While You Were Sleeping

Sophia took a monster three-hour nap flanked by a half-hour of quiet time on Sunday, leaving Michael and I a solid block of time to tackle projects around here. When she arose, she was in a fabulous mood and entertained herself in the backyard for another two hours! Anyone who has kids knows this is a rare and amazing opportunity to relax or work! Obviously, with our 534-point to-do list, we got ourselves busy!

For the last five years, we've been living with a battered, rusted, numberless mailbox with a missing front and the name of the family who lived here a decade ago still on it, even as a relatively newer version sat in our garage for the last four years. So, for some reason, today was the day to refurbish and replace. I printed out a stencil in Word and magnified it to 300 percent then cut around the numbers, traced with a pen and filled in with the Gem Turquoise custom color we created to paint our new Dutch door. We're also renovating our windows and will paint the outside frames this same color for a real 'pop'! The flag, which is orange rather than the typical red, complements our blue color choice and is leftover paint we used as an accent wall color in our hall.

And while I was outside with an open can of paint, I added a spot of happiness to this hive body. This is the second hive we have, and the colony suffered the elusive CCD a couple years ago. Moths then moved in and proliferated in the warmish garage. I cleaned up what I could, and the bees will take over next spring. We'll place it next to our up and humming hive in the orchard and see if some of them will swarm to start a new colony.

I asked for and received window boxes for my birthday last month and finally potted them with pansies. More than shoes or manicures or other typical presents, I enjoy the gift of having my honey-do list checked off! It's a present for us both!Unlike the light-up frisbee he bought me one time...

I've also been collecting pots for years but have never actually planted them with anything. Not only do the containers and flowers bring some color to the large expanse of wood decking, they protect the posts from cats scratching. (See the slender curvature on the closest post?!) Brilliant! Question is: why didn't we do this sooner?! 

cluck, cluck

Treasure Hunting

As two people who have been trying for nearly a decade to get rid of everything unnecessary in our lives, it boggles our minds to think about all the new really old stuff that we just acquired in the house and outbuildings next door. My best guesstimate is that 75 percent of the contents is one of three things: scrap metal, glass jars and cardboard boxes. You can't really blame the Depression-era former homeowners for hanging onto valuable materials in case the bottom dropped out again, so we're hoping to find gold buried inside the walls. But we won't tell you if we ever find that. 

Most of the contents have made their way to the recycling bin, but the rest we can't quite get ourselves to let go of, just like our predecessors! Some of the better finds we'll keep, some will be sold at an estate sale this fall. It's like our own little time-capsule museum ...more finds will surely follow.

super weighty vacuum and collection of clock radios

1 of 1543 boxes of glass jars

metal inboxes?

wash tub and seeder

awesome old grill, maybe turned into a side table?

rotary dial phone, which I can't figure out how to unplug from the wall. Sophia may otherwise never know what one of these things is!