Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Memorial Day weekend

For the long holiday we worked on the yard and finished up some things around the house. When we bought the house the flower beds in front and around the trees in back had pine straw which we replaced a few months ago. I do not care for this stuff at all. It doesn't keep the weeds and grass out of the beds and it makes it hard to dig the unwanted stuff out. When we cut the new flower bed in the back around the perimeter of the fence we decided to use regular mulch and that was on our to do list for this weekend. Thursday morning I got an email from Lowe's saying that mulch was on sale and it was the one we had picked out. Instead of $3.33 per bag it would be 5 for $10! Yay! So we decided at that price to go ahead and redo all the flower beds that had pine straw as well. 

Here is a picture of the front flower bed with the pine straw back at Halloween. This was the only before picture I could find. lol



And here is a picture of the front flower bed now. 


Our grass isn't nearly as green as it was. Not sure why, it's greener in the back-where we have grass that is. 



Here's a before of the back yard. 



The other thing we worked on this weekend was the entry and stairs. Back a few months ago we started this project but just hadn't had the time to finish it yet. We are bad about having 10 things going on at once. Right now we are trying to finish up all current projects for the year and this was one of them.

Here are some true "before" pictures.



See that wainscoting in the dining room in the first picture? That is what we wanted to replicate for the entry and stairs. We couldn't find the exact pieces they used but we found similar ones. It will be hard for most people to tell the difference. 

Here are pictures from part way through. It was like this for a while.


Here is it now with the boxes added.  Much better. Edward does such a good job!





So pretty.

The other project we finished up this weekend was in our kitchen. This one kinda snow balled like things tend to do with us. First we painted it. The wall color the builder put is very dark and looks like dirt to me. So we painted the kitchen and breakfast area plus the ceiling. We used Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray and love it. We chose white for the ceiling in here just to make it easy on us. We prefer white ceilings to begin with except where the ceiling is coffered. Then we thought adding board and batten to the breakfast area would be great and then we realized that the back splash just wasn't going to work with the new wall color and the board and batten. So we got a new back splash as well. All that was left for us to do this weekend was touch up the wall paint. That was pretty easy compared to the rest of it.

Here's the before of the kitchen and the breakfast area. 




Here it is now. 





Here's a close up of the tile. The grout is almost the same color as the walls. 

We used 1x3's for the board and batten and 3x6 subway tiles for the back splash with warm gray grout. The white paint is the same Sherwin Williams paint the builder used. Just plain white. No special white. The board and batten was a bit of pain in that we chose to take the baseboards off and put it behind them. It turned out fantastic though.

I also made the pallet artwork in the breakfast area over the long weekend. I will have a post on that in the future. 


Eventually we will get all of the builder paint covered with Agreeable Gray but it's going to take some time. I look forward to it because it really brightens up a room!
Other than that the boys played outside, we did some weekend cleaning and cooked hamburgers on the grill. Pretty low key but busy.

***Note: We no longer live in this house and left all of the stuff for it with the house. We are not for sure the name of the grout color but we think it was called Warm Gray and we got it at Lowe's. We moved a few months after doing this project. 

Thanks for stopping by.
Chris

I am sharing at this party:
 That-DIY-Party-link-party-button

Monday, May 23, 2016

Belt ceremony and some cuteness from Addisyn

Ed and the boys had their belt ceremony tonight. Ed is now an orange belt and the boys are both yellow. Ed is a belt behind because he told them when they started if they stuck with it and got their first belts he would join too.

Here are videos of them receiving their belts.





Pictures after the ceremony with their new belts on.





And here is some cuteness from Addisyn today.



Thanks for stopping by!
Chris

Trip to Riverbanks Zoo, Columbia SC

Our zoo/science center membership gives us discounts and sometimes free admission to zoos and science centers/museums so we take advantage of it when we can. Ed and I took Edward, Ethan and Addisyn to the Riverbanks Zoo in South Carolina last Monday. We had a really good time. Addisyn loves animals especially horses. She tried to climb out of her stroller when she saw the horses walking by! lol

Here are some pics and video from the day.

Addisyn

Addisyn and Opa


Everyone with the birds













Edward is wearing the green shirt and Ethan is in red. 












Thanks for stopping by!
Chris

Sunday, May 22, 2016

New Blog

Welcome to our family blog. This is intended for us to be able to share videos, pictures and updates with family and friends but anyone is welcome to have a look around. We may post a lot when we have a lot to share but other times we may not post at all for weeks or months. I found it hard to keep up with a blogging schedule with my last blog so there will be no schedule.

Hope you enjoy.
Thanks for stopping by!
Chris