Projects

So much to say, so much to say. I could blog about Scarlet's latest 'do, following her brief alone time with scissors yesterday... but I am still a little too mad about that. I need a few more calm down days. It is definitely not funny yet.

So instead, an update on the projects going on at our house.

Jon and I have been in a crafty mood lately. We'll start with mine.

To get into the Halloween spirit, the kids and I created this bat and ghost hanging thingy.

When I say the kids helped, I mostly mean they got to color a few ghosts as well... and theirs magically disappeared before the project reached completion. Sorry guys, ghosts with missing arms and green faces didn't make the cut this year. Try again in 2011.

My next project was one I have been promising to finish for about six months now. While walking home one day, I noticed one of my neighbors had thrown away a wooden rocking horse... separated into about 4 pieces.

I swear those wooden eye holes were just staring into my soul, asking to come home with me and be made whole again. I couldn't resist.

Sadly, the horse then sat in pieces on the side of my house until Jon could bear its misery no longer. He pieced the thing back together and gave it a coat of paint.

Now I had grand plans for this horse, a horse he would no longer be. He was getting an upgrade to a zebra.

Four months later, I am almost done. We are now down to some touch up paint and a mane to be added very soon.

So like I said, crafty times.

So... um... well... here's Jon's project.

Yes, while I was cutting out paper bats and spray painting stripes, Jon created a fortress single-handedly in less than a month.

Here is the very old realtor's picture of our house.

As you can see, the front yard grass... well it is in dire need of a good combover. Plus, last year's big snowfall mangled the branches on most of our very extensive amounts of greenery.

So before the fence could even be considered... the shrubbery had to meet its end.

It was exhilarating to walk into our front door without getting whacked by a stray branch.

Then, with our handy dandy little red car, we made a trip to Lowes.

And before I even realized what was going on, the front of our house was transformed.

We now have a little courtyard in front of our house which include his other project, our homemade porch swing.

It has been fantastic. Now we can have our front window open without opening ourselves to the world to view, we can roll out the ginormous gate and really keep those door to door salesmen at bay, and we have had more conversations with our neighbors than ever before as they ask about and praise our housing improvement.

So remember my cool zebra?!?! Yeah, me neither.

P.S. Ignore the dead grass... we have decided to eliminate the hundreds of dollars of water bills and are desert landscaping the front. Rocky... but cheap.