Pics of my girls and around the 'Farm'

That's Bugg, aka Haillee Bugg

That's Emma Lou, who's now 9 years plus 2.

A week of progress

I started off the week staining the deck.

A while back I bought a can of 'Oops' deck stain to do this with.

I am now regretting not having bought BOTH cans that were on the 'Oops' shelf that day.

My advice to anyone doing this, get at least 2 cans.

"After"s will be forthcoming

Wednesday was SA Day, and I picked up a few small things that I started to work on today:

A Handy Dandy bill organizer.  It is going to be black, with distressing with red showing through

Red is on

I do not have alot of jewelry, nor do I have much 'good' jewelry, but what I do have is meaningful to me, so I picked this up so that my jewelry can be detangled from the boxes it all resides in 

This is going to be off white, with distressing to show a little green underneath, in keeping with our Master Bath

Around the front of the house, I have been painting some lattice to dress up the bottom of all our entry porches

Lattice will go all around the bottom edge of the side entry [above], as well as under the front entry porch [below] to clean this up.  I also bought some stain to do those porch decks.

I did get these front porch steps stained:

Not bad for 'Oops' eh?  Very close match to the shutters.

And I have enough to do the side/Mud Room entry porch as well.

Finally, out front I put in this brick sidewalk a few years ago when I was tired of everyone walking on a dirt path and dragging mud into the house.  I am hopeful that this year we can reset the walk, and add some height to the pad in front of the stairs.  This way you will walk up the walk, step up onto the pad, and then the steps will be easier to navigate [builder set them too high off the ground] to step up onto the porch.

So it's been a fairly productive week.  I also made it to audit some lessons with a BNT [Big Name Trainer] of Dressage... and it was a mix of sad [Yo and I could do that!] and energizing.  

Yo had his Spring shots yesterday and only got a slight tummy ache afterwards and I did not have to sleep at the barn holding his hoof.  

His 27th Birthday is Monday.  Lots of pics of him enjoying his carrot cake muffins will be posted for all to enjoy.

Linking to:

jennifer rizzo

http://www.jenniferrizzo.com

I'm baaaaack.... again

It's been a while, how are you all?


Things are pretty much the same-same here... general chaos, dealing with shizzle that is not mine, but I have to deal with it anyway [a long personal story I will not bore you with]..... and FINALLY I have back my handy sander!!!

I am so excited at the projects we have waiting to do, or just completed, check 'em out:


We have what they call a 'Bonus Space' over our garage and mud/laundry room.   Why is it called a Bonus Space?  We planned it as part of the house design, and we paid for it.  There is no BONUS to this, really.  *shrug*

This space is in transition to be a 2nd family room/guest suite.

Here it is now:

On the left is the North facing dormer.  It faces the front of the house

On the right is the South facing dormer, this is where I plan my future desk/office space

The main portion of the room

On the left you an see a little of the wall that is the main entrance up a back staircase from the Mud room.

Where I am standing to take these pictures is just out of the Master Bath door into this room.  There's a 5' or 6' wide by 15' area behind the stairwell that will become the 2nd master walk-in closet that will be off the bathroom.  

Just past that 'soon to be Master Closet' is an area of about 10' x 10', along the stairwell wall, that someday I would like to make a bath for the 'Bonus Space' .

Yup, there's alot'a stuff in there

It's about 550 sq ft of empty wasted space.  Since it is the last room to 'do' in the house I insisted I wanted to wait until I could do it 'right', meaning with my wide plank pine floors I wanted throughout the house.  Well, I got it, sorta'...  and my only other comment on this floor is 'be careful what you wish for'.

8" wide plank pine, DIY style.

I consider us lucky to have gotten many lengths of over 14', and then these shorter lengths of 4' and 6'.

We were supposed to install this the 2nd half of the just-ended-yesterday Spring Break.  

We spent the 1st half at 'home' visiting my family [Awe-Some!!!], but then when we got back home we spent way too much time, energy and sweat cleaning my MIL rental that had supposedly had professional cleaning done to it.  After 5 college aged guys residing in it for the last 2 years, then a flood... and someone waxed the no-wax vinyl floor... well, there went the 2nd half of our vacation, and the time to do my floor.  Boo!

I digress....

Here are some projects around the house we did accomplish:

This is my half bath, which was a victim of my 'beadboard wallpaper is the greatest thing that must adorn every wall in the house' illness.  I wallpapered the upper portion of the walls:

We added trim molding to the bottom edge of that beadboard wallpaper to finish it:

It looks just like I wanted it to, but it sure is hard to get a good pic in such a small space.

The other victim of the 'beadboard wallpaper is the greatest thing that must adorn every wall in the house' illness was the 2nd bath.  I papered the bottom half of the wall opposite the vanity with it:

I had always meant to add some wood trim to the top of the wallpaper, and it is finally done:

here's a shot from the doorway looking in the mirror over the vanity.

It came out just as I had hoped it would.

The next  things on the 'to do' list are:

- stain the deck

- rearrange the family room

- lay the 'Bonus Space' floor [there's a long story there believe it or not]

- drywall the 'Bonus Space'

- add a wall to the Bonus space to define the master closet

- install hanging rods to the 2nd Master Closet

I also bought a 'birdhouse' to paint a la MacKenzie Childs, but I want to get a few more to do as gifts:

MacKenzie-Childs birdhouses available at Neiman Marcus

... and have my headboard to finish and a bunch of small projects to finish up to sell this summer to raise funds for the horse rescue I volunteer with.  Garage Sales season is here, and we need to raise some money!

Linking to:

jennifer rizzo

http://www.jenniferrizzo.com