Not our house

Last year our awesome friends Shawna and Bob came over just to help us paint the living room and kitchen. A couple weekends ago Mom, Paul and I decided to take a little road trip to Helena to visit Shawna. While there we decided it was time for Shawna to paint her living room, so we helped her pick out paint and got busy. Our first paint choice was not good, but we were successful with paint number two. So although this isn't home improvement for our house, it's still some fun home improvement that we did for a friend!

Here are the before pictures:

Busy removing screws from the wall while Dietrich played on the floor:
Here I am working on the accent color:
Go Shawna!
Finished up and taking a break with Dietrich:
And the after pictures! Beautiful!


Then of course we had to take Dietrich to visit Carroll College while in Helena. Here he is with my brick, it's hard to read but it's right by his knee:


It was fun to do some home improvement on someone else's house, and it was great to have the opportunity to pay Shawna back for the help she gave us last year. Now back to the fence...

I won something!

I just won a carpet cleaning! How great is that? Especially with these sadly stained carpets and a baby that I would like to put on the floor once in a while. They are going to clean two rooms...and try to sell me a vacuum cleaner I am sure, but I can't afford the vacuum cleaner, I can't afford to pay them to clean the two rooms! So this is great!

Unfortunately today we have also encountered THREE cavities in my mouth. This is actually pretty normal for me, I used to have a cavity every time I went to the dentist, no matter what I did, brush, floss, rinse, still cavities. But it's been a while (probably because all my teeth are filled now) so I'm pretty bummed about it. In fact, one of the cavities is actually a cracked filling that needs replaced. As if getting cavities filled isn't bad enough, it will also cost us around $240, and remember that expensive fence project? Yeah...

So as long as I'm making appointments I call to make Dietrich's two month well-baby check. He turned two months last week on the 9th. The Dr. can't get us in until July 9th. So really, this will be a three month check. Not that it really matters but I feel silly for not making the appointment sooner, and what if there was something wrong with him that we don't know about and we will have to wait a another whole month!

Then my mom sent me an e-mail about sad things regarding horses...horses that we don't ride anymore that I wish I wanted to ride but I don't. And she wants to sell them, and I should let her, but it's still very sad....

So enough of my complaining. It's a beautiful day and Bryce will be home soon and I did win that free carpet cleaning...

Everyone pushes a falling fence...

And this fence has been falling for a while. Last year we came home from vacation to find it lying in the yard, every time the wind blows we have to tack up a few pieces, and a few weeks ago after thinking we survived a windstorm, the next day the neighbor had very nicely propped the pieces that fell in his yard back in ours. We have been planning for months for this BIG project. Probably one of the biggest and so far the most expensive projects we have done to our house. But the summer weather is supposedly here, or maybe it's just on it's way, and we are ready for this project. So here are the BEFORE pictures!

The double gate in the back, we can't open it because we have it all propped up. This was actually laying in the yard when we bought the place:

Here is what the neighbors see. When we moved in they had a permanent piece of wood propping the fence up and out of their yard. We fixed it up last year so that they could take that out:
This is the best side of the fence, look, only one t-post keeping things in place.
Over here is what we found in our yard after vacation last year. Note the t-posts!
Look at all that wood holding things in place:
We had to really work on this part to keep it from falling down and letting the dogs out into the neighborhood.
Now the fence is GONE! And it looks pretty weird, kinda nice actually. But tying the dogs up every time they need to go out is not so nice. The wood was delivered earlier this week and I suspect that Bryce will start setting posts this weekend. It is going to be a busy month trying to finish this huge project. I'm not terribly helpful now, but I will keep Bryce supplied with water and beer! (I make the same promises to anyone who shows up to help...)