Doors

I've been slowly taking care of some doors in the house.  I blogged about painting the front door a couple weeks ago, but I've also painted most the interior doors.  While we had doors on the brain, it hit me to finally take down the shower door in our bathroom.  

We've talked about our little bathroom before.  It's very small, which is fine, I don't want/need a giant bathroom to clean, but this one is a little silly how small it is.  

Here's the makeover we did a few years ago.  

And here's when we hired a guy to build new walls.  

Both great progress, but... that shower door was so awkward.   

It was too narrow to walk out of comfortably.  A new, swinging shower door could work, but it was a tough solution because the guy said he'd want to peek in the walls to make sure he was securing it to a sturdy enough structure.  Great idea, but it sounded expensive.  And who knew if a swinging door would get past that toilet?  A shower door that had 3 panels instead of 2 would make the opening bigger, but again, I didn't want to spend $700 or more on this silly little bathroom.  Then - DUH!  Shower curtain!

I tore out the door, scraped all the caulking, cleaned up the shower and for less then $100 and a weekend of time I hung up my new shower curtain.  

We got a tall stall curtain, it pulls all the way to the side and we can walk out with ease.  Such a simple solution!  Sometimes there's a few drops of water on the floor, but not much more then the shower door let escape.  Also, it's just Greg and I that use the this room, and we're grown ups so we clean up after ourselves. 

In 2020 it's all about making things work. 

First Day 2020

We switched to a hybrid schedule a few weeks back, I grabbed a photo before they took off.

   Mimi, Freshman in high school!

 

Parker, Senior in high school!  

Mimi and Parker attend seminary at home over the computer and then drive off to their little high school together.  Halfway through the day they drive to the big high school for Orchestra.  

Poor Mimi has to go back and forth 2 more times during the day to get to all of her classes.  Fortunately we only go to school 2 or 3 days a week, so it's not that exhausting for her.  Parker did similar things his sophomore year.  It's a short drive though. 

Parker takes 3 classes at the big high school so he just stays there.  Then they drive home together.  Sometimes he'll have to stay for play practice, or he drives home early because he doesn't have a class.  If he does that then I go get Mimi at the end of the day.  Mimi's last class of the day is Latin and that teacher seems very funny because she always has good things to talk about!

Yoda, last year of elementary school- 5th grade! 

 

While the weather is good Yoda rides his bike with a buddy down the street a (Greg goes too because people on their way to work are TERRIBLE drivers and we want to make sure he's safe)

The front porch

The front porch needed a change, we got to it during this annoying summer.

Here's a before photo from a few years ago...

 

And here's a close up of the redone porch...

Greg tore down the railing and detail up top.  (We noticed a few neighbors had done it and it looked like a good idea.)

We "wrapped" the pillars with a pvc material--no more painting!

Moved the furniture from the back of the house to the front so we can all sit up front.

Simple macrame hanging plants in colorful pots.  

New door color!  A beautiful blue from Benjamin Moore. 

I accidentally caused 3 of the 4 boxwood bushes to die, so I moved the one live one over to the side.  Then I dug up all the pachysandra and re-planted them throughout the front mulch bed.  I also moved the stepping stones around so they make more sense.  Also added some top soil so hopefully everything will grow strong.  

I bought some string lights from Ikea, we've only used them once.  But they're so cute. 

There are some new house numbers along the side of the door as well. 

The smallest detail that we changed but I liked a lot is the peephole.  I bought a new one and replaced it in seconds! And no paint splatters on the new one! 

Tearing down the railing opened up the porch so much and now we spend way more time out there.  It's funny that such a small change made a big difference. 

Just out for a walk

 The park was pretty crowded on this pretty day so we masked up

Me - a mask from Target.   Greg and Mimi - masks that I made this weekend during church at home. Yoda - a mask he made with me a few months ago.  Parker - a mask from his most recent high school play that he was in (more about that play soon!)

Hitting the Trail Again

Greg took the kiddos off on another long hike.  After the last hike we asked what they wanted to do differently or the same--they all wanted to go again, they wanted to switch around who got what backpacks, and go for a shorter hike.  But they went on a longer hike, I think it was by accident. 

