This pin has been sitting patiently on one of my boards on Pinterest, but there’s one huge problem – glass.  I love the idea of using glass jars to display craft supplies or game pieces, but those jars would last about two seconds in our house.  Out.  And then there’s something as simple as adding sconces in our master bedroom, like this picture -

But Juice is just getting to the age where she’ll jump in our bed in the morning and we’ll let her watch some cartoons.  Her attention span is pretty short at this point so after a couple minutes she’s jumping on the bed, pulling books off my nightstand, and rummaging through the drawers next to Brian’s side of the bed.  I can only imagine what she’d do if there was a nice sconce within arms reach.  Out.  Even projects that I’ve been dying to try for her have to be shelved for now, like these tents -

No amount of fortification would keep these guys up in Olivia’s presence.  And finally, we come to the conundrum that is her big girl room.  I have this perfect vision of what it should look like, but it dawned on me the other day that she’s just not ready for half of them.  Curtains?  Nope, she’d pull them down.  Child size rocking chair?  Terrified to think of what she’d do with that during nap time.  Book shelves she could reach?  They’d be used as a ladder.  On and on and on.

So while we’re stuck in decorating purgatory for the next couple years, especially with another little one on the way, we’ll just have to keep working on Olivia friendly projects and creative ways to child-proof our house.

We put up with it for about two years, fully accepting we were the lawn pariahs of the block.  But the last straw was being stabbed in the foot by a bee because they were drawn to all the “pretty flowers” in our “lawn”.  And so began our journey to graduate from weeds to a big kid lawn.  We started with a soil sample and after we got the results we applied a couple rounds of lime, then killed every last bit of green in our yard -

After an oh so fun fight with a yard thatcher and aerator, we planted our grass in October and waited like kids on Christmas morning for the first blades of grass to pop up -

As we thawed out this spring, our grass grew in thicker -

But unfortunately so did some of the weeds -

Overall we’re much better off than we were one year ago.  Back then I’d say we were at a 10/90 ratio of grass to weeds and now we’re at a respectable 80/20 ratio.  We tried a weed and feed a couple months ago, but didn’t have much luck with the weed part.  Now we’re patiently waiting for the fall when we can over-seed again.  We know the journey to a weed free lawn will probably take us a couple years, but we’re happy to say that Juice has been able to run, barefoot, in our yard this year!

Our first loop around the stands was a reconnaissance mission, strategically picking the places we wanted to try.  Of course I was drawn to the booths with the best decor, like this one -

And this one with a chalkboard pallet menu -

Or this bus turned farmers market -

And of course the local beer truck, but I’m pretty sure that’s frowned upon at 7 months pregnant.  I’ll see you next year, beer.

The second loop around we got our eat on.  The first stop was for tacos (chicken for Brian, tofu for me) -

Then Brian hit up a BBQ stand while I tried some fried green tomatoes -

We probably could have tried about 10 more stands but Juice’s patience in the stroller was wearing thin so we grabbed one last last treat and headed home.

Not a shabby afternoon Richmond, thanks for the food!

And with no real entryway and one main path through the house, our floors quickly turned into a hot mess.  We tried using a wet Swiffer.  Fail.  We tried Rejuvenate Floor Refresher.  Fail.  Just when I resigned myself to dirty, worn floors, Groupon came to the rescue.  As a last ditch effort we bought a coupon for a floor cleaning service that uses a non-toxic solution to clean and polish the floors.  I wasn’t holding out much hope, but it was such a good deal it was worth a go.  In the end it was worth every penny  Our shiny floors are back!

The coupon was for two rooms and a hallway so we chose our living room, dining room, and the hallway to the bedrooms.  The entire process took about an hour and a half plus another hour to dry.  The company said the results will only last for about a year, but it’s a great inexpensive option to give your wood floors a quick pick me up.

The next day we headed out on our annual strawberry picking trip.  Last year Juice was just starting to walk, but this year we were in full on chase mode.  I’m pretty sure she ate more than we actually left with.

