Pittering Around the House

We had an incredibly mild winter this year.  It's been great on the utility costs, but makes for a less magical winter for the kids.  And who am I kidding, I love a good snowfall!  I think we've had a total of 3, maybe 4 inches of snow the WHOLE winter.  Lots of rain too.

All of the boys were in Harrisonburg one night so the girls and I headed out for dinner.  Pretty glamorous going to McDonalds!


I watched my friend's daughter a few times the first part of March.  I visit teach her and her husband recently passed away from cancer.  It's been sad.  I did copies at the school one day and took her girl along.


I also took her with me to help with "fluency".  I go to Haley's reading class twice a week and do fluency.  The kids have certain passages to read in 60 seconds based on their reading level. If they mess up I tell them "redo" and they need to correct what they said wrong. Sometimes I take so long wondering if they said it right....did I really hear "rocks"?  or did they say "rock"?, that I just let them keep going. 


She had fun in the copy room with me.


With Elden's upcoming baptism, that meant we would have a lot of visitors, which meant I would want to get some house things done.  I never run out of house projects.  Something always seems to be needing some paint, or caulk, or update or cleaning or......  Like our doorknobs upstairs.  Two of the three didn't work and they didn't match. 




I found some cute knobs that are similar shape to the ones downstairs.  There is just a tiny hallway with three doors. One right at the top of the stairs, with a door to your left and a door to your right.  The hallway is maybe four, five feet long?  Anyway, Lee once again did a FANTASTIC job with the doorknobs!  Love them!  I forgot that we need to update the fan in Clark and Cal's room and will do that in April.


We also need a grout update as it was wreck some when the new door in the kitchen was installed. See the grout line the meets the counter?  There was a gap there all the way up the edges between the door frame and backsplash.  It was great getting it all filled in!  Though I messed up on one spot and need to touch that up again.


I think we were supposed to put colored caulking in where the grout meets the counter.  Oops.  The grout in places will crack and start coming out.  So I did some fresh grout all the way around.  Thanks Lee for mixing it!  We should scrape it all out and use colored caulk, but this is easier and we already have it on hand.


It seems like every storage place in our house is a hardworking spot for us.  I also can't seems to keep them looking 100% all the time.  Company coming was the right motivation!


Still full, but I got rid of a garbage bag full of stuff, either trash or donate, and it is much more pleasing to the eye!  This is our linen, game, craft, re-usable/duffle bag and sewing closet....


I bought a bunch of contact paper to help motivate me to line drawers and such around the house.  I've only done one project so far, and I liked the result!  Under the bathroom sink...


I love the method I read about on iheartorganizing to clear out everything when organizing a space.  I did that with the hall closet too, though I actually kept some games in that closet this last since they were already fine where they were.


So much better!


Again, still full, but better!  And I got rid of some things too!


I bought some LipSense from my friend Sarah.  I really like it, though I did pick the wrong color.  I am excited to get different shades though.  Lipstick that lasts all day?! Literally--it was still on my lips the next morning! It's pretty cool and won't kiss off color onto anything.


We tried to pull out our front bush stumps with our truck.


Cal and Elden are in front of the other bush opposite side of the stairs.  Yeah, they were STUCK and it ripped off the truck's trailer hitch.  The hitch was rusted which we didn't know.  Thankfully we didn't try to haul bikes or anything with that hitch.  Another April project for Lee: install a new hitch.


Remember the soldering mishap? 


They ordered carpet and installed it!!! 


It looks great.  No burn marks!


Lego building is still alive and well here.  Cal with a Pokemon thing he created.


The day before the baptism the kids happened to have off from school which worked great because they were able to do their weekend jobs on a Friday.  Haley made this cute sign by herself and took it upon herself to hang it on the front door.


I wanted to get more done around the house like some touch up painting, but that didn't happen.  Now to motivate myself to just get it done......