It's been a while

Since I moved my craft room upstairs, it's been super hot. Considering it's not an actual upstairs, but a finished attic and there is no central air in our house, it's miserable. I quickly threw together my neice's dress one cool day. Her face lit up when I told her it was for her, and that I made it. My sister and brother in law went to the beach with the kids, and they sent me the pictures afterwards. She apparently wore it everyday they were there! The fabric came pre-smocked, and I made a shirt for myself long ago. I had enough leftover fabric to stretch around half her body, so I just went back to the store to get another half, added some buttons that looked like the orange slices on the fabric, and used left over fabric from my BFF's apron we've been working on and walah. She has a fun summer dress that has definitely gotten some miles on it!

We just signed our life away to have trees taken down, and our lot has so much sunshine now. I love waking up in the morning now because the sun is bright in my room, and I take a shower to natural light. I LOVE IT! I used to love all the shade since we never got rained on walking to our car, the yard was always cool, and the house was always cool too. But we took the plunge and I wish we did it sooner. I don't mind a little rain (I don't even own an umbrella, just rain boots so I can play in the puddles!) and the house is still surprisingly cool. We also signed a contract the other day to have the house exterior COMPLETELY redone. I don't mind being broke knowing that i'll have a beautiful home to enjoy for many years to come. We thought we would move sooner than 5-10 years, but the house is in great shape after all our updates and repairs, and we're 4 and 8 miles from our jobs, and 10 minutes to everything you could think of. 3 hospitals, 5 malls, great schools, an $800 mortgage payment and our electricity bill is $30. Come on, can you really beat that?


In other news, I just spent the night in the ER. I've had bad chest pains and my hand went numb and tingled 2 nights in a row. The first night it subsided, but last night it kept going. It still hasn't gone away, and they didn't give me any real diagnosis. Story of my life, I swear. So back to the PCP again. BFF and I baked what we thought were delicous Ande's filled brownies. Only 1 person other than us out of 5 others liked them. They said it was too minty. Oh well, more for us! Hopefully I can get back into crafts soon. My wrist is bruised up from them drawing blood, so it hurts to put pressure on it typing on my laptop. Curse having hidden veins! I guess that's enough of an update for now!

A quick update after a nice weekend.

So much has been going on this past weekend. We went out to lowes to get more mulch for the garden, and I totally forgot to pick up more pink paint for the chairs. However, I at least remembered to take a picture of them together so far. We have decided to knock out all the major home repairs in one swoop over the coming weeks. This includes a new roof (taking off two layers of shingles, moss, mold, repairing a leak, installing new gutters, and replacing the chimney vent), new windows(replacing the ORIGINAL 1951 windows with energy star, tax credit worthy ones with grids and vinyl wrap for the wood frame outside), painting the entire exterior (can't afford the siding, sadly), taking down two trees, and POSSIBLY leveling out the awful original porch with concrete or something of the like and covering with new material, possibly slate. Drew picked out the new house colors from an arts and crafts idea pamphlet at Sherwin Williams, but even though we have a mid century rancher, the colors are really relaxing and very natury, so I agreed to it. We're also going to borrow his dad's tiller and put grass down on all those dirt mounds like in the picture, and eventually install a new fence. The chain link isn't doing it for me.

We also finished the mulch on my garden, however I forgot to get a finished picture! This will have to do for now. And you can see the very faded yellowy color of the siding, and the blah blue concrete foundations. Those rocks were scattered all over the entire front and back yard. Some we even dug up. They weren't set out anywhere fancy, just laying around. Drew grabbed a wheelbarrow, hauled them all to the side of the house, and we carefull picked out each and every stone to line the garden. When we went to Lowes, I was looking at the different edging for landscaping and the sizes equal to the smallest rock in the picture were $3 a piece. We probably layed down 20-30 rocks to line this itty bitty area! We saved a lot of money there. We're using the rest of the rocks to line the side area thats covered in lemon balm and different grassy plants. One day!

We also have Sunday Dinner with his folks every weekend. I love playing with the girls in between reading the sunday ads and the latest Miss Manners installment, and of course, the food. It's been so nice out, and Drew's mom has been coming home with new toys for the girls to play with outside every weekend. A couple weeks ago she got that Barbie jeep, and this weekend she got that truck for the youngest to play along the older girls. I must say, I'm extremely jealous of the jeep. I had a monster truck power wheels when I was a kid, but longed for my own Barbie car. The girls are growing up so fast. I love taking the one on the hood to the park. She's like a mini me with the blonde hair and wears pink from head to toe. People frequently think she's mine.

The littlest one is the poster child for perfect babies. She's always laughing, and loved to come get me to play with her. And I just love the long locks on the one in the drivers seat. She just got her first haircut, and it's still growing like a weed! She has amazing art talent, just like her mom. Everytime I come over to her house, we love to draw and make stuff. I thought I would be sad when the first two, who are only 2 months apart, weren't babies anymore. But it's been so fun watching them grow and learn new things. But it's nice still having another baby around to play with, and rumor has it the long haired one will have a sibling in the near future :)