With or Without?

What do you think?

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate...

My nephew wanted a chocolate cake with chocolcate frosting...he loves chocolate!

Benny tested the frosting and you guessed it, he loved it. Look at that smile...an orthodontist's dream!

Mud Room Built-in

Jim has been building the mud room bench and storage. I can't wait to have a place to put everyone's stuff as they come in. No more tripping over stuff!! The big drawers will be for the many shoes that we've managed to accumulate and each person will get a smaller drawer for their stuff. Hopefully this will stop all the stuff that seems to pile up on my kitchen counters.

Jim put on the drawer front with the hardware that I picked out to see how it would look. I wanted something simple and durable looking. I'm going to paint them a darker gray and make a cushion for the bench.

Porch Details

I realized that the last post did not do the porch justice, especially after all the work JD has put into it. I decided to post again but with more detailed pictures so you can see all the hard work!

We were originally going to paint the ceiling the typical blue but the wood looks so pretty, knots and all, that we decided that we're going to do a light stain and then clear coat it.

The cat hangs out here almost as much as we do...

My coleus is potted in pots that are too small. They dry out by the end of every day and look wilted. The secret to my huge impatiens...miracle grow every couple weeks. The ones on the right were planted a couple months before the ones on the right (I didn't want to plant them just to have them stomped on).

We've been Busy...

We've been keeping ourselves busy this summer. We finally finished the farmer's porch so it's on to some other projects inside and around the house. I just finished touching up the old bathrooms and I'm moving on to the guest bedroom. Jim is putting together the mudroom. He's started with the bench/storage unit in it that I can't wait to have! Other than that we've been busy hiking, swimming and the kids have been in a few camps. I can't believe that school is just a few weeks away!

New Kitty

Nora and I finally got a new kitten. I say "Nora and I" because the boys didn't seem that interested and Jim was difficult to convince. We adopted her from a cat fostering group in a nearby town. She came with the name Sugar but the kids kept calling her "shuga" which was driving me crazy. I renamed her Daisy because she is a "cow cat." We'll see if that sticks...