Friends For Dinner, Favor from a Friend and Finally Painting the Dinning Room

We had Aaron and the kids over for spaghetti and meatballs. Then he left to go watch the Timberwolves game.

Meadow has suddenly started reading big chapter books. She loves the Warriors series.

 

She usually only reads graphic novels. She also picked up this awesome sweater at the thrift store the other day. I can't believe we are still wearing bulky sweaters. 

 

Since she was already into her Warriors book from school she opted out of coming with Theo and I to the library. 

Finally toys are back!

Meadow missed out on the large graphic novel section at the Arvonne Fraser Library.

Meanwhile, I decided it was time to get rid of the pink dinning room paint.

 

This room has always grossed me out. The paint is peeling in areas and there's dirt smudges and stains everywhere.  

With the dining room in use I took my giant mending pile upstairs. 

The kids played in the other room almost the whole day. Since we brought all their toys up here they rarely come up here. 

I asked an old friend of ours if they had scaffolding we could borrow. Eventually we'll use this to paint our exterior and fix an open soffit.

Meadow is always creating something. 

 

Like most of the walls in this house, there's a million cracks that need to repaired before painting. 

Every day something new sprouts in the gardens. It's a classic game of is it a flower, invasive or weeds.

For some reason we got DQ without Meadow. 

 

We had to do another trip to Menards and she didn't want to come with. 

 

 Since we can't use the dining room, I made a makeshift table with our pull out cutting board. Also this is what your counter looks like when you don't have a dishwasher. 

 

Or your Edwardian forebearers were tiny.

 

Meadow made flowers and gave them to the neighbors for May Day. 

 

Cute, but an invasive.

 

Jumping right over the fence from our neighbors yard.

The previous owners planted a lot of flowers in our yard, we're going to learn a lot this year thanks to the Seek app.

The walls were easy enough, but now I had to paint the box beam ceiling.

 

I wasn't sure about a dark color in a room with so much dark woodwork but it works.  

 

By luck it's actually appropriate for the time period.
 

This took forever.

Months late I finally received some back plates for sconces that didn't quite work.

 

It's beautiful.

I'd taken a break on house jobs after finishing the rental half of the duplex. I was finally back in Mr. Fix-it. mode.

I found a super cheap electric mower that also works with our string trimmer and snowblower batteries. 

 

 

We're going to need a ton of wood chips in this yard. My mom is always saying we should get a bigger vehicle. 

Well, we proved her wrong.

 

I finished a very productive week by extending the monkey bars on the kids playset. 

 

It came with only 3 bars so wasn't really challenging. I found more bars online and we used wood that we already had.