Playing Catch Up (again).

Well, I'll not going to bore you with all my excuses about why I haven't been keeping up with the blog.  Life's just been busy lately and taking photos and then blogging them has fallen to the bottom of the heap.  Anyway, I've resolved to do better this year, because I really do enjoy looking back over the years at photos and videos of the kids.  At this rate, if I don't commit to taking more photos to have something to blog about, poor Luke may never have a non-cell phone photo of himself!

I'll try to do a brief catch up from fall and then if I can get my act together, I'll try to post some current pics of the kiddos :)

First up, I'll pick up where I left off (before Luke was born) with the house tour.  OK, so the outside:  it was rough.  This house was vacant for the better part of a decade before we bought it and no where showed it more keenly than the yard.  We bought it from a guy who flipped it and his strategy was basically to remove everything in the front yard (seriously, there is not a single shrub, bush, flower, tree, etc.) and leave untouched everything in the backyard (8 years can allow for a TON of overgrowth, let me tell you!)

Before we could really address anything, we had to clear out what was in the back.  In the process, we found a sidewalk (!) about 40 hornets' nests, a few families of mice, a snake or two (not earning their keep, since the aforementioned mouse problem was out of control), a clothes line, tons of old bottles, an old model airplane, and lots of other wonderful treasures. The family who sold this house tot he flipper had been the original owners and it seems (from both the condition of the yard and from talking to the neighbors) that they had been too frail to address the yard in any capacity for the last 15 years they lived here.

Here are some photos of the process of 'weeding out' the crazy brush in the back yard:

After we got most of the mouse/wasp/snake-harboring plants out of there, we addressed the problem of grass:  ie:  There was none.  It is dry out here, very, very, crazy DRY, and nothing grows unless it is watered.  Period.  We have had a lot of success at past homes in NC sowing seed and getting grass to fill in nicely, but it became clear that if anything was going to grow, we needed to install sprinklers.

So, we spent the summer and early fall saving our money and becoming more and more dusty from the barren wasteland that was the yard.  Here's some photos of what was going on back there:

We also discovered after finding a bunch of glass and other random trash in the yard and from talking to the neighbors, that these homesites used to be used as an impromptu dump in the 1930s and 1940s.  Lovely.  We have found all kinds of odd things back there, some with dates from almost 100 years ago!

Truly, the yard's only redeeming quality is a mature, established apple tree, which we do love and were careful to save :)

Finally in October we were able to put sprinklers in, which meant we could put some grass in.  I can't tell you how much it improved my overall mood!  I hate to sound so shallow, but I didn't realize how depressing it is to look out your window everyday and just see brown, dusty, dirty, trashy ground.  I had gotten to where I didn't want the kids playing out there because they'd come in hurt from falling down on the rock-hard ground, or filthy dirty, or carrying pieces of broken glass to show me their 'treasures'!

Here's some sprinkler installation and topsoil progress (we had to add topsoil over both the front and the back as the ground was just so hard and devoid of any nutrients after being neglected for so many years):

 

     

After all the hard work of removing the overgrowth, installing sprinklers, and prepping the soil, it was finally time for the grass to go in!  Yay!!!!!!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Finally, some green in my life!!

Daniel built a table for the patio (photos of the finished product to be added later... forgot to take them and it's now dark outside :)), and we bought some old wicker furniture off Craigslist and painted it and voila!  Our once-wasteland is now a wonderful spot for the kids to play and enjoy the beautiful Colorado weather.

Speaking of weather... the yard looked like this less than a week after these nice, green photos were taken:

This was on October 5th!!

(This is the trail that runs behind our house)

Campbell waiting for the first snowflakes to fall.

Gramps and Mimi sent an early Christmas/Birthday present for the girls:  A Playhouse!!!  They actually ordered it from a shed company which installed it for us.  The inside was very spartan, so Daniel spiffed it up a bit for them. 

First, we added insulation, so that hopefully they would be able to enjoy it for a larger portion of the year.

 Next, some drywall.

