mud mud everywhere and progress being made.

Our backyard got really muddy really quickly once it started raining after we moved in.  It wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for pup 1 and pup 2.  Once pup 1 lost her white coloring and pup 2 [our golden/lab retriever] turned into a chocolate lab we knew we had to take action pretty quickly to eliminate the muddy backyard.  Tommy was pretty bummed out because we bought this house on the premise of not having to do any work, but I reminded him that's just not us.  He dreamed up/engineered out his plan and got to work.

Our backyard before 

He has no problem with the mud-- we're the ones with the problem.  And the green stuff was Tommy's first attempt at fixing the problem.  He tried to plant seed and used this stuff on top of it. 

Again, Eli loves the mud.  Tommy is progress. 

A ton of rock! 

Seriously, so much rock. 

The mud.  So much mud. 

Tommy tilled up this pathway.  This is where the water seems to puddle and the path we guessed the dogs would take the most, so we are turning this whole area into a pebble walkway.  Tommy tilled up this section of the yard to prepare it. 

Then he rented this awesome machine [which saved him so so much time and energy] to remove the mud.  It's still in our yard, just in a different location.  He took all of the extra mud and dirt out of this pathway and leveled it down. 

Just another shot of him bein' boss with the machine. 

Seriously couldn't have done this project without these guys.  My brother and his friend helped us immensely with this project!  And of course, we had record breaking heat days while they were hauling rock and digging trenches.  85 degrees in March-- yeah, that would happen while we're doing this project.  Bradley and Bradford, so much thanks to y'all!  We would be sittin in mud if it weren't for you.  Did I mention they're on spring break right now, too?  Yeah, they're great guys!  

I have no afters yet.  It's looking awesome and so far we are so pleased, but it's not done.  So I'll be sharing those later-- probably after the weekend.  The hubs needs to go to work and sleep at night, so I'm encouraging him to wait a few days before finishing this up. 

new home.

We love our new home!  We are so thankful to be in it.  We seem to be in a great neighborhood and have met some really nice neighbors.  Unpacking boxes is so time consuming.  If I never hear the crinkling of that paper again it will be too soon.  I am so thankful we had movers bring our stuff in.  Maybe wishing now that I had had them unpack.  I didn't think about how much paper there would be and how many boxes I would have sitting in my garage.  Anyway, just happy to be here.

We have started a new project already, of course.  The dogs always seem to make things a little more complicated, so we are working on the backyard.  And by we, I mean Tommy.  He's working really hard on it.  Big changes to come, and I will have lots of pictures to share.

In the mean time you won't believe-- or maybe you will-- what our week of eating has been like.  This seriously busy, seriously tired family has stayed in our house for 7 nights and I have made dinner one time.  Spaghetti at that.  Took me 15 minutes total, and my mother-in-law finished the noodles for me.  We've been eating some junk this week, and my body's starting to rebel against it.  I've got to get back into the cooking groove, and the making healthy meals for my family groove.

Now for the fun part, the pictures...  

Our new home on closing day!  Our front porch. 

We're happy homeowners. 

The "before" color of Jack's room.  A little too bold for my taste so Tommy got to work. 

This room seems to be everyone's favorite. 

My favorite area-- the loft! 

Living room/dining room.  With a mess of stuff. 

Master bath.  We're so excited to have 2 sinks!  Talk about luxury. 

Our moving truck.  We had that thing loaded.  Feels like it was longer than just a week ago. 

Our garage.  This is such a luxury for us since we didn't have a garage in Maryland.  It's loaded up with boxes but it's also got my car in it! 

View of the living room from the loft and all of the work I have to do. 

our kitchen.

Since it's been 2 years of home-ownership for us now, I thought I would "celebrate" the occasion this week by showing some of the updates we have done to our house. 

Let's start with the kitchen.

The kitchen was the first thing we did.  We knew that we could not even live in this house with the kitchen the way it was, and you are about to see why.  After work and on weekends for a month and a half we would be here every day working on this place.  This kitchen was completely DIY and done on the cheap, but we are happy with how it looks.  Tommy did almost all of it by himself.  I helped with sanding the cabinets and painting them and occasionally as he needed me to help hold something, but he did the bulk of it by himself. 

This is the old kitchen.



The kitchen is small so we knew we needed to brighten it up with lighter cabinets.  We also knew we needed better countertops, flooring, and appliances.

The old details: 
-  Tommy brought down the nasty hood over the stove.  NASTY.  That's all I have to say about that.
-  Next he started disassembling the cabinets.  Doors off, taking out the old countertops, the sink, etc.
-  The 3rd and 4th pictures on the top row show the cabinets and counterspace in more detail.  The knobs really weren't so bad, I suppose, but at the time I really hated them.  They definitely weren't modern.
-  The 5th picture shows how nasty those floors were!  It's disgusting to look at that.  That was the set up of the old kitchen.
-  Bottom row first picture on the left, another view of what the kitchen looked like.
-  This was where the refrigerator originally was.  We felt the need to put in a dishwasher so we had to move the fridge as this was the only place the dishwasher could go.
-  You can see all the different colors this kitchen has been over time.  It was built in 1948 after all.
-  I'm such a dork.  This is me giving a thumbs up as things are going well during our home inspection.  This is the other side of the kitchen- where we moved the fridge to.  I do wish I had kept that light though.  Not in that spot because it hung way too low, but I have several spots where I would have put it.

This is the new kitchen.

