How To Tell if You Live With Boys: A Tutorial With Photos

Whenever I run into evidence that I live with boys, I'm surprised and caught off-guard.

"How did this get here??" Oh yeah...the boys.

"Who did this??" Oh yeah...the boys again.

"Who IS that person??" Oh yeah...must be one of the boys.

So I pass along to you some signs to watch for, in case you've ever wondered if you, too, have an infestation of boys in your house:

#1) Storm Troopers in your houseplants, guns at the ready.

#2) Army guys in your houseplants, guns pointed at #1.

#3) Rocks. Everywhere.

#4) Strange little people walking around in outfits like this:

#5) Strange themes seeping into your holiday traditions

#6) Handpicked flowers that make all the rest of it worth it.

Happiness Is...

...washing the beautiful, old bubbly glass windows on the front porch for the first time in three years, and just in time to enjoy the color beyond.

Perspective

When we go from this:

To this:

It feels like the whole house is clean.

Another Project Off the List...

The other thing we've been busy with is paint.

We have painted almost every surface of the first floor of this house. The kitchen, family room, dining room, and living room have all been freshly painted and brightened up. The biggest *phew* of all was getting all of the trim painted white. It was so chipped up and banged up and many different shades of dirty white. Yuck!

Now it's all crisp, clean, bright white.

Feels like a new house!

Here are before and after shots of the living room (Check out the fireplace, too! Delicious!):

Before:

After:

The fireplace before:

and After:

4th of July in Walker

Click here to view these pictures larger

4th of July in October

Well, I'm finally able to see the light at the end of my work tunnel, and am realizing how terribly lax I've been with this blog.

We've done a bit more in the last few months than finish our kitchen, play baseball, and head off to school.

Yes, we've been up to more fun and projects and now I have the time to share them with you. Aren't you excited?!

In looking back over the summer, one of the standout things we did was a slightly spontaneous trip to a friend's cabin in Walker, MN. We spent 4th of July weekend swimming, kayaking, tubing, fishing, boating, eating, sleeping, and just enjoying every minute. It was heavenly.

See photos in the next post.