Dolphin Cruise

 Recently we took a little trip and had the chance to do a Dolphin Cruise! It is a Bucket List item of mine so I was super excited to get to do it. Possibly more excited then my kids were!!
 I could talk all about it but this one is more awesome in pictures then any words I could come up with.

 Such a great memory! Have y'all had the chance to do something like that??

Love and Arches

This is my wedding picture. It was last year. Bwahahaha, no, it was almost 15 years ago. Shhhhh, don't tell but I am old! See that arch???? I still have it in my yard at home. But it is looking pretty rough after so many years of winter, summer, feet in the dirt.

so I had the bright idea to weave our cherry tree clippings from the spring pruning into it to help hold the old girl together. I think it is working pretty well.

these photos were taken in the spring while I was restaining the deck. She is looking pretty good  with my climbing roses now. I will share pics of the deck and the arch as it progresses thru the summer growing season and my flowers are in bloom. I am just happy we will get a few more years out of our arch because I think of our wedding day when I look at it. I might be a little sentimental about my soul mate!

In House Shopping

Any one else go shopping in their house when they are tired of something?? If nothing else the price is right! And I don't mind painting something to make it work better. I shared earlier how I was redoing a table that had been in our basement and I wanted to share the final product with y'all. I am really liking the way it turned out.

so light, bright and fresh!! I am really pleased with my handiwork!! I loved the table color so much I decided to paint the wine shelf and the sideboard.
Some projects turn into an adventure. The sideboard got multiple coats of paint before it felt right. Sometimes that is just how it goes. But the final product came out great and I am content with it. Happy ending!!

I love, love, love the rich dark wood top on it. I am working on a little redo of the wall above, just some re-merchandising of the shelving and stuff. I was growing tired of the plates on the wall and I wanted something new. 

I am a teeny tiny bit addicted to letters and words all over the house!!

Operation: Curb Appeal

Hey y'all, welcome back and thanks so much for dropping in. I mean you could have brought cookies with you but whatevs. You want some iced tea??? Anyway, I was full of sass and ideas this spring. Poor Husband Darling ust shakes his head and cowers in a corner, I mean writes the checks(figuratively of course because who uses checks anymore???!!)...cha-ching!! I had to work on him a little but I finally convinced him we needed a new bright front door color!  This is our before. I have loved the red door for the last 7 years since I painted it that color from the ugly faded out blue it was when we bought our little nest. But it needed a fresh coat of paint and I was ready for something new!

 We also had to do a bunch of boring maintenance-y kinds of stuff on our little house. The shutters need paint, the trees need limbed up and trimmed and dead bushes from the harsh winter need replaced etc.... Also we wanted to upgrade some of the flower beds to better, low maintenance bushes and shrubs instead of needy perennials that constantly spread and need split. So to digging we got!!!! Pulling out lillies and iris and replacing them with spirea and hydrangea. Workhorses of the foundation planting! They bloom all summer for very little effort. Gotta love that!
If y'all are on Pinterest you know that curb appeal ideas are present there by the gazillions!!!! I have a gardening and curb appeal board that has so many ideas I can never do all of them, if I owned 10 houses I still couldn't do all of them, lol! Check out my Pinterest board here   https://www.pinterest.com/mamabto3/gardening-and-curb-appeal/

As anyone with flower beds knows there is always weeding to do. My kids LOVE weeding <sarcasm>
I painted the garage door and fascia boards and all the trim I could reach from my 6 foot ladder cause that is as high as this little girl goes. I am terrified of heights,lol. But as long as that took it was merely a drop in the bucket of the time spent weeding so in self defense we mulched nice and deep!! I did something new I haven't done before too. I caulked the outside of our front windows. I noticed the drywall in the windowsill in the living room was a little mushy and damp after rain recently so hopefully fresh caulking fixes that. I did silicone the inside also.

Pictures, pictures, pictures!! of all my hard work and planning

 Seriously!!!!! Isn't that yellow addictive???? I am obsessed with it! And did you see the insane cuteness I added??? (thank you ETSY!)

 I mean really?? Are you not in love with that???

 I loved the yellow so much I had to change out some accessories to emphasize it so it all came together as one cohesive vision.

I will show you some more sides of the yard soon!!!

But I love the way it is coming together, especially with the flowers  all blooming!

Speaking of which, my hydrangea is looking so fabulous this year!!!

Mama, I'm Bored!

Bwahahaha, this one is a little bit evil and a little bit awesome. It is not exactly an original idea but hey I actually did it and put it on my kitchen counter so yay me!!! Every now and then my kids get whiny and these 3 words exit their needy little mouths. Last year I had on the chalk board a task for each of the letters of BORED but this year I have taken it a step farther.

This pickle jar I saved and painted the top of, is full of slips of paper with a variety of tasks, activities and suggestions if any of my boys dare to utter those words. They will be reaching in and picking out ONE slip of paper and NO TAKE BACKS!!!!! Cause I am mean and that is how I roll. It is everything from go clean a toilet to bake cookies for a neighbor or go to the park, watch a movie and pop popcorn or vacuum a room or even the dreaded pick up dogpoop!!! (that is where the evil comes in)
None of my kids have been so brave as to whine yet but it surely will happen eventually!! And I will get to say, "go pick your poison from the jar!!" then cackle in an evil witchy fashion and ride my broom around the roof in circles....or whatever.

Summertime! And The Planning Is Easy!

