything down), but it took me like four weeks to finish it because every time I tried to start it, I would get interrupted by the girls. Summer allowed me to finally finish this thing that has been on my list for years!!!

7) Pregnancy Photo Album
One of the things that is eternally on my list is making photo albums. I am really, really, really, bad at completing photo albums. I have grand ideas of how to start photo albums and I do start them, but I rarely finish them. It is a pet-peeve that I have about myself. I have about 4 photo albums that I have ideas to do but have not started. And about 6 that I have started and not finished. I can count two photo albums that i have actually finished: one is a photo album for Simon which included all of the hard copy photos I had of him, and one is a photo album of my trip to Texas with dear friends Jessica and Louanne. The only reason this one is finished is because we did it ON the trip together! So, when I was gifted a photo album for one of the showers, I decided it was going to be my pregnancy album, journaling the journey that I went through during that time and to document the support and love I received. I was able to complete this album (ummm... except for a few pictures I still need to print...tee-hee!) this summer! Seriously, it is like 90% done! And that is really good for me!

8) Mexico Photo Album
Three years ago, I took my first trip out of the country to Puerto Vallarta, with my friend Erica. We spent ten days there, a week of which was spent at school learning Spanish. It was a great time for me, perfect weather, great sites and food, and a great school community. It really helped me in my Spanish conversational skills to have to practice in the country. I couldn't get away with speaking English if I didn't know the words I wanted to say because sometimes it wouldn't work. And in school, they didn't allow us to speak in English. So you end up getting creative in what you are trying to say. Instead of saying "I wish I could have gotten that sweater," where I didn't remember the verb wish or know how to use different verb tenses, I would end up saying, "I hope I buy that thing sometime." A good time overall! ANYWAY! I finally put all those printed photos into an album as well. A huge feat for me! What I want to do to completely finish it is put in my journal entries and emails between Charles and I as the narration of the trip.

So, all in all, I feel like a lot got done! I love summer!

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER- should I paint the fence and arbor white to match the house trim? Or should I leave it redwood colored to match the fence and patio furniture?