Flowers

Okay. I am the first to admit that i am not a Gardner. I do not have a green thumb. But while working on the electrical stuff this weekend i got a little bored/frustrated. That and Josh was gone for 4 days and that always seems to be the best time to start numerous projects. Simply because no one is here to stop me or say i should wait. Or to say that we should only do one project at a time-even though i know that's true.
But while taking a little break from wiring i went out onto our deck to enjoy the warm, beautiful weather we were having. I looked down and immediately thought, i can do better. So i grabbed the boys and we went to Viola's, our local nursery.
Um . . . i got a little carried away i guess? Though i am going to go back next week and grab some annuals for more color. Almost everything i bought will bloom-or is about to bloom. Even the pansy's are perennials. The cedar chips smell so nice and added the perfect finishing touch, well, the scalloped border also helped.
What can i say, i use to work at a floral store. Naturally i wanted flowers at my own home! Now i'm just excited to see what it will look like in a month when everything really starts to grow and spread. And who knows, maybe very soon i'll do another one of our flower beds. For really having no experience i thought i did pretty good. Oh, and Josh said he really likes it-though he thinks i should probably stop watching HGTV and reading Better Homes and Gardens for a little while. I can't help myself!

Say Hello to the new Mrs. Handy!

I did it! I couldn't take it another day. This was the sad state of most of our outlets in our living room/dining room. There are several reasons i hated these outlets so much: 1) they are safety hazards. 2) i have an unrealistic fear that there are thousands of spiders living in the walls of my home, and this is how they get inside so they can sneak up on me and either (a) parachute from the ceiling so they can bite me on my head (b) hide in dark places on the floor and then run out and bite me as i walk by (c) start crawling up my arm has i'm watching a movie late at night or (d) crawl into my mouth while i am sleeping at night. *the average person swallows 3 spiders a year while they are sleeping* and 3) they are simply ugly and hideous to look at.


So i called my favorite father-in-law (aka Jim, Josh's dad, "Chef" Pond, Da). Da came over last week and walked me through the steps on how to replace the plugs then left me to do my dirty work. Can i just say that he is amazing for taking the time to help me! I cut the old plugs out of the wall. Cut a larger hole for the blue safety box, re-wired a new plug, added the face plate and made sure everything was level. The result? Awesome-ness!!


The old plugs were really old. Almost every time i used the plug whatever was plugged into it would fall out. This was especially annoying during vacuuming. Not to forget to mention that this was one of those unfinished projects i mentioned a couple weeks ago that i just hated. But now the plugs fit into the sockets so snuggly. Nothing falls out, no sockets are dangling from the wall, and no spiders are going to get through.

I am now feeling especially accomplished and like i can fix anything. I started my handy work on our garden this weekend and will be hopefully finishing that up today. It makes me feel so good to look around and see things coming together before my eyes. I feel even better that i was able to do these things with my own hands.

Wonder what next weeks project will be . . .

Hating Something I Love

Sorry to rant for what i fear will be a long time, but i really need a few moments to De-stress and share some frustrations. I am actually really embarrassed to post these photos, but at the moment i just want to cry-scream-punch holes in walls-and start a major demolition project. These projects have built up since we bought our home 4 years ago. Some are little things that we were going to fix from the start, others are major changes that life decided we needed to manage, and a very small amount are self-inflicted unfinished projects. To help keep my sanity for what i fear is a long time still, i need to release some steam in fear that i will explode if i don't. Just let me say first that I love my home. It is perfect for me and my family. But i hate the ever accumulating projects that are piling up.

And so to start, the latest disaster . . . yes, it's my bathroom floor. I know what you must be thinking. "That's disgusting!" I couldn't agree more; really. This happened about a month ago. One, or both, of our boys put too much toilet paper in their toilet causing it to overflow. Lucky for me, i grabbed the plunger out of my bathroom and dashed into theirs and stopped the overflow before a huge mess was made. After cleaning the little mess i went to my bathroom to put away the plunger. As i stepped nearer and nearer to my bathroom i began to hear the sound of water running. Yes, the kids plumbing pipes run towards my bathroom before leaving the house. The result of their overflowing? Mine overflowing. I whipped the door open to find a chunky brown river coming out of my toilet. It took me 10 minutes to get this river to stop flowing. Then another hour before the toilet water went down enough to plunge. I was furious that Josh was working that day, chunky rivers are something i can barely stomach.

To top it all off, one of the previous owners put carpet in our bathroom. I HATE carpet in bathrooms, mostly for this reason. Due to our chunky river, i had to pull up the saturated carpet right away and get it out of the house. So i spent several hours ripping up the carpet, and the nail board, and the base boards, and the nails and staples that held the carpet and foam in place. And then another couple hours Scrubbing everything the chunky river had gotten to and more. EEWWwwwww!!!!!

The result? We now need a bathroom overhaul. We have to redo the base floor because it's uneven, we can't even lay linoleum down because of this. So we'll rebuild the floor and lay tile. As you can see, the really old vanity is attached to the floor. This has to be ripped out because the chunky river ran under it (i can't pull it out yet, i cringe to think what's under it), and then replaced. And our toilet hasn't worked right since the flood, so that needs to come out and be replaced as well. But what happens when 1) there's no money, and 2) there's no time?

If this was all, i think i'd be okay. Of course, it's not. The only doors in the house that close and have trim are the closet doors. The laundry room floor had to be partially torn up and redone due to a bad washing machine (the machine at least was replaced a month after it died). That happened over a year ago and we still have plywood covered by rugs in our laundry room, and we haven't been able to replace the damaged dry wall yet. Then there's also the shower head in my bathroom with the patch job around it that's been falling off since before we bought our house. The ugly wall paper in the kids bathroom that Cody started to peel off about 2 years ago. The numerous holes in the walls and doors that have also been there since before we purchased the house. And then the projects we haven't finished yet, like covering the outlets with covers - that project started a year and a half ago. (The picture is not upside down, the plugs are put in that way for fire safety)

I really just want to cry. There are nights when i would sacrifice all the chocolate in the world to have a nice bathroom. You know, when you can take a relaxing bath and when you get out your not thinking of how to avoid your floor? The bath you get to take with a locking door - keeping all kids from entering as they desire? Or to take a shower without constantly worrying that a spider is going to leap from the failing patch job.

I would love to do laundry without getting splinters in my feet. I would love to have a bedroom door that closes, and a bathroom door that closes for guests to use. Heck, i would love to replace all the doors in my home with working doors! I would love to have my outlets covered so i wouldn't have to worry about my kids electrocuting themselves.

Someday, instead of having to buy a new washer we can fix the floor. Someday, instead of having to repair a car we can redo our bathroom. Someday, instead of medical bills we can replace doors. Someday, instead of no time, there will be time. Someday, Josh and i will get to spend more than 1 day a month together so we can work on projects.

Someday . . . yea, someday.