I am taking the kids out for awhile and there is a chance… a chance… that the flooring may be down in the mudroom when we return. How exciting is that!?!

There is paint going up in the mudroom!  It’s what I’ve wanted all along.  :)

Ok, it’s primer technically, but we’re getting there!

We seem to have a family of yellow jackets living in the compost pile. I was hoping they were just dining there, but there are A LOT of them and they never seem to leave. :/

Sorry for the close up of the compost pile. These are yellow jackets, right?

This is my consequence for neglecting the poor compost pile for so long. I have spent hours today reading about how to get rid of them. I have learned that they swarm when agitated, apparently loud noise like the lawn mower can agitate them, and reading all that makes me itchy and twitchy all over! Ugh. I was painting on the back porch and swatted three of them with the paint brush! Good thing their buddies didn’t swarm!

On another note, the kids found the dirt garden again this evening. They went outside to play tag, wore themselves out, and settled in the dirt.

Dirty birds!

Eve found a worm and was eager to show me.

Playing with trucks in the dirt. Still a little boy.

They both came in covered with bug bites! Maybe not covered, but they each had six or seven swollen bites. I was worried they were stings at first, but neither of them noticed getting bitten and I think they would have noticed if they’d been stung by yellow jackets six times!

Weird afternoon. New neighbors and new stairs… we’re movin’ on… up?

Any advice how to remove yellow jackets?

Reconstruction work has begun on the mudroom, courtesy of these fine fellows.

Is this mirror too big for this space? The lady on freecycle asked if it fit my decor. That made me laugh. :)

It would hang, of course, but it could hang so it's at or just above the mantle.

It's a little dirty :)

The kids prefer it on the hearth instead

They have been enjoying it at eye level.

It’s a beautiful day for a blower door test.  Hopefully the test-out will show a sufficient energy savings so we can get a lovely refund from the state.

Check out my snazzy new curtains in the kids room. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile now and slowly, slowly finally got around to doing something about it. We used to (until about an hour ago!) have a dark blue fleece blanket nailed up over the window and hanging down weirdly, but now there is a nice smooth curtain covering the window and a nice smooth curtain covering the ugly brown and painted door into storage.

A big thank you to Julie for making the window curtain. It has 100% light blocking material on the backside so hopefully it will keep their room dark when needed. I had no confidence in my ability to sew multiple pieces of fabric together, sew on velcro, and make it all straight and perfectly measured. Good thing Julie can do all that!! As it was, it took me nearly forever to make the door curtain. Measuring, pinning, sewing (mostly) straight lines… hard work!! But doesn’t it look awesome!? The colors look much better in person, so next time you’re around remind me to show off the kids room :)

While I was taking pictures of the curtains Lex wanted me to take pictures of him. OK! He did some “super hero poses” for me. I’m not sure what kind of super hero this is, but I love it anyway!

Crazy Lex posing for the camera. These are his super hero poses :)

After much delay we finally, FINALLY got around to painting the bookshelf.  But “we” I mostly mean “me” because the kids have been dying to do it almost every day, but it took me awhile to gather the materials and motivation.  I mostly wanted to do it while Lex was at school and Eve was napping, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  In hindsight I’m glad it didn’t!  We all had a really fun time and the kids did a super good job of listening and being careful.  Hopefully it will dry tonight and we can do another coat (or two, I didn’t use primer) tomorrow.  Maybe by next week it will actually have books on it :)