This piece of furniture once was a hutch that went over a desk. We got rid of the broken desk, but it still makes for a nice shelf. 

Tonight, I cut the legs off so I could mount it to the wall. 

Finally got around to mounting the chargers for my new mower/leaf blowers. 

My goal for the spring is to organize the garage so nothing is on the floor. 

Someone thinks I need to ditch the push mower and get something with a little more power. 

Today I gave this reel mower a spin. 

I’ve got a smallish yard and thought a non-electric mower would work better than always charging my batteries for my Ryobi mower. 

It did not do well on my thick, six-inch grass and was nearly impossible to push. 

I’m definitely going to wait to give my final review until I try cutting the grass in a week or so. 

It’s starting to look like spring here in the Miami Valley and Kenley and I spent some time fixing a few dead spots in our yard. 

I really have know idea what I’m doing, but it looks like it will grow 😜

Tonight I installed a new nightlight for the hallway as our three year old is potty trained and I wanted to give her a little light without a bulky night light and found this cool outlet cover by Snap Power.

This cover is super easy to install at it pulls power from the outlet. The spec sheet says the batteries will last for 25 years using about $0.10 of power per year.

The screws on the side of the outlet were not tightened, so the two minute installation turned into about fifteen.

Overall, I’m real happy with it and excited to see how it looks when it pitch dark upstairs.

Before

Box / packaging

Back of the cover

Here are the screws that were in the way

Finished Product

Plus, their store is built on WordPress and WooCommerce 🙂

Finally had all the supplies and was able to build the valence for baby brother’s room this weekend.

The angle of the picture makes it look crooked, but it’s definitely not 🙂

We are another step closer to finishing up the baby’s room. 

And I’d say we matched the color pretty well. 

Some supplies for my next project (and some salt for our water softener), building a valence for around the window in baby brother’s room. 

Definitely didn’t want to go out to Lowe’s in the sub 10 degree weather, but everyone else stayed home so I was in and out in no time. 

There is a website called bitfta.com, that is an online auction site where you can score some significant deals.

It’s a huge warehouse filled with hundreds of items.

We’ve bought wine fridges as Christmas gifts, bathtubs (yes plural, as I thought I was going to be outbid, so I got two tubs for a total of $14), a new rocking chair for the baby’s room and quite a few other miscellaneous thing.

Today’s haul include a rain barrel to collect water for our garden and a Gladiator cabinet to go with the other ones I recently installed.

As you can see, the boxes of some things are a bit ragged and some items are open box, so you have to read the auction post carefully.

Usually when I set my mind to a goal, there’s no stopping me. However, with the daily blogging goal, it’s been a struggle.

Every day it’s on my to do list and it just gets pushed off until later. And I’m in no mood to publish a blog post after dinner.

The first five days of the challenge were easy. I was on the road traveling and I got up earlier than the rest of my team and was able to write a post before heading out for the day.

Last Saturday was when the wheels fell off.

I discovered around 10am that our sump pump in our house wasn’t working and the backup had kicked on. It had rained most of Friday and Saturday morning and our sump croc fills up with water quickly.

I dropped all plans for the day and ran out to Lowe’s to buy this stuff to start the process of replacing the broken pump.

I worked for a couple of hours and after another trip to Lowe’s, finally was able to get the new one installed temporarily to start pumping the water out of our house.

We had family Christmas pictures schedule so I had to leave before the job was fully completely. Luckily my mom was in town, so we left to get the pictures taken and she baby sat the sump pump.

I wasn’t able to install the float, so I needed her to unplug the pump if the croc ever completely emptied.

When we returned from pictures, my dad had arrived and we spent until 6:30pm getting the new pump completely installed.

So, finally, at 7pm, I was ready to start my day.

I decided to spend time with my family and not blog and that’s when the daily posts stopped.

Now that I’m caught up from the weekend’s adventures and my traveling from last week, I’m all set to tackle the daily mission of blogging again.

Over the last few days our backyard has undergone some huge transformations.

Dump trucks full of gravel and sand have been brought in with a bobcat and the ground is now perfectly level.

Last Friday, the sitting wall got started and today pavers began to be laid. Looks like surface is about 75% completed now. Here are a few pictures of the progress.

Today the concrete slab and lilac bush were removed from our backyard and we’ve got a big lovely dirt patch of where the patio is going to go.

Ever since we’ve moved into our house (August 2010), we’ve hated our outdoor living space.

Our house had a 12′ by 12′ concrete slab, which wasn’t quite big enough for our six person table, grill and tower garden. When we had people over, we brought out the folding chairs and table and placed them on the uneven grass.

Well, today is the last day for the old concrete slab. Tomorrow a local company, Deal’s Landscaping, will be cleaning out the old and preparing for our new paver patio.

Here are some before images:

First weekend project completed! Capturing rain water to water our landscaping / garden.