our new fence

The fence fell down along one side of our house. Matt and his dad replaced it this weekend with this beauty. They do some nice work!

after

My friend Lisa accidentally saw our (not visitor ready) bedroom because Cam had an emergency and needed to use our bathroom. Our room gets cleaned up every couple-ish weeks and then is a mess within a few days. Basically, I'm great at doing our laundry but horrible at putting it away and it's a vicious cycle for me. Anyway, Lisa got inspired to help me get organized so she came back that same night that she saw the disaster zone and we got to work. I forgot to take a 'before' picture, but I'm not sure I would've shared it anyway, so no big deal.

Here's the after:

The 'before' closet had baskets on the floor that were moved up to the shelf after I realized I could put away about 75% of the stuff because it was either seasonal or the wrong size. I also now have 3 bags of clothes to donate and an empty storage box that I have yet to decide what to do with. I also wasn't using the hanging shelf (it was the other direction as sort of a divider between our closets). And some other stuff may have found its way in there as well that needed to find a different home.

The bummer with all of this is I now see how many clothes I actually wear and that I only love about 3 things... Oh well, now I know.

Thanks Lisa! You should do this for a living. : )

our house just got bigger

We decided to take down our pellet stove safety fence today! It makes our living room feel so much roomier - it's awesome!

We put it up when Andrew was a baby and by the time he was old enough to be safe, Mason was on the way so we just left it up. Mason fully understands 'hot', so we're good! Yay!!

hutch

The day we put an offer on our house, there were two things I instantly knew I wanted to do if we got it. One was to paint the outside of our house (not done yet, mainly because it was freshly painted before we moved in, I'm just not a fan of the color) and the other was to get a hutch or buffet table for the kitchen (not done until this weekend, mainly because they're crazy expensive!).

Before:

After:

And now for the fine details of why it's so lovely, other than the fact that it's pretty:

1. We saved $650!

2. I finally have a place for my rad "D" plates

3. And a place for this platter

4. And a place for all of our large bulky serving dishes

I love it!

the money pit

Last spring we had to decide if we should re-side our shed or buy a new one. After seeing how much those suckers cost, Matt decided to re-side it.

This is Andrew enjoying our strawberry plants in front of the shed. You can't really tell in this picture, but the siding was rotting out. It was also ugly.

Then, this winter, Matt noticed a leak. We went high class and covered it with a tarp until we could fix the roof - which thanks to Matt's dad was this weekend!

Then, as Matt was reorganizing the shed, he stepped through the floor. Seriously - this stupid thing has cost us a lot of money! The good news is it didn't rot anywhere other than this area of the floorboard, so Matt was able to cut it out and just put a new board down.

Luckily we've still spent well less than the cost of a new one, although then we would've had a new one... but whatever. Hopefully we're good for a while now!

little updates

April is our house anniversary month. After 6 years of home improvement projects, we're down to two things: big projects and tiny projects. We're going to be painting the outside of our house this year and working on fixing up our yard. In the mean time, here's what we've done...

... added planters to the porch

... added blinds to the bathroom windows

... and updated our bathroom.

The little things are fun but I can't wait to paint the house! I've been waiting to paint it since the day we put the offer in!

superhero room

For about $30, I was able to update Andrew's room from a guitar room (which sadly, he's no longer in love with) to a superhero room!