They did a TON of prep and planning before hand, they went for 3 days, 2 nights, and had a pretty good time over all.  They may go again if the weather holds.  (I stayed home and did a bunch of painting and stuff around the house and didn't cook the whole time!)

Here are some photos, before, during and after the hike...

 

Ramen in a bag! 

There's their little camp stove on the right. 

Buckeye!

Playing in the dirt.

We bought a 3rd hammock for this trip.

They are saluting Mimi's last apple squeeze, so silly. 

Angry teens...

...happy teens.

On their way home. 

1058 and All the Puzzles

That's how many blog posts I've done over the past 13 years. Just saying.

We've put together, shared, loaned, mailed, gifted and been gifted so many puzzles the last few months, it's been fun to keep track. 

Washington D.C. puzzle in January, pre-pandemic.

Mimi got her very own Suffragists puzzle for her birthday in February.  I had to hold back from working on it while she was at school!  

When the lock down hit, Mimi found a few puzzles to do on her own. 

These are a couple of space ones from Nana. 

My sister got me this as an early birthday present.   Very cute. 

Yoda got this one for Valentine's Day, but didn't put it together until lock down.  Then he decided to flip it.  So silly.

Video

By May it felt like we'd never get to go anywhere, so we started doing quite a few puzzles.  Here's our 2000 piece that we usually keep to do over New Years break. 

I got this cute, boat one for myself for Mother's day.  

Mimi and Greg picked out our new hardest one for my birthday, it was beautiful but very difficult!  Van Gogh's Starry Night.  We started it on my birthday and didn't finish until the next month.  

Then we needed a classic, quilts on a summer day, ahhhh... (this was a birthday present from my sister either last year or the year before.)

 

I used some of my birthday cash to get this puzzle of Fallingwater.  It's double sided and Yoda couldn't help himself, he flipped it over and over again! 

 

Greg got me this puzzle for my birthday as well.  It's got all sorts of our favorite things: quilts, s'mores, snowshoes (we did that once a million years ago, it stuck with us), hot cocoa....

Now that the kiddos are busy with remote school at home I don't know what to do with myself.  I can't really get into cooking, cleaning or a project, because of the noise.  Or because if I do, someone will likely need my help, usually there's something wrong with the computer or something.  So I got myself a new puzzle to do when I need to keep myself quiet, but busy.  Mimi jumped right in.  She loves camping, stars and learning about astrology lately. 

Apples and Peaches

We went to our favorite fruit picking place and came home with so much produce, it's been hard to eat it all.  

We've made: apple sauce, apple slump, peach syrup, peach cobbler, apple coffee cake, apple turnovers, pork chops with cinnamon apples, and probably something else that I can't think of since I'm all jittery from all the sugar :)
 

 

First Day 2020

(sorry this is very late) 

Just trying to keep things together amid this nonsense pandemic.  First our school district was going to be hybrid, then we were told we would be all remote until the end of October.  Now we are planning to go back at the end of Sept, we'll see...

For now this is how the kiddos are doing their school work:

Yoda is in this little nook between the laundry room and the kitchen table, we moved out the cubbies that held coats and stuff.  He is using a table we bought when we first moved into the house (off of Craig's list).  It's purpose changes all the time: game table, puzzle table, now a school desk.  He's using the computer that we bought specifically for school work and Skype a few years ago. 

Mimi is on the comfy couch in the living room, on a desk that we lucked out finding on Craig's list.  I wanted something pretty, not a folding table.  It looks a lot like the table Yoda is using.  Her computer is a loaner from school that she usually gets, even without a pandemic to help her with her reading and writing. 

Parker is on our previous kitchen table in the office/dinning room, it keeps getting moved around too.  In the spring he and Mimi were both using it in the living room on that comfy couch, but that was when video chats were rare.  Now that they have classes all day they need to have some space between them.  We brought back the little comfy couch that used to be in here years ago.  And he's using Greg's laptop. 

Music

One of the fun things we get to do these days is listen to lots of good music.  

An awesome 80's song came on the radio, Yoda says, "I feel like this is a song you know and like"

Me, "you are correct!" and I started singing along, loudly.

Rolling down a giant hill