Trying to catch up :)

well since I slacked on updating the blog forever I figured I had better get caught up... so here's ANOTHER post to get a little closer to catching up, actually I think I am caught up at this point..but I feel like I've missed something so we shall see :).

At the end of June I had a conference for work and while I was gone Todd re-did the front door! It looks amazing :)  He did forget to take a before shot but luckily I found this one from last Halloween that shows what it used to look like.   Then below you will see the new door, notice it has leaded glass in it from our old big front windows :)  I think it turned out pretty nice.

Old Door

And then a month or two ago...it's all a blur really :) we painted the door! We aren't sure what color we'll be painting the outside of the house so we just used the same green that we had left from the "frog room" so that it is more protected on the outside.  And we painted the inside of it white to match the trim :) I like it!

And then a couple weekends ago Todd started building a SHED :) and I had some painting projects :)

Isn't he just handy! :) the overhang is where he is going to build
an area for our fire wood! ;)

And then I wasn't much help with the shed since he had his dad and my dad

and a friend help with it :) So I worked on a couple of projects of my own. 

I re-finished an old dresser I got from my friend Leslee :)

And I "antiqued" a surround for the fish tank stand that Todds dad had made :) 

And Todd and his dad finished our BEA-Utiful entertainment center! it looks soo good:)

they also used some leaded glass for the doors on this! We will be able to take a 

little piece of the house with us when we move :)

Finally...another POST! :)

Well it's been awhile...much longer than I thought...since I last posted.  We have been working slowly but surely on the house and in my opinion it's starting to look REALLY good!  There is still a lot of work to go but considering we've only been here just a little over a year...we are making some great progress :)

This summer, we have worked a bunch on the yard! There were lots of pavers, rocks, and random "landscaping" things that made for a very weird backyard. So we removed all of the rocks, all of the pavers, and all of the other random things (for instance a tire planter box...)  We also removed about 14 trees that were dead, or too intertwined with the other trees, it really opened up the yard, but we still have LOTS of shade which is nice :)   One of the trees we removed was FULL of carpenter ants...it was awful...but we took care of all of that and then had 14 yards of dirt dumped in our backyard so we could attempt to level it out a bit.

Cutting down trees

Pile-O Dirt.....

Rock (this wasn't even all of it...)

See... more rocks

Pavers

We kept these pavers, and used some of the
others to clean it up and make it look nice:)
see picture below as well :)

We tried to use as many of the rocks and pavers as possible so we didn't have to haul as many to the dump.  So we got rid of the wood boxes around the planter type areas and Todd landscaped them with rock around instead.  I think he did a great job!

We moved all of the rose bushes that were randomly around the backyard and
planted them in the planter area next to the drive way! ...Some survived :) haha

This area had some rocks already, but Todd cleaned it up and made a larger
planter area, and cleared the access to under the house.

More planter box areas we replaced the wood with rock.

We also planted some TREES! :)

We ripped out the sidewalk that went in-between these bushes
since it will never be used... 

We trimmed the bushes :)

Took a lot of loads to the dump...

And enjoyed every minute of it :) ....maybe not every...