The boards are battened.

(Sorry for that title, but it's more original than "Board and Batten Completed.")

Yes, we did it! After several weeks (yes, weeks) of living with dropclothes and drywall dust, our family room is sporting a brand new look.  I love it - crisp and clean and updated.  I'm really loving all the farmhouse decor that is in style now and this is our attempt to bring a bit of it into our home. Doug likes that it is comfortable and not "froo froo".

I picked up an old window at an antique store. Not sure where it will end up, right now it's on the mantel. We are still thinking about painting the brick. Right now I am considering painting them all to match the dark brown bricks. Other option is to whitewash them all. Your thoughts?

We rearranged the furniture in here, too. Did you notice the "new" couch? It's my old apartment sofa with a twill slipcover. And now I'm going overboard by putting a blanket over the slipcover to protect it... Yesterday I took advantage of the Labor Day Sale to order a comfy chair and ottoman for the corner opposite the blue chair to make a nice little reading nook.

In the kitchen, the green really does pop the cabinets. We also painted the ceiling in both rooms, so that also did a lot to brighten up the space.

Can you tell I bought some new knobs for the doors?

We splurged a bit on these fancy switch plates, but I think they were worth it.

I removed all the photos and things on the fridge and have been asked at least four times if we got a new one! It makes a big difference.

Well, that's it! Wish my camera was operating better, but this is the best it gets.  We have hickory flooring on order and have already begun doing some drywall repair in the dining room, prepping to paint. Stay tuned...

Indiana Sunset

Who says Indiana isn't picturesque?

Back to Preschool!

Hard to believe I am starting my third year of homeschooling preschool.  This will be the final year of homeschool, as E will be headed to public school next year for Kindergarten. It should be the easiest year, since I am reusing the same curriculum that I did with C two years ago - the Letter of the Week.  I have all my lesson plans, print-outs and manipulatives saved by letter so the prep will be minimal. I also have a much better perspective on how much (or rather, how little) is needed to properly prepare E for Kindergarten at public school.

How does E feel about it? Well, let's just say that we hadn't been home five minutes from walking C to first grade when she asked to do preschool. :)

The first week is an introduction week, where we do activities related to the whole alphabet.  E is older than C was when we did this curriculum and she also is way more advanced in reading then C was. I will have to come up with all new sight words and probably do more focus on math.  I plan to be much more relaxed with E and not pressure myself to fit in all the activities each week.

Here is E enjoying the first week of preschool:

Garden Bounty

I know I have neglected to post much about my garden goings-on this summer. It survived! We've had awful heat and drought, but below is an example of some of the things I was able to harvest before clearing out the garden of spent plants and planting some things for fall crops.

That bloated, green thing you see is my last zucchini. It went into a very delicious Chocolate Zucchini Bundt Cake that didn't last more than 48 hours! The bottom of the basket is filled with basil. I cut down all eight of the plants and got a huge bag-full. I made three batches of pesto for the freezer and still have an abundance left in the fridge for cooking! I may dry some more, but I really have quite a lot from drying batches throughout the summer. I have LOVED my basil this year, but next year will keep to only 4 plants.

We had success with our jalapeno plant. You can see some green and also red jalapenos. We've had green all year, not sure why we had a few red ones this week. I need to research that.

Finally, finally, finally, I was able to harvest some tomatoes.  These are the first tomatoes that have been picked. There are many more - our tomato cage actually toppled over and we had to reinforce it with a fence stake. Next year we will look into more sturdy cages and I will also plant an Early Girl variety to have some tomatoes earlier in the season.

There is a lone yellow pepper. Notice it is lime green.  We haven't had great success with the two bell pepper plants. The yellow pepper plant has many fruits on it, but they don't ever ripen to yellow.  I picked this one to see if it will ripen off the vine.  The green pepper plant has nary a fruit on it, but it is just as tall and green and lush as the yellow pepper plant. I see flowers on it, so I am hoping we will yet see some peppers.

Notice those wonderful carrots? I grew em! I had so much anticipation to see what these looked like and they turned out wonderful. I only pulled out a few - there are many more still in the ground. I had to taste one as soon as we got inside and it was delicious. You can definitely tell a difference from the grocery store carrots. Crisp and crunchy and fresh. Yum!  I will have quite a few to harvest and am researching how to store them. Some people say to bury them in a bucket of sand in a cool place (root cellar). Also, you can slice them, blanch and freeze them.  I may try both methods just to see. In the meantime, they are in my fridge being snacked on and used in recipes.  I see carrot cupcakes in our future!

Last AND least are my poor shallots.  I was so excited to harvest these, but they were a total bust.  They didn't grow any bigger than the cloves I planted in May. I harvested them when the tops fell over but was so disappointed to see their small size. Not sure what went wrong here...

I may go back and add some historical shots of the garden over the summer. I took pictures, but just didn't blog them. It will help me next year to know what and when I did things this first go-round.

As for the fall - I planted some lettuce where the zucchini was and some more green onions to the green onion square.   I also purchased two blueberry bushes and four more broccoli plants.  Fingers crossed, my garden will continue to grow until the frosts shut it down!

First Day of First Grade!

Official first day of school shot:

Look at that big backpack! I am hoping it will last through college...

Waiting for the school crossing guard to walk the kids to school:

The crossing guard walks them all the way to the school doors:

Waiting for the bell:

  Getting off the bus at the end of a long day. She made it!

Hardware Renovations

One of the ways we decided to save some money on our renovation was to paint our kitchen cabinet hardware, rather than to buy new. I really like the pewter look, but we estimated that would be about $110.  I found a kit on Amazon to paint our existing handles and was pretty pleased at the look!

We saved almost $100 by going this route.  Here is a before and after (keep in mind the flash on our camera is broken so all my pictures will be crappy until Christmas):

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Demolition Day

There's no turning back, now!

We decided to do some redecorating in our family room and kitchen, thanks to some money we received from Great Grandma C's estate.  It's something that we've been talking about for several years and now we decided to go for it.

The plan is to put up a board and batten wall treatment, paint the upper portion of the walls, replace hardware, do a faux granite treatment on the countertops, install new flooring and maybe even get some new furniture. All that on a tight budget! Wish us luck...