Sunday Round Up ( Jan. 24-30)

 Last year (like the Christmas before last) Hubs got a retro arcade plug and play game. Which has Pac Man on it. After Dad showed him a few times, Pac Man is about the perfect skill level for a 4 year old. He would have played for hours if we let him. Needless to say it disappeared that night, to come out another day. But it was fun to watch how much a game that we grew up with could still be so much fun, to someone who's never seen it.

Meow meow, somehow managed to worm her way into the house today.

Actually I kept seeing her sitting in front of the goat barn spying on them through the crack in the door. It occurred to me she's not actually that interested in the goats, she's probably after their heated water. Which means the dog water is either frozen or Jasper's being a jerk again, and won't let her anywhere near it.

So she got let into the house to make sure she had access to water.

Speaking of the Dog's guess who's also in the house tonight?
The temps have dropped drastically again. But with all the melting in the last week all the melting has caused some massive humidity. When Maggie met me in the driveway tonight she was soaking wet and covered in frost at the same time. Considering the temps are suppose to drop to minus 29 tonight our buddies are getting treated to a rare night inside. No Coyote duty tonight. Yippee!!!

Actually the whole week has been pretty wrecked, since everyone has come down with one heck of a cold!

Poor little monkey spent an entire day miserable on the couch.

(it's so strange when he goes from 60 to 0 instead of the other way around)

My only big project around here this week was the start of the operation de-clutter the kitchen. I've decided it's time for a massive overhaul, where everything in the house MUST have a permanent home or be re-homed! So far these are the donate boxes just from the kitchen cabinets. We're closing in on 2 years here, and most of this stuff has sat untouched in the cupboards the entire time. I don't know if it's just cabin fever, or if it's the fact we have "normally" moved at least once in every 2 year span up until now. The moving always forced a de-junking, and without it I had to wait for the urge to purge.

- Not bad so far-

and then I added something more to my plate.

You know that saying...
“Behind every successful farmer is a wife that works in town.”

I've decided to be both.

But I haven't found the balance yet.

I took a job that suppose to be flexible hours doing some data collection at local stores. And it is flexible enough to accommodate, kid and school schedules. But after running around from Tuesday to Thursday doing school and work stuff I've realized my house exploded!

*Sigh*

I guess today will be about cleaning and catching up.

And next week we'll work more on this balance thing.

Nate's room redo

Back in September, My in-laws took Nathan for almost a week.

{Yes, I didn't get around to taking the after photos until now}

My main project during this week was to paint the cave of a room he has (while he wasn't there to help!!!)

I don't know if the pictures do the dark color justice, since it was sunny when I took them. But just imagine if the color reads this dark in sunlight how dark and cave like it is in his room at night with this horrible blue.

Not to mention he's been rather rough on the walls since he moved in. Look at the number of holes, dents and dings that needed to be patched up before painting. And if you don't believe me the blue was too dark. It was 3 coats of primer before we could even attempt putting a different color on the wall.

And this is the after. Again it was afternoon light when I took the pictures so the room almost looks yellow. But its a very soft green. Nathan loves it. And I think it's opened up the room. It actually looks less crowded with the 2 beds (Greg will be moving in as soon as he's old enough) than it did before because of the nasty color.

Such a productive weekend

My Dad came for the weekend. Nathan was in heaven. He adores my dad, his Grandpa Zoom. But Dad is great to have around for productivity.

Chris rototillered the whole garden. Now it just needs a quick wire fence wrapped around to keep the dogs out (as you can see)

Dad cut down the dead tree in the front yard.

It was crazy cold rain all weekend it even started snowing Saturday night so we focused most of our energies inside. We got to work on this wall in the garage.
(Above is the before picture)

We found a bunch of Styrofoam insulation sheets in one of the barns. we got to work cutting and fitting the pieces in between the studs. I spent most of the afternoon out in the garage with Chris helping to measure and cut all the pieces. It was funny to see how well we can still do projects together when there's no kids in the mix. By the second or third piece we got in we had a rhythm and routine down and start whipping through them faster and faster. It was a flash back to how well we could get things done TOGETHER before kids were around. We were a good team.

We found pegboard sheets on sale at one of hardware stores for 2 dollars a sheet a few months ago. So Chris screwed all of those to the wall over the new insulation. It has mad that whole space so much bigger and brighter looking. and so much more usable and accessible.

And Dad brought a bunch of my paintings (that I did in high school) we got them hung and screwed into the walls in the stairwell to the basement.

Dad also managed to get a threshold cut to size and screwed into the door frame of the mudroom entrance (so happy about that there was a quarter inch gap in the bottom of that door that created the biggest coldest drafts ever). And the boys managed to get the fridge that died a few months ago finally out of the kitchen. It was just to big and too heavy for Chris and I to do it.

They were all tiny jobs, but just stuff on the list we never managed to find time for. It felt great to get so many crossed off all in a weekend.

Blessing in disguise?

This is my little fireplace in our mud room. It serves no real purpose at least not for heating the house or anything. But it made it oh so comfy cozy to strip off all that horrible wet winter clothing in the coldest months this winter.

When I went through our insurance policy because it was up for renewal. I found out they had excluded our fireplace. That just didn't sit right. I could just imagine (knock on wood) any fire in the house would automatically be blamed on the fireplace and therefore not be covered.

Thinking I was pretty smart. I decided to change insurance brokers and make sure it was included in the policy.

Well

a month later.

a lot of pictures. E-mails and phone calls later

our new insurer has deemed that we will not be covered unless we remove the fireplace.

So with Chris home for the long weekend we finally managed to get it out.

I miss it already. and am not looking forward to how cold that room gets in the winter when it wasn't lit.

It sure makes the mudroom look huge with it gone.

and with it out of the way, I went back to painting the walls. (much easier when your not hanging off a ladder sideways trying to reach around a stove pipe.)

And honestly when we took it out and looked over the condition. I'm not surprised the insurance agencies where worried it was a fire hazard.

The bricks in the back had obviously heated up so much most of them were cracked.

the stove pipe wasn't properly secured it was resting full weight on the top of the stove.

and the metal mat? we thought was underneath it?

turned out to be some sort of spongy mat with a thin metal coating on the surface.

Not impressed.

I guess it was probably a good thing we took everything out when we did.