Week #8 Renovations

This was a great week!  We began the week with a lot of primer.  We were worried about getting the job done, so we called in reinforcements.  On Monday we finished priming and painting the kitchen, so our carpenter could start putting in the floor and kitchen cabinets.  By the end of Tuesday we had finished painting two bedrooms and a bathroom to give our carpenter more floors to put in.  It was a lot of work but with help we got it done.  Thank you to our help!

This man is a crazy painter!

Michael had a lot of fun learning to paint and working with the grown-ups.

By the end of the week we had flooring in the kitchen and two of the bedrooms.  It is beautiful!  We finished painting all of the rooms except the living room.  The living room is still a work zone, so we will have to wait a few more days before we can get in there to finish it up.

My paining clothes will forever remind me of this week.

There is no light in here, but it still looks beautiful!

Painting a vaulted ceiling is not something I will volunteer to do again soon, but it is lovely.

The painted walls and flooring are amazing!  It is really exciting to see things come together!  But now for my favorite part . . . the kitchen!  The cabinets are all in and look beautiful!  It is hard to get great pictures without the countertops in, so you will have to use your imagination.  :)

Hyrum loves exploring in the new house!

James loves it, and that is what matters!

These corner drawers are my favorite!

It was a great week and we are excited to see that things are finishing up and will hopefully done in a couple of weeks!  While the work inside was going so well our garden was thriving!  This was our great harvest today!  We got tons of tomatoes, so we made 6 pints of salsa.  It is really delicious and we enjoyed a pint of it with our dinner.  We also had our first corn ever since we have never tried growing it before.  It was amazing!  It is all that Hyrum ate for dinner as it is one of his favorite foods.  It has been a fabulous week, and we look forward to another great week, but with a little less painting.  :)

Week #7 Renovations

This week I learned what it looks like when the mudder is actually working.  He can mud, sand and texture the whole house in one week.  It still took time to dry but it got done!!!!  Our mudder/sander is all done and moved out!  He even textured the ceiling patches to match which didn't look easy.  We still need to texture the walls, but that should get first thing Monday morning.  Our contractor did put up the ceiling in the family room but we are holding off on the paneling until the heating and cooling guys are done with their ductwork.  They even put in the doors and floor boards.  Now we just need the tiles in the ceiling and the carpet which has been ordered!

New door, floor board sand drop ceiling in the family room!

All of the doors look great!

Now it is our turn to paint everything, so we prepped all of the paint and bought all of the supplies.  This will prove to be a very busy week for me.  :)

While waiting for our house we have been enjoying the spoils of our garden most especially our zucchini.  I thought it would be fun to post some of the things we do with our zucchini during this time of plenty.

Breakfast:  We usually eat eggs, so we have been sautéing onions and zucchini and then enjoying them with our eggs.

Ratatouille:  This is a pretty simple recipe, but here is the general idea . . . dice several zucchini (2 - 4), eggplant (2 -4 small), onions (2 - 3), red peppers (2 -3 ) and tomatoes (5 - 6).  You can alter the number based on the amount you need in the end.  Cook vegetables in 4 - 8 T of butter, salt and pepper generously.  Add some tomato paste and quite a bit of thyme (or rosemary).  Then, cover and let it cook for 30-45 minutes.

Italian Zucchini (we call them zucchini pizzas).  Slice zucchini and then put on sauce and cheese.  Bake until zucchini is cooked.  If you call anything pizza my kids will eat it!

Zucchini/Stovetop Casserole  (I must admit that I stole this from my sister-in-law and altered it).  Again this is very simple because, well, simple is all I do.  :)  To feed my overzealous eaters I diced 4 zucchini, a couple of red peppers and mixed them with a box of stovetop, 1/2 stick of melted butter, two cans of mushrooms and some mozzarella cheese.  I added lots of salt and pepper and then put it in a casserole dish and topped it with cheddar cheese.  Bake at 400 for 40 minutes.  

And even after all that we still have tons of zucchini, so I think it is time to start making more zucchini bread and freezing the rest!

It has been a nice relaxing week, and we even did a little school work.  Now we are finishing up a relaxing weekend in preparation of our great week of paint!  

What a week #6!

This week was probably the most frustrating of this entire process.  First, the house was still moving slowly because now that the drywaller is back it still takes time.  He did get the family room done on Friday and even did quite a bit of work upstairs.  One more week and he should be completely done. . . fingers crossed.

Tape and mud is going in!

After the family room was mudded and sanded our contractor headed back in and textured the wall.  I think he waited about 5 minutes between sanding and texturing.  He is just as ready to get this project done as we are!

Texture on the walls in the family room!

 And then being the ever patient people that we are waited for that to dry and began priming the walls immediately on Friday night.  We were really grateful for the light that our contractor left in the house because it is hard to see in a completely unlit room.  There are some windows, but it wasn't going to be enough to make sure we painted well.  There was still wet mud on the floor from the texture, so I chose to paint barefoot to preserve my shoes.  Barefoot is definitely the way to go!

Liz putting up the primer on the family room walls.

Primer is all up in the family room!