The new details: 
-  Painted the upper cabinets white and the lower blue.
-  Dark countertops -- stock countertops from Home Depot, and my amazing husband installed them 100% by himself.  He says he'll never do that again.  I tell him he did a great job.
-  Mounted a microwave above the stove.
-  New sink and faucet.
-  New dishwasher -- first time this house had ever seen a dishwasher.
-  Hung my pots and pans where the fridge used to be to try and conceal that custom fridge-containing cabinetry.  I think it works pretty well.  At least I'm pleased with it.  [Sorry I couldn't clean off the counters before I took that picture.  That picture is from 2 years ago and apparently I didn't feel the need to clean up} 
-  Moved the fridge to the other side of the kitchen to make it feel bigger.
-  Painted everything with a nice, crisp, clean coat of white paint.
-  New hardware on the cabinets.
-  New floors.  The floors alone took the hubs about a week and a half to do because there were 4 layers of old flooring he had to pull up.  You used to have to step up into the kitchen there was so much old floor piled up.  It took him forever, and he lost a lot of blood but he took care of it.  And I love our kitchen floors -- hides dirt so well!


One last before and after look:

Thanks for coming along on my kitchen renovation tour.  It was a lot of hard work but so worth it.  We love our kitchen! 

santa in september?

I walked into the dining room the other day to find this.

I thought Christmas was here!  You can imagine my disappointment to learn it was not.  I was happy to see my husband though.  He was working on the leak in our roof that came about after the hurricane and then 5 straight days of rain.

ps - I'm glad it's not Christmas yet because I am so ready to enjoy this fall! 

small fixes.

This may not look like much to you, but to me it is amazing. To me this is part of getting more sleep, having more quiet moments at night, and helping my marriage. You might be wondering how a light switch could do all of that. Well, let me tell you.


This is the new light switch in our bathroom. Our old one was big and chunky and looked like this set in our hallway except that there was one switch rather than three.




The problem was that it made the loudest noise when it was flipped on and off. Seriously, ridiculously loud. And many, many nights when Jack was finally asleep Tommy or I would flip it on when we went into the bathroom- just out of habit. And every time Jack would wake up. It's a shame to lose sleep over a light switch, so I got to the point where I would hound Tommy. "DO NOT touch that light switch." "You better brush your teeth now {at 6 pm} if you want to brush them in the light because that light is not going on tonight!" "If you flip that switch and wake our baby, I will come after you in your sleep." I'm a great wife, I know. Very encouraging. But you know how it is with a newborn, right? Please tell me I'm not the only one to ever sound like that.


So Tommy proposed the best solution-- replace the light switch. A trip to Home Depot and five magical minutes later, we were free to flip the light on and off as much as we want. We can see in the bathroom any time, I don't threaten my husband anymore, and Jack doesn't wake up. This light switch might be one of my favorite home improvements. And by the way, I never thought I would write an entire blog post about a light switch.

a gardening project.

First off, there's a new look here at The BPS. I like the simplicity of it, and we'll see how it goes. What are your thoughts?


Next...

Today was finally Morgan Gardening Day. And by Morgan Gardening Day what I really mean is we got our garden {very small this year} planted. And by we what I really mean is Tommy did the work while I sat in our adirondack chairs "supervising". I did a pretty good job of supervising, if you ask me - I kept the dogs company, I kept Tommy company, I took pictures, and I pointed out where things should go.


So this year because we have many changes in our lives and our family {that would be our little Jack guy} and because we need to make adjustments from last years garden, we have made some changes in our gardening.

• We cut the size of our garden in half.
• We bought well-established tomato plants {because we started planting late and because I demand good tomatoes and last year we didn't get many big boys to grow from our smaller plants}.
• We are sticking with tomatoes and peppers this year- a concentrated effort.
• We changed the location of our garden to be closer to the house and in a spot that will definitely get more sun!
• Tommy used our raised garden beds from last year but did some reconstruction to make it a higher bed.

the new location

moving dirt from the old to the new

preparing the new location

Tommy's special helper for the day

building the newer version of the raised beds

just putting the screws in...

still working on the screws because the drill died. yes, he is screwing them in with a plain old manual screw driver

moving the bed over to the new spot. and this was my view throughout this endeavor. i didn't even get up to take the picture but in my defense i am 4 days away from my due date.

filled it with good, rich soil

again with our special helper. she's so handy to have around.

what's going in...

and in the ground!

we also filled 2 planters with veggies - one with peppers and the other with a Better Boy plant!

ps- I told you I took pictures :)

my list.

I would say I'm in full-on nesting mode. Full on. Tommy would say whatever you can say that sounds more intense than "full-on" is what I am. He's been amazing and so supportive, but I think I've driven him just about to the end of his rope with my honey-do list. He's ready for me to not be pregnant anymore. I am too.


Here's my list of things to get done before Jack's arrival/this summer {some:

üCdone	Bench in dining room
	Call pest service for our ever increasing stink bug issues
donedone	Clean bathrooms
done	Clean guest bedroom
üdone	Clean kitchen
üdone	Clean living room
üdone	Clean master bedroom
üdone	Clean, organize office
üdone	Finish Jack’s room
üdone	Get together stuff to donate
üdone	Iron
	Mirror above fireplace
ü	Pack away maternity clothes
üdone	Pack away winter clothes
üdone	Photo gallery in living room
	Plant herbs
üdone	Plant spring flowers
	Redo decorations in office
	Re-hang marriage license in bedroom
üdone	Reorganize kitchen
ü	Returns to Target
	Weed flower beds
	Window boxes for side windows
	Work on decorations in guest room
	Work on decorations in hallway downstairs

I've been moving along at a pretty good pace. Some items I haven't checked off my list because they're not completely done but I have tackled and failed. Like the herbs--- I've bought and planted twice and had some failures. Hoping for success this go around. Some things I've been putting off, too. We'll see how much more I get done before Jack arrives.