I’m writing this weeks after the fact, but I’m determined to document eight weeks of our stay-at-home life. I promised myself I’d write eight weeks worth of posts so I could look back on this later, and I always finish what I start. It’s a curse.
About five weeks after I set it up, I took down the table we had in my office for the girls to do school work at. They’ve been slowly migrating away from my office into the family room, to the couch, on the floor with the dogs, and the table was just taking up space. So it’s gone and it feels nice.
We’re in a pretty good routine. The girls know how to fill their days, when to focus on school work, and when to run around outside like wild animals.
The weather was better this week (finally) after weeks of being gross so we spent a lot of time outside: getting garden beds ready for planting, cleaning up landscaping, and pulling weeds.
Have I shared the patio plans here? I’m too lazy to go back and read the other posts so this might be a repeat. We have a patio off our family room that we’re building a roof over. It seems simple, just build a roof, but to do it we had to complete a bunch of other projects.
The roof will block all the morning sun from my garden beds so we moved my garden beds out away from the house. Then we built more beds, sectioned off a part, and plan to cover it with river rock.
The roof will block what little natural light we get in the family room so Chris installed canned lighting in the family room a month or two ago.
Now that the garden beds have been moved, the whole area outside the kitchen looks pretty depressing. There’s a small concrete slab off the kitchen doors, but it’s so small I could only ever put one lawn chair on it and then it kinda blocked the door. So then we decided to break up the concrete patio (it was about 6 x 4) and have a much bigger one (22 x 8) installed.
I feel like I shared part of this already because the concrete patio is how Chris threw his back out.
ANYWHO. Long story to tell you they started working on the patio this week. They leveled the area, built the frame, and then moved some huge rocks we had near our driveway. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Also, this is a detour to the patio roof. This step wasn’t ever part of the plan in getting the roof up. Full disclosure: it’s not a cheap detour, but when we’re finished with our backyard, it’s gonna be amazing.
Stay tuned for more exciting concrete stories.
I took Friday off work to borrow my dad’s truck and haul a few loads of river rock to fill in my garden. Chris’ back is still messed up so if I wanted to get this done, I had to do it myself. I wasn’t sore from shoveling rocks for hours, but I should have worn better gloves because the blisters I ended up with are going to stick around for quite some time. But the garden is *almost* ready and I’m thrilled with how it’s coming together.
Late last fall, I inherited about five plants from my mom’s work. They were getting rid of everything for a remodel/update, and she scored me some pretty sweet houseplants. Except I’m pretty sure one of them had gnats living in it…and I finally lost my mind this week because of them. I don’t know which plant it is and I have a feeling they spread so I went full attack and pulled out every single plant in my house on Sunday. EVERY. SINGLE. PLANT.
45+ houseplants from every room of my house got dragged out to the driveway and front sidewalk, cleaned, treated, and aired out. I never ever want to do this again so I was really thorough, took every tip the internet had to offer, and left no piece of soil or pot unturned.
(The good news about writing this weeks later is I can confidently tell you I no longer have a gnat problem. I don’t know exactly what actions worked because I took every tip suggestion and used it, but I’m gnat free and loving life again.)
You know how everyone and their mom started making bread during lockdown? Because I am nothing but defiant and contrary, I stopped making bread. Literally stopped making the bread I love because everyone else was doing it. I think everyone is almost over making bread now, so I’m sure I’ll start back up again soon.
I’m slowly turning our backyard into the place to be. I picked up a rope/tire swing at Sam’s Club when I went grocery shopping. Our pool goes up in a few weeks. As summer approaches, we’re getting more and more camp cancellations so our backyard needs to pick up the slack if the girls will be here all the time.
All my garden starts are itching to be planted. We’re about a week away from safely planting in zone 6, and I can’t wait. There’s so much to do to get dirt and gardens ready before you can actually plant, but it doesn’t match actually putting the seeds or plants in the dirt. Nothing beats that.
Ellie has been very invested in getting her wet hair French braided after her showers. She wakes up with some fancy curly hair and no place to go, but I admire her energy to not completely give up on her appearance like someone else in this house has.
Her math bowl competition happened online this week. She was really disappointed and bummed at how it turned out. I would feel such relief to not have to do some math problems in front of large groups of people but, obviously, we enjoy different things.
We ate a lot of sweets this week: the party scones and the blueberry almond cake from Let Me Feed You are really good. If you haven’t purchases this cookbook yet, I don’t know what to tell you. Just do it.
Things we watched, listened to, or read:
-We watched McMillion$ documentary on Hulu. It’s so weird and funny and odd. I liked it a lot more than Tiger King. Less horror and heartbreak, but still kinda unbelievable.
-We’re still watching the Michael Jordan documentary; still interesting to watch.
-I’m sure there’s more but I didn’t write anything else down and it’s far enough away that I have no idea what I was reading. This is why I shouldn’t procrastinate so much.
What’s for dinner?
Sunday: red beans and rice with chicken sausage
Monday: grilled chicken, zucchini, and couscous
Tuesday: turkey cheeseburger soup (from this cookbook)
Wednesday: Steak-n-Shake takeout (while running errands)
Thursday: one-pan sausage and potatoes (from this cookbook)
Friday: Egg Roll #1 takeout (after returning my dad’s truck)
Saturday: leftovers
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