Hello my beautiful friends,
I hope you are having a wonderful summer so far. Here at the little house on Clover Ridge we are just getting things kicked off. The littles had day camp all last week so we are just hitting our groove this week. I spent some time getting our organizational plans in place. You may remember some of our plans from last year. You can see that post here http://houseoncloverridge.blogspot.com/2014/08/summertime-avoiding-chaos-chores-and.html
But this years plans look like this:

This is our summer chore list. Each of the 3 kids and I have a section. We split the big jobs up between up. Thank God for bigger kids!!! Especially the kitchen chores. Each day one of us cooks, one puts dishes away, one puts food away and is a kitchen helper and one washes dishes. It works great to split it up so no one person has to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I cook more then anyone else but I only wash dishes one ay a week. We split bathrooms up too. One does all the sinks, one does all the toile-y bowls and another does the tub and tile in one bath and I do the shower and tub in the master and the floors in all of the bathrooms. This is a slightly altered system so I will let you know how it goes.

One of the kids had this idea last year. It worked great and we are doing it again. It is a simplified summertime menu plan. The meals are quick and easy and it helps with cost and time so we can spend more time having fun!

I don't know about your house but here it can be Chaos Central. Things get crazy and there are more freak out and melt downs when there is no structure in times like summer when there is less "have-to's" and scheduled everyday activities. So years ago we started doing a daily schedule when everyone is going to be at home and it really helps! This is our schedule and we are not drill seargent crazy about it but it does help to have a plan of some kind and it helps keep the kids from playing video games all damn day!!!!

You might have noticed that exercise is on the daily chore schedule. It was last year too. While it doesn't actually happen as often as I would like it does help encourage them to move it, move it! I found this online and printed it off for the youngest as an encouragement for him. I have found any time we can cross off the days on a task it happens more! I am also compiling a list of simple easy exercises that don't require a large time commitment or a lot of equipment and maybe some that are multi-participant to encourage the boys to do them. And we are going to try and put together an obstacle course in the backyard to have some fun with too!

 

 

I am still working on our display for our bucket list so that will be coming soon!!  Here's to a simple, relaxing, organized summer with the kids!!!

Pickling, And Not In Mason Jars!

Good Morning y'all,

I have been keeping the ball rolling and knocking out project after project here in our house! I am busier then a beaver after a flash flood! My kids and poor Husband Darlin keep rolling their eyes in their heads every time I walk thru carrying a big bucket of supplies or a big ole blue tarp somewhere. But at least they aren't groaning about me making them do yard work! I will share some of those projects later! I might even try a video tour of the yard! If I can figure out the tech side of it!But now that school is out I have my tech savvy teens to help!




So the back story for this project is 
I have a formica topped C.1974 dining room set with 3 leaves, 6 chairs and a buffet that I restained Minwax Bombay Mahogany in 2009. It is a great well made set and it has served us well thru our kids messiest years. It has held finger painting sessions, crafts, Thanksgiving dinners, birthday cakes, and countless dinner conversations and family meetings. I have a deep emotional attachment to this table for that reason. But aesthetically formica in my formal dining room was well..... I was over it. Husband Darling would tell you it is all Pinterest's fault.

just a few of the moments that have increased my attachment to this table

right after we moved into our first home

birthdays!

But as you can see it really just didn't fit our style anymore.

this is a pic from this years St. Patty's Day post that I never got around to writing, sigh

 As I often do when I want to change something up, I shopped my house first. Starting in the basement and working my way up. I found an old table I trash picked years ago. We used it in the school room when we homeschooled, it became a sewing and craft table in the basement and then a computer lab station so all the kids could be on their computers at the same time for homework or play. Then it became where I laid out decorations for seasonal changes, oh it was once a shelf for storage of camping gear. Well anyway, it has been thru a lot. But it was ugly which is why it has never been a dining table. Pine and covered in what must be like 30 coats of poly until it practically glowed yellow. But solid and handmade, obviously with care. So I decided it needed a new lease on life. A resurrection. Either that or a trip to Goodwill but how could I donate something that still had function for my family???

solid, handmade but ohhhh that yellow pine. It needed a facelift

 

 I know y'all have been on pinterest or HGTV and seen all the fuss about chalk paint. I first saw it in use last fall at the Country Living Fair. I knew I wanted to get around to trying it but hadn't had the chance yet. This cried out for that!

3 coats white chalk paint

a couple hours of sanding off the gazillion layers of poly and one coat thinned chalk paint rubbed on

2 more coats of pickling, or thinned paint, rubbed on and then rubbed back off. 

 Don't be jealous of that gorgeous blue tarp. It is protecting my beloved cow rug.But hey, that table looks a hell of a lot different, starting to look pretty darn good!

now to make these chairs work with it a little better. I will share the finished product soon!!!

Who Is Going To Pick Up Dog Poo?

Well,
once again my ginormous children have bravely survived another school year and we are trying to figure out how to run the household with everyone home. Over the years I have found that having clearly posted organization is the key to survival when it is one against three. So as I have the last three years I asked the children which chores they would volunteer to do and if given the choice to avoid one chore what chore would that be. And they managed to surprise me with their constant willingness to help, well at least in theory of helping. Actual day to day doing...well that might just be a different story. But I love that they each were willing to take on new tasks, upgrade to a harder chore, lessen the load for me by doing more for themselves and for the family as a whole. They do make me so proud to be their Mama!!

though how we went from this

to this so fast.........baffles me.

So I am making the new summer chore lists and once I have it done I will post a pic of it but until then they will just be upstairs arguing over who will have to clean up the dog poo in the back yard.