What Our Weekend Amounted To...

• Washer and Dryer installed.  I was very impressed with my handy husband.

Thats right!  We have clean laundry.  Do you see those buttons and those lights?  They make me smile.

• Dining room furniture assembled.  Again, very impressed with my handy husband.
• A lovely dinner at the Elk's for the bowling banquet.  Rich will tell ya, next year is his year.
• A whole lot of Cardboard wrangling.  Our recycling guy picks up this Friday, and he's gonna hate us.

One stack is broken down and is about knee high, we still need to breakdown the dining table boxes.  Supposedly we need to break down all the boxes and tie the cardboard before throwing it to the curb for recycling.  the stack will be as tall as me.

• Crawling under the house to check out the crawl space and see if I could find this 'leak' the cable guy said he saw.  I got real dirty and was pleased to see how dry the crawl space was, but couldn't find the leak.  I will put it on a list for a plumber to check out.

Supposidly there is a leak here, from what the cable guy said.  I didn't see anything and there wasn't any moisture hanging around, so who knows.  On a side note... I will not be making a trek into the crawl space again until i have some impressive knee pads.  That ground sucks to crawl around on.

• Poisoned a stump.  While I was all dirty I busted out the drill and did some damage to the black elm stump that tree guys said we should poison, after they cut it down.

Ya thats right, I was outside with my cordless drill at 0700 on Sunday morning.

• Watered the front lawn and beds there around the house.  We are yet to get a successful hose hook up (first no gasket in the hose, now we got some and they don't fit) so we are dealing w/ a leaky mess.  However,  I have managed to water the lawn/ beds for the last three days now.  So, we are hopeful all of the plants will survive/ thrive.

Me and this hose are getting to be very, very good friends.

• Massive yard clean up.  Rich was a raking madman and got the back yard cleaned so he could kill all the weeds and grass in the wrong places and prep for rota tilling the yard and seeding for grass.

This would be a picture of a sweaty, dirty, tired Richard, with his 16 bags of yard debris.  (He wasn't the most pleased that I wanted to take his picture at this time.)  Our trash service here doesn't have a green trash day or dump or anything for yard waste.  So we will be adding these bags into our trash each week until they are gone, or the next free dump day comes around.  Whichever happens first.

• Killing the backyard.  Rich managed to spray all the backyard with Roundup.  We are going to pick up some more today to do some spot spraying on really stubborn weeds (a.k.a Mustard and Dandelions).

One gallon of Roundup did a good job for a first round.  I already see things turning brown and wilting up.

• Dining Room cleaned and staged with the actually dinning room furniture.  This was one of those tasks that should of taken minutes instead took hours, courtesy of the hanging light being an ugly filthy mess.  Now at least its just ugly.

This room looks so bare without all the clutter.  I can't wait to get some things on the wall, a centerpiece for the table, spray paint the light fixture or replace it with some steal and start sourcing a side board from the thrift and consignment stores.

• Groceries!!!  We actually purchased groceries for the first time in weeks.  It felt so good to make sandwiches for lunch and eat a frozen lasagna for dinner.
• Found a solution for our big kitchen question.... where do we store the food?  This was a great solution for us that illuminated itself when the pocket door between the kitchen and dining room was closed off.

These shelves where previously in my office closet at the apartment.  Just another example of where placeholders are a good thing.  The white containers are Ikea that previously held bathroom stuff.  And its ridiculous, but it thrills me that we can hang our bananas.

Why do we not keep our food in the pantry, like any other American household?  It's as simple as our plates are too freakin big.  We have standard size upper cabinets in our kitchen and our large and in charge flatwear is too much for them.  So our dishes live in the pantry, sitting on top of some of the 85' of shelf liners I cut.

Of course there were a handful of other items that occurred.  Good news there is progress.  Actual progress we can see with our eyes and experience and enjoy.  That makes the aches and pains worth while.  We have one more weekend with me here and then i will gone for two weekends for my trip back east.  We are hopeful to get a lot more done before I have to bail on Rich for 10 days. 

Much Love- Shanna