And we ended the weekend with a little mother nature.  We headed down to Pocahontas State Park, which I’ve wanted to visit since I moved to Richmond.  The park is beautiful, but unfortunately it’s not right for our little toddler right now (great camping, hiking, boating…we’ll be back in a couple years).  So we jumped in the car, headed back to Richmond, and landed at another park a couple blocks away from our house.  Olivia got some good coloring time in, a visit with geese at the pond, and a bike ride with Dad -

Operation Wear Olivia Out  was a success!

In one bed we have corn, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, and lettuce -

And in the other bed we have pole beans, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, cauliflower, cucumber, and banana peppers.

This year, we’re trying a new set up for the pole beans.  Last year we made a wigwam, which ended up being home to about 10,000 mosquitoes in the center.  Hopefully the new set up will allow a little more space for each vine.

Another lesson learned from last year was that we needed to protect our corn from squirrels.  Every time the corn was almost ready to pick they’d swoop in and eat it.  This year we covered the area with netting to ward off our little friends.

We’re also trying a couple new veggies this spring.  Brian really wanted a banana pepper so we threw in one of those guys.  And brussel sprouts have become a new favorite in our kitchen so we thought we’d try our hand at growing some.

And while we wait patiently for everything to grow, we’ve already been able to munch on some lettuce -

Outside of our raised beds, our blueberry bushes are loaded with berries.  We’ve learned to cover these too as birds picked off about 90% of the berries last year -

And on our patio we’ve got a mini container garden, including herbs (cilantro, basil, and dill), peppers (red, green, jalapeno, serrano), strawberries, and a citronella plant to help keep the mosquitoes away.

Yeah, so much for downsizing.

First he sunk two PVC pipes in the ground to make the sleeves -

Then he used 2×2′s to to create a removable barrier that can be slipped in and out of the sleeves whenever we need it.

And with that, our backyard is officially (we think) dog and child proof.  Well, minus potted plants Olivia likes to dig through, the bushes Riley likes to sit in, and the any other undiscovered mess that they can get into.  But hey, you can’t win them all.

Looking back, our backyard has come a long way since we moved in.  One of the first things we did was build a couple raised garden beds and put up a clothes line behind the shed -

Then we had our porch redone and installed a poured concrete patio -

Then adding a rock border around the patio (here and here) -

And I’ve already mentioned our lattice work and garden fence -

And here’s where we’re at now!

AKA – it didn’t have a gate.  Not exactly effective at keeping unwanted pests out of the garden (Riley and Juice to name a few).  But that’s past tense because we finally hung our new gate to finish up the project -

Building a gate is pretty simple, but there are some pretty important details to think about, like which way you want it to swing, what latch to use, how you’re going to attach it to the fence, and actually making sure it’s functional.  That last one sounds obvious, but if you’re not careful with your measurements and how it attaches to the fence, you could end up wasting materials, making lots of return trips to the store, and adding lots of time to your project.  With our gate, we wanted it to blend in with the rest of the fence.  We put horizontal beams on the outside of the fence posts and the wire mesh on the inside so we did the same with the gate.  We used 2×4′s for the top two beams, but used a 2×2 for the bottom beam so it would leave more space for the gate to swing over the grass.

After we built the frame, we hung it using gate hinges on all three horizontal beams.  Last, we attached the latch.  We bought be the same one we used on the baby gate we made, but this one’s high enough that we don’t have to worry about Juice opening it.

And with that the fence is done!

Riley still seems thoroughly confused when she can’t chase birds and squirrels on the power lines all the way across the yard anymore, but at least she’s stopped running into the fence.

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With a smaller, portable board, it won’t matter how many times we rearrange our house.  We’ll be able to iron anywhere our little hearts desire.  And of all my previous Pinterest Challenge projects (here, here, here, and here), this one proved to be the easiest and the cheapest!  First I gathered my supplies, which included plywood, batting, fabric, and a staple gun.

I was lucky and we had all the items around the house to this project cost me a big fat $0!  I had Brian cut the plywood to 14″x 36″ and I cut the batting and fabric scraps so they would be a bit larger than that.  First I stapled the batting to the board, followed by the fabric -

And that was it, our new portable ironing board was done!

 Now we just need to teach Olivia how to iron…