How to build a patio without really trying

1. Have a friend decide to rip out her walkways
2. have the same friend offer to let you have the bricks if you remove them
3. get your teenaged sons to help you dig them up and load them in the truck (three times)
4. Have your hard working teenaged son clean the bricks and stack then neatly
5. Have your slacker teen marginally clean and horribly stack the remainder of the bricks
6. con a good friend to come "help" (since he's already built his own patio)
7. Get busy cooking, watching his kid brother etc...have everyone else do whatever he says
8. Go out occasionally to move a few dozen bricks.
   
9. Provide great barbeque and drinks and swimming compliments of #1&2
   

The Sunroom chronicles

Handrails are coming to our house

I asked for handrails on the front porch in December. We have sketched several plans and finally ended up with a very simple design. This weekend we bought the materials and with help from each of us, ginger almost has them done. I think I might use a green-tinted stain.

Home Improvement continues

After a storm a few weeks ago we had some roof damage and water damage in the sunroom. Tearing out the wallpaper and carpet was easy compared to fixing the roof! Ginger, William, Max and Renee did all the work. I left them and went shopping for fabric. Does that make me evil or smart? I did join them all at Molly's later for dinner and drinks though :)

It's home improvement time, it's organization time.

Here are a few projects the family has taken on in the last month or so. We put up 2 new book cases, organized 20 years of photos and cataloged them waiting for the time to scrapbook them. Those 2 large rubbermaid bins were full of photos and have been reduced to the photo storage boxes on the new bookcases.