 We then, of course, waited until Saturday to do the painting!  Our goal was to get it painted this weekend, so that our contractor can start on the ceiling first thing Monday morning!

Pretty blonde walls!

Family painted . . . check!  

The boys were very excited to come and see the painted walls on Sunday.

We also stopped to look at the garden today and had fun looking at the plants.  Everything is growing very well, so the dirt must have some good stuff in it!  Some of the zucchini plants have randomly died but others look like 2 and 3 plants each, so it has more than balanced out.

The garden is thriving.  As long as we can keep out the deer it will continue to do so. 

 Now this may sound like a very normal week, but amid the painting and gardening our range decided to quit working.  We called our landlord, but he just didn't have time to deal with it this week, so we became very creative very fast.  We made pancakes on our griddle several times and even for dinner, ordered pizza another and grilled another night.  Then, on Thursday our grill decided to stop working and we knew we were in trouble.  So, on Friday I went and borrowed my visiting teacher's kitchen and made dinners for the weekend (including feeding the missionaries one night), bread and some extra black beans.  It is amazing to learn how much I depend on my range.  On Saturday we thought we would just take a peek and see how much it would cost us to replace the oven and found one on Craig's list for a very reasonable price that had appeared only minutes before, so amid our attempts to paint the family room we also drove up to Bettendorf to buy a gas range.  It is super old school but it works and we were very excited to be able to make scrambled eggs this morning with zucchini in them.  Yes, zucchini goes in everything!  :)  I did learn that there was no way I could use all of my zucchini if I couldn't cook it, so we shared with some friends.  It was a crazy weekend, but we did it!  The family room is painted and ready to go and we have a way to prepare food for these hungry boys again!

Hopefully we will get to do a little more painting next week but without running to different towns in between!  

Renovations Week #5

This week has been a slow and frustrating week.  Our drywaller who was only responsible for taping, mudding and sanding did very little work.  He had a death in his family which happens, but it is hard for us given that we are not very patient people, but we are working on it.  Showing pictures of mudding is difficult, but hopefully we can paint it soon!

Random mudding in the bathroom.

But out plumber was on fire this week and that was very exciting!  He put in the hot water heater and ran all of the lines!  We have hot water!!!  Well, we will as soon as the gas line is run to it.  There is just always one more thing.  :)

Hot water heater!!!

New water lines which look much more professional than anything else that was in the house.

All of the plumbing in the master shower is done and set.  I am thinking that three shower heads seem excessive, but it makes both of us happy.  

The lighting was bad but they finished the flooring in the loft and it looks great!

A better look at the new floor.  

 While waiting on the house we have been having fun gardening.  I am pretty sure that the garden is helping to keep us sane.  We get to eat lots of zucchini and eggplant which is a lot of fun.  Ratatouille is one of our favorite foods now, and we get to eat it a lot!  We also tried corn and melons this year and haven't been disappointed.

Our corn is growing well and is probably the boys favorite crop.

Our melons are on fire!  If they are half as good as they look we are in for a treat!

For some reason we have great luck with butternut squash and this year is no different!  

Our first red pepper of the season!  It tasted amazing and there are plenty more on their way!

Gardening is a lot of fun, and it is even more fun to garden at our new house.  The boys already feel at home there even though we don't live there.  School is getting ready to start and we are itchy to get in but we are trying to be patient and grateful for our new house!  Hopefully week #6 will be a good one!

Adventures with a 1 year old

It has been awhile since we have had a toddler, so we are all learning together and remembering what to do.  The first thing you remember is that it is your job to keep that little one alive.  Hyrum has no fear whatsoever.  When we were at the pool he would just go and fall and lay there with his head in the water.  He will eat anything he can find, so the boys have learned to keep their valuables off the floor.  Well, we're still working on that.  But they have learned that Hyrum can pace them at almost every meal.  The child can eat more than me!

Second, toddlers want to get into everything!  Hyrum loves playing in the dirt in our one plant.  We often have dirt on the floor around this plant which I have learned to tolerate.  He loves playing with the pots and pans and the food processor.  You know, anything within reach.  But now his reach is improving as he has starting climbing up onto chairs.  I have a love-hate relationship with this new skill.  I caught him standing on the dining room table yesterday and did not love it.  :)

Caught in the act.

He is very proud of his new skill.  And yes, that is a pot lid in his hand, of course!

But the best thing about toddlers is that they are easily entertained.  He can play with a pot or a broom or lay on the floor with his brothers and be very happy for house with such simple things.

Laying with Jacob on the floor kicking their legs and rolling around.  Ahhh. . . the simple things in life.

And the other day I bought him a new pair of sandals that he just loves (surprised me too).  He loved them so much that he made us put them back on every time they fell off.  No kidding.  It is the truth.  But in all honesty they are some of the cutest shoes ever that I found at our used kids clothing store.  They were brand new and happened to be the exact same brand that we bought all of our other boys, so they were very excited that they all have the same shoes.  See even boys think stuff like that is fun . . . well, for now anyway.

Strutting around and climbing furniture in his new sandals!

 So, life is fun and exciting with a toddler.  And Hyrum is one of the cutest toddlers ever . . . yes, I am completely biased.  :)