Yard work and projects

With owning a house, I have learned one thing.... there is a lot of work! Almost so much, I wish we still rented. Don't get me wrong, I love the freedom of owning a house... being able to put up swings in the trees, a swing set, pick out my own flowers, personalize the house to fit our personalities, etc. But, I will admit, it was really nice when we rented and had no yard work, which allowed for more family time.
One thing we are learning is we have to balance house work and family. I think there just seems to be so many projects since we just bought this house, but we decided that a lot of those projects are just going to have to wait! Family comes first!

Here are a few things we have been working on outside:

-A storage shed(Andy's project). I will help paint when it's time, but theres nothing I can really help with right now. This has been a long and rather annoying project(I will speak for Andy). He is ready to be done! We bought a pre-cut wooden shed that is supposed to be easy to put together, however, it's been a nightmare. Most of the pieces Andy had to cut and measure himself because they were wrong. And the directions, well.... might as well not even have those. It's been a long project, but Andy is doing a great job. In fact, he just has a couple more things to do, including the roof, then its ready to be painted! Next time we'll just start from scratch... Oh wait, there wont be a next time... better yet : )

-Planting and gardening. This is my job and thankfully I have a lot of help to get me started because before spring started, I couldnt tell you whats a weed and whats the actual plant. I am learning though. I spent a lot of time cleaning out the flower beds and got them ready for a makeover. Priscilla came over and helped me get started. She loves to garden and had a lot of perenials to give me. She helped me plant all of it and taught me a lot too. It was a fun afternoon of gardening. My parents are garden lovers too. They have been teaching me a lot about planting and keeping me in track. And thankfully, I have a lot of friends who enjoy gardening as well. I am really starting to enjoy it and love seeing the transformation of my plants as they bloom. The lady who owned this house previously did a great job with her plant beds and had a lot of unique and fun flowers so now I get to enjoy them. God's creation amazes me everyday. All the little details in all his creation are just phenomenal. It is so awesome he gave us such beautiful nature for us to enjoy!

-The grass. Andy regraded the front and side yard and parts of the back. So, our yard is a yard of dirt. The grass is starting to come up finally, but very patchy. Looks rather weird to me, but I'm sure(I hope) it will fill in. It's been rather a nuisance to have to water it twice a day, but a necessity. It's also been hard keeping the kids off the seed, but I think there finally getting it.

-Picking up sticks... everyday! We have a lovely birch tree outside our front that Andy would love to cut down. Why? Because every time we get a little bit of a wind, we have a lot of little branches and some big to pick up in our yard. Drives him crazy. This is something the girls can help with as well.

So, needless to say, we have been busy working outside.

Whether it gets done this summer or not, here are a few things in the near future we'd like to do:

-Me: The front yard plant beds. When Andy regraded the yard, our plant beds were demolished(they were ugly green shrubs anyways), so now we are starting from scratch. I have been looking at all my options and checking out a lot of different plants and shrubs. It's been fun just to brainstorm ideas I have. The tricky thing in the front is that lovely birch tree gives a little bit of shade so I have to find plants that don't need full sun.

-Concrete: This will get done soon. We are having a concrete guy come and widen our driveway so that there is room for Andy's car to park in the driveway rather than the grass.

-Back yard in front of the electric poles. We have some yucky electric poles in our yard so we have been thinking of way to cover them. The lady who owned previously had big white trellises up with clematis climbing them. But we didn't like it too much so we tore those out and are putting arborvitaes there. They stay green all winter long so it will be a great cover and will also be kind of a wall to keep the kids away from there. A bonus is my mom and dad are getting rid of 2 of theirs because they have them in the shade where they are not doing well, so, this is definitely something that might happen this summer!

-painting: Since we have to paint our shed, we decided we are going to paint the little bit of red we have on our house. I don't like the red because our neighbor has the exact same red. It seriously looks like the builders copied each other. So, we are going to change it up. Some shade of green is our preference. I guess you'll have to wait and see. Not sure if this will happen this summer.

-Front porch: We have these decorative poles that hold up the front porch over head that are starting to rust. We want to replace them with decorative wooden poles and possibly a railing. Def. not a 2010 summer project.

I think that's it! Wooh, I'm exhausted thinking about all that. Seems like one project takes forever, which is why these projects will not be getting done anytime soon. And whether it ever happens, who knows! It's fun thinking about it, but to actually do it, not always fun.

What we don't want to do is make the house our priority! God, family, friends, serving, etc come before house work. It's just going to burn someday anyways. Kind of silly to put all our efforts into something materialistic that is only temporary.

Here is a video to show the work we are doing:

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