Between Two Pheasants...

The alternative title to this post is "Cosmetic Work: Fillers and Plumpers." Remember how I was telling you about all the rain we had at the beginning of March and how there wasn't any work on the exterior paint? Well, things drastically changed over the last two weeks. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous and Jesus has been able to do a lot of cosmetic work. He's filling cracks and holes and plumping up depressed areas. We're going to turn our house from an aging Hollywood Queen to a fresh, young star! Check it out! These pictures are from March 24th through March 30th. The yellowish-beige color is the putty that's filling the cracks.

If you live in California or have been following our news, its been raining for nearly two weeks straight. That means there's been no progress on the exterior paint until last week and now it's raining again. Booooooo. Well, we need the rain, so Yeah! But, boooo! I want my house to be painted so badly. Anyways... Jesus spent four days at our house last week, working on the back of the house where the laundry room and 1/2 bath is located. Check out the progress! First two days = scraping, scraping and more scraping...

Question: how do you really freak out your neighbors? Step 1. Paint your house bright blue. Step 2. Change color to gray half way through. Work progresses around the house. Here's the latest Front of the house:

As if the exciting news couldn't get more exciting, we found out that Jesus could actually spend more time on our house than originally planned. He's in between jobs which means he can spend more time on our house. Check out the progress he made in just one week! West side window:  Back of the house after power-washed

For Valentine's Day, the Handyman and I agreed that we would  treat ourselves to a nice dinner (and a babysitter--thanks Gramma) and get roses that wouldn't die in 5 days. For a while now, I've wanted to plant rose bushes in the little strip of grass between the sidewalk and curb. Fun fact: this little space has a name, actually a bunch of names. According to Wikipedia, it's called a  road verge ,  besidewalk ,  boulevard ,  city grass ,  devil strip ,  government grass ,  hellstrip ,  island strip ,  nature strip ,  neutral ground , out lawn ,  parking strip ,  parkway ,  planting strip ,  road reserve ,  sidewalk buffer ,  tree belt ,  tree lawn ,  utility strip , or just a  verge. Our neighbor on the West, a certain well-known swim instructor, also has rose bushes and mulch in his hellstrip (heehee). Here's the before pic:

You know when you're waiting for something, and waiting, and waiting, and then finally you get to do it. It's bigger than your birthday or Christmas or a trip to an ice palace. Okay, maybe not that last one, but what if you had to wait TWO whole years for your birthday. That would suck, but then it would be amazing when you actually had your birthday. Well, 730 days after moving in, we are getting our HOUSE PAINTED!!!! It's so exciting! It's so expensive! It's so exciting! It's so expesive! Okay, well there is a little mixed emotion here because picking out paint that you're supposed to love for a decade or more is hard. Like, really hard. Maybe even harder than picking your child's name? Okay, maybe not. But, the time is finally here and we have to get down to business. Actually, Jesus is getting busy (heehee) on the house. He's going to work on it slowly...on the weekends...which is good because it gives me more time to think about colors. Today,...

One of my absolute favorite, favorite, FAVORITE things about this house are the floors. I may or may not have given them the #1 reason why we bought this house. LOVE them. They are lovely, classic, the perfect color, but boy did they need to be refinished when we bought the house. Although we didn't want to spend MORE money on the house before we even moved in, I felt that it was worth it to get the floors refinished before move in day. TOTALLY WORTH IT! Can you imagine trying to move two children and all of our stuff out of the house, enduring the smell of poly, moving everything back, etc.? Not just no, but H-E-L-L NO. In all of the major walkways/walk-throughs the finish was completely worn off and the wood had turned gray. Here's a pic of the baby's room before. You can see the lighter gray-tone to the floor in the yellow circle.