There's a skylight in it to help keep it warmer on cold days... how cute is that!!?

After a coat of paint and some clean-up, the girls were ready to move in!

 They put their kitchen in there and stocked the shelves with all their goodies (Campbell was pretending to have a baby in her tummy!  This was taken a day or two before Luke was born :))

 Aunt Deborah sent them some mirrored decals to decorate with and they had a blast adding the finishing touches :)  

Though we still don't have a single shrub, flower, or plant, we've really, really enjoyed the yard!  The grass and sunshine in the back have helped to provide endless hours of play for everyone and I have a feeling that playhouse will have to come with us whenever we move from this house :)

Our New House

I had been waiting to post photos of the house until I crossed more projects off my list, but I've decided that the project list may never get done, so I might as well post now, before I have my hands even fuller :)

The entire upstairs was (uncharacteristically) relatively picked-up and clean the other day, so I snapped some photos... you'll have to wait for the basement-- it's still pretty much a catch-all for boxes, winter clothes, baby gear, etc, etc!

First, for some 'before' shots

Boxes, boxes, everywhere!

My dad and brother working on plans for shelving/work space in the garage

The garage was perhaps the most dramatic project in terms of what it looked like and how functional it was before vs. after.  We've never had a garage before and were eager to have a space for things like bikes, lawn mower, the car, etc.  They tore down the existing shelves (which were rickety and bowing in the middle and wouldn't really hold much of anything), and put in slat wall, a portable storage shelving unit, and built a work bench for Daniel's projects and tool storage.

This was the one and only light in the garage... they replaced it with a florescent fixture that makes such a huge difference in how well you can work in there!

Progress... we put up an ad on Craigslist for free shelving and someone had picked up all the old stuff in less than an hour!

Replacing the light fixture..

Here's part of the work bench.... it really is a wonderful space!  Thanks, Dad and Derek!!  I'll have to get out there and take some better 'after' photos... I didn't realize until I started this post that I never took good photos of the completed project.

As we started to make progress inside, it seemed like the outside got worse!  I finally spent a couple hours breaking down boxes and gathering bubble wrap, packing peanuts and trash.  Another quick ad on Craigslist and all of that was gone in about 20 minutes!  I love Craigslist!

We celebrated Father's Day in the midst of all the mess!

Here's a pic of the basement.... I will say, it doesn't look that bad anymore, but why do basements become catch-alls for everything that you're not sure what to do with??

OK, now for a few 'afters':

Here's our bedroom.  I love all the natural light, though I will say that it has been making it hard to keep cool during this really hot summer we've been having!  Hopefully it will serve us well during the winter.. which I hear is actually the season to fear around here! :)

Here's the baby's room, which is still very much in-progress.  Currently there are no doors on the room (we converted it from a dining room), but since this photo was taken, we did get some shelves up above the changing table and moved Rosie's bed out of the middle of the floor!  Once my mom gets here and we actually get some things hung on the walls (for those who don't know, I basically don't do any decorating/hanging of things on my own-- I just wait for my mom to tell me where to put it and then I never, ever move it :) ), I'll take some more photos of this room. 

Girls' bathroom (unexciting :))

This is the entryway and what you see as soon as you open the front door.  Again, I loved all the light in this house!  Out that sliding door is the back yard.

The kitchen.  I am LOVING the gas range!  It even has a 'quick boil' function (which is basically just an insane amount of gas that heats a pot really quickly), and between that and the Instant Hot water dispenser that my dad installed, I've hardly noticed that it takes longer for water to boil up here.  I have had a few flops on the baked goods front, though,... still trying to figure out the magic formula for altitude adjustment!

I actually have a little curtain on that window now, it looks out into the front yard, which I love, because I can see/hear the girls playing or riding bikes in front of the house.

Living room/dining room.  We hung that light fixture to define the space a little since it originally was just a living room.  Since we needed the separate dining room for Baby's room, we were glad that the area was roomy enough for couch/seating + our table :)

Still to come: photos of the girls' room + basement + yard (which is basically a hot mess, but slowly but surely getting better :))