House Updates

After several full weeks of travel, I needed a week at home to regroup.  Last week ended up being great as I spent time getting caught up on numerous work projects and around the house.

Over the last few months, we’ve been all over the place regarding where we want to end up and what the next few years will look like for our family.  At this point, we are looking at staying where we are and having the trio finish high school in the area, so that has pushed me to start some home projects that need to be completed.

This summer, we put in new front porch posts, and we have a new front door ordered that should be going in sometime soon.  We are also looking at reconfiguring a bit – possibly moving Anna downstairs and turning her room into my office.  We are also looking at expanding our mudroom and adding a third bay to our garage (3 years until we have another driver… eek!).  And of course, the kitchen, that I’ve hated for the 11 years we’ve lived here, needs a remodel.  I’ve been working on getting pieces of these projects priced and thought through to figure out what we will do when and what will be worth it moving forward.

Also, for Bo’s birthday in a few weeks, he requested to have his room and bathroom painted and redone.  This led to new bedding, new towels, new bathroom rugs, new bathroom hardware, and today I just ordered a new toilet.  It’s crazy how these projects spiral!  Happy 13th Birthday, Bo; here’s a new toilet. 😉

I spent a lot of time last week on normal house maintenance and organization.  I cleaned my office and cleaned out my closet (with 4 bags for ThredUp and 2 for Goodwill).  It feels like I just did all of this, but that was at the beginning of the pandemic, which is now 6 months ago…

Mike and I both sent in our ballots and voted as well!  Glad to have it done and ready for the election to be over!

The trio had a good week with school, swim, and art.  Clara and Anna have been playing outside with friends more in the evenings, which is nice.  Swim is continuing to go well with their little pod in Ottawa, and our first meet is this weekend at our old Y.  All of the COVID protocols will make it interesting, but hopefully, it will be a good experience.

Chip is doing well too.  He’s had a bit of a cold, so he’s been extra cuddly.  Frenchies tend to catch colds more easily, and they can turn into other issues because of how flat their noses are, so we’ve been monitoring him extra closely.

Over the weekend, we stuck close to home.  It was dreary and rainy for much of the weekend, and it was nice to have some time to catch up and cozy up by the fire.  The highlight of the weekend was the pumpkin muffins that Anna and I made yesterday afternoon.  I hope to share the recipe here later this week.  They were so good!

Last week’s meals: 

Monday – Faux Chick-Fil-A Sandwiches and fries

Tuesday – Cheesy Chicken Chili (one of my fav fall recipes!) and Tastefully Simple – Nana’s Apple Cake – my friend Jamie is a consultant

Wednesday – Italian Beef (this is a great easy recipe – I’ll share this one here soon), chips

Thursday – Frozen Pizza

Friday – Meