More Landscaping

Armed with a long-overdue gift certificate, we headed to Heritage Nursery in Elkhorn to move our landscape past the gorgeous mulch. We purchased and successfully installed five Maiden Hair grasses, five Boxwood plants, and two Black Knight Butterfly Bushes. I'm pretty excited to watch the butterflies and bees outside Danica's window! :)

New Fence

Working with our neighbors, we finally got our backyard fences up! We hired Quality Fence Co., and they did a great job. Mia's loving her new, expanded area... so much so, that it's hard to get her inside in the mornings.

We now present our version of where's waldo... Find the pug!

Landscape Progress... finally!

If anyone has ever been to our house, you may have noticed our apparent lack of landscape. ...more specifically our amazing weed beds. Well we finally cleared out all the weeds, sprayed, and laid a bunch of mulch. Hopefully our neighbors won't be embarrassed of us anymore! Only problem was that we picked the most crazy hot and humid weekend to work outside. Brilliant.

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Basement Framing I

Last night began the framing of the basement. My dad came up from Waverly with a load of tools and he and Grant framed out our storage room and closet for the furnace and water heater. Next up, family room...

Danica and I supervised from upstairs.

And since Danica was in her swing, Mia found an opportune time to try out Danica's boppy pillow. Not the best fit.

Ready and Waiting...

I think we're officially ready. Or at least supplies and gear-wise. (I'm not sure that I'll ever be ready to push out a baby!) Had a check-up this morning, and apparently the "little" girl had a growth spurt and is pushing 8ish pounds. I do believe it though - every time I even attempt to get out of a chair, I'm winded. It's been a crazy couple weeks.

Thanks to Grant's patience with me, we've got the drapes hung (there's a pretty bright street light outside the window), a couple shelves above the crib, and everything in some kind of order. Thanks to help from my parents, we have baby monitors and a carseat. Thanks to Grant's parents, we have the pack 'n' play which will function as the bassinet until she moves to the crib. Thanks to a ton of friends and family, I think we're officially ready and waiting...

Almost Ready

Thanks to some heavy snow and cold weather, Grant and I have finally got the nursery pretty close to ready. The white chair rail is up and the furniture is assembled. Only a couple things left: we'll be adding some heavy white drapes over the window blinds to keep the room warmer, and we've collected a variety of white frames to hang in a collage on the blank wall above the storage cube units (but probably won't hang those until we have pictures for them). Other than that, just seven weeks to go til the due date, March 4th. Yikes!

Painting

A little behind on posting, but we had a productive Halloween weekend! The "leapfrog" scheme ended up winning out, so you'll see a very green room now. The white chair rail is yet to be installed, and there will be other white accents in curtains and picture frames to soften the current green glow.

We put the crib together the following weekend, then when I came home from drill, a masterpiece had begun on the east wall. Let's just say when Grant gets motivated, he dives in head first... with only a few breaks for a little air guitar. Obviously, we have yet to install the chair rail, but we're one step closer...

Nursery Updates

Last Saturday, I finally got motivated enough to clean out the second upstairs bedroom (future nursery) so I could put a piece of furniture together. It was a fun little project - slightly reminiscent of model building in school. This piece is the combination dresser/changing table/tower.

Monday night, we finally painted a few sample patches of the colors we're thinking about for the room. We're deciding between the "Leapfrog" and "Baked Clay" schemes. Either way, we're planning on a darker, more saturated color on the bottom, a thick white chair rail, and a lighter version of the color on top. Mia was extra helpfull, as you can see. :)

Landscape Progress

As if the boys didn't have enough fun the first time, we're now on round two of the front retaining wall. Grant got to load up the new truck with more black granite block. Over Labor Day, he got a good start on the L-shaped wall that will frame the tree out front.

Retaining walls done!

It was a long Memorial Day weekend, but our front retaining walls are done! Padraic Stack and Nick Nice came over (pretty much for the whole weekend) and helped Grant move block, set block, level block, glue block... I think you get the picture. :) The block is natural-cut blue granite. With traces of brown and gray in it, we thought it complimented our house without adding yet another shade of brown.

House Project No. 2...

Tonight, we went rock shopping. Found a great deal on some natural blue granite (actually has hints of green and brown in it too) that we ended up buying! That, with a little pea gravel and crushed limestone, will begin our new retaining wall/landscape beds in front of the house.

Thus begins house project no. 2......

Mission Accomplished!

Grant and Padraic got an early start on Saturday and painted the finished shelf - took some time off to watch Yankees vs. Red Sox (of course) - and then painted the wall. It's exciting to have our first "project" done!

Spring Cleaning... and then some...

And then came the cleaning... Even though we had plastic taped and pinned everywhere, there was still a ton of drywall dust after Grant finished sanding. Grant was covered, the wall/shelf was covered, everything was covered (my only known down-side of an open plan house - we couldn't shut doors to contain it). We also hosted Mother's Day at our house on Sunday, so most things were cleaned 2-3 times before the dust was abated. And, as you can see below, Mia was very helpful. :)

Birthday Tree!

True, it is not yet my birthday, but I got an early present this week... a tree! Grant had asked me what I wanted, and I said a tree. So he called up our friend Tom from Ahern Hardscapes and Garden Design - and he and Grant walked a nursery and picked out this Red Point Maple. It's so exciting to see some growth - my new tree and our grass are the first color, other than brown, on our lot since we've lived there! Plus, I had no idea it was even happening! I came home from drill in Lincoln, and surprise - a tree! :)