When They Out Grow The Swing Set

Today my oldest son showed me what he can do.

My son wanted to show us what they have been doing on the swing lately.

He showed me, he has no problem going back and forth with out stopping.

Next one in training.

Her confidence is building.

I am thankful the littlest child had no interest in trying.

Later that night, I happened to look outside to find them up in a tree at least 20 feet high.

They were looking for a good spot to build a tree house.

Now I know what the kids do when they out grow the swing set.

Time for a trampoline I am thinking.

The Season of Purple

My gardens tend to go through seasons of color.

Right now it is purple.

The purple flowers are called Obedient Plant.

It comes in purple and white.

They grow all summer long and flower in late summer to early fall.

They are beautiful.

BUT BEWARE!

IT IS INVASIVE!

Many years ago, I remember planting just a few of these plants in my driveway entrance flower bed.

A few turned into hundreds.

I gave so many away.

They are spreaders if you let them go to seed.

I did.

Now I have them in almost every garden in my yard.

So this year I went out and bought some more.

White ones.

I am hoping they will spread as well as the purple.

The Hydrangeas are starting to change colors.

Fall is on the way.

My Autumn Clematis is in bloom too.

Tiny white sweet smelling flowers.

It is one of my favorite climbing vines, I have four of them around the gardens and I added a new one to the back deck.

My daughter's new purple sneakers.

She loves the color purple and they are just her favorite she tells me.

What color season are your flowers in?

A Great Day Thriftintg

I scored during my last visit to Sally!

This beautiful oil painting is so full of color.

The frame is what made me really want the picture.

Look at the detail.

I am not too fond of the gold.

However, I am not sure if the picture will look as nice with a white frame.

Ironstone tranferware platter.

I love the little green detail.

I am always on the lookout for vintage ornaments.

Of course, I could never have too many of them.

And my favorite find.

HUGE!

Silver tray.

Footed 

and 

Handles.

LOVE IT!

I can't wait to start decorating for fall.

The weather is getting cooler at night.

You can almost smell fall coming.

THEN COMES HALLOWEEN!

Happy long weekend everyone.

A Room of His Own

My youngest son will soon have a room of his own.

When we finish our new master bed room he will be getting our old room.

He keeps asking when.

Soon.

Will I get your bed?

No.

Will I get your tv?

No.

I have been asking him what his favorite colors are and what he would like in his new room.

Orange.


here

Not the whole wall of course.
Maybe some horizontal stripes or one wall of vertical stripes.
He also likes blue, so I will do some smaller stripes of that color.

I would also like to try gray along with the orange.
I think it is a color he could grow into and not hate it in a couple of years.

I would love to make him a cool bed for this new room.

here

Seeing as we STILL have NOT built the tree house, this might be a temporary compromise.
He is young enough to really appreciate it for many years.


here

This bedding would be great to start off with.

Some wall art.
I love the canvas pictures.

I have two vintage scooters that once were hanging in his room when he was a baby.
Now they are just waiting to be hung back up.

He will have his OWN closet.

He will have his OWN cabinet for toys.
His OWN desk.
His Own bookcase.

I have a funny feeling he is going to leave his new room as a play room and sleep in his brother's room.

I'm ok with that too.

At least he will have a place to go that is his OWN.

Progress

We have been working hard on our vacation.

Very hard!

We finished almost all the drywall in the master bedroom.

 This is the master bedroom looking from the master bathroom.

This is the view that Mr. M. said it is starting too really look like a room and he can start to visualize it.

I looked at him like he had two heads.

Seriously, now it is looking like something.

It started to look like something to me a LONG time ago!

Then I started to tell him how I see it coming together and where all the furniture will go, and the colors of the walls, and what kind of lighting.

I lost him.

Then I asked him, "did you happen to realize that this room is larger than our living room?"

He looked at me amazed, that had not really sunk in.

Anyway.

The wall near the table is where the bed will be placed.

The far wall with the hole is where the fireplace will be.

The outlets are for the tv and cable.

A sconce on each side.

I will put his lazy boy by the window, a small chair and couch for watching tv and reading.

The wall to the left is where I will put the pine armoire that currently houses our tv.

Oh I have plans for this room.

This is the left side of the room.

The two open doorways are our his and her closets.

I would eventually like to build a window seat in front of the windows.

There will also be a round table where we can put the contents of our pockets, keys and what not.

My closet!

All sanded and ready for a second coat of joint compound. 

Don't worry, I sanded Mr. M.'s too, I will finish them tomorrow.

The laundry room.

Waiting to be sanded and a second coat of joint compound.

I have already started showing Mr. M. the tile I would like to put in this room.

Honed Travertine floor and wall tile from HomeDepot.

I love the color, it will go with the dark wood we plan on putting in our bedroom.

I am also thinking of using a smaller square travertine tile on the fireplace surround.  Mr. M. started to glaze over when I showed him the different colors of tile.  I do love that he lets me make almost all of the decorating decisions, BUT, I would love his input at times.

The in-floor radiant heating was finished today.

Now we will be able to work on the room even in cold weather.

The new mantel waiting to be put in place.

I can't wait to decorate it.

Especially for Christmas.

There is a certain kind of tree in the garage I found at Sally during their Christmas in July sale, waiting, just waiting for that special time.

I can't wait!!!

This is one of the views looking down from our new bedroom window.

I can see all of the gardens.

We installed the french doors at the back of the garage.

Originally it was the plan to have a regular garage door.

BUT, when we built the deck, we realized that there was no way we would use it to move cars or the tractor in and out of the garage.

SO, I put in a brick patio and filled in the rest of the space with flowers.

These will be the party doors.

Yes, there is already a door there.

We are funny like that.

Someday I will have to tell you about the light switches in the mud room.

Now all we have to do is install the door knobs and put up some trim.

The doors let in a lot of natural light into the garage.

They look great and will come in handy for when we have large parties.

With no air conditioning and the threat of rain during my son's birthday party this past summer, we used the garage.

It worked perfect.

Each day we list what we would like to work on and what we can do for fun.

Wednesday we went to Six Flags amusement park, lucky for us, they had some rides down so we scored 5 free tickets to go back before the end of the season.

Thursday we went to the drive in theater to see Planes and Smurfs 2.

We are hoping to still fit in miniature golf, bowling, roller skating, bike rides and possibly visiting friends on Rushford Lake for some swimming, jet skiing and relaxing. 

 We play as hard as we work.

Only one and 1/2 weeks and the kids go back to school.

They are ready.

I am ready.

Dinner's Getting Cold

Dinner's getting cold.

This is a picture of a cold dinner.

A fireman is late for dinner.

Mr. M. ran off to a call before he even had a chance to eat.

He is out helping a family in need of assistance.

This is a picture of a family waiting for their dad to get home for dinner.

There are many nights that dinner sits waiting for dad to get back from a fire call.

In fact, this night, dad had just enough time to get home, eat his dinner and then run out to another fire call.

This is not an unusual occurrence in our daily life.

If you are a family member of a volunteer fireman, you know what I mean.

This particular dinner is special, we are eating chowder that Mr. M. helped make this past weekend to sell at the field days.

It was his volunteer fire companies field days weekend.

We all go and help support our firemen.

We love to go to the fire company parades.

We love our Fireman!