Hot weather makes me do strange things, like wandering around with a quart of white paint. No, wait. I do that all the time. Sometime between watering the plants and making dinner, I found myself on the ladder painting coaxial cable and nails. The cable ran across the front of the house near the roof [...]

The driveway is done! We got a good estimate to have it sealed, so we’ll do that in a few months. In the meantime, we are so happy with the result! The company we used did a great job.

Three years ago, my Dad patched the end of our driveway with concrete, and we had it sealed. Three Syracuse winters later, we can’t ignore the mess. So much mud and water accumulates every time it snows or rains, which is no fun when the kids are trying to get out to the bus or [...]

Parents always buy the best Christmas presents. This year, my parents presented me with an early surprise. I am getting a new storm door! There will be no present under the tree this year, but this is perfect. Our storm door was bent and never was installed right by the PO. It also was a [...]

I’m sure I’ll get over that soon. I recently read from a blogger who used many samples to pick that perfect shade. She is right. I have painted every room in this house, only to decide after a year or two that it wasn’t “What I was going for”. This drives my husband crazy, but [...]

I was motivated to work today. I cleared another big plant on the left side of the house, then decided to bring a rake with me while the kids were playing in the back yard. They were having fun, so I kept going. A couple of hours later, I had cleared all of the weeds, [...]

We had some overgrown, half-dead shrubs in the back yard that needed to be cleared. All I had were some hedge clippers, but I managed to get them chopped down. I’ll worry about the stumps later. Micah broke the branches up while I ripped out weeds. The goal is to plant grass here and disburse [...]

I know this will seem trivial to people who have acres of land, but to me it seems like we have so much lawn to mow. It takes about 2 1/2 hours, and during much of the season it needs to be mowed once a week. I decided to take some photos today, even though [...]

I’ll have a post with some real updates soon. In the meantime, here are some Fall photos. Today, we spent two more hours raking and leaf blowing. We filled five 30-gallon lawn bags. The lawn was covered again within a few hours.

I spent about 1/2 hour patching the cement and an hour priming it, all over the course of two days. Finally, the patio was ready to be painted. I brought out my giant roller and the oops paint. And then there was a problem. It was hideous. This wasn’t even oops paint; it was WTF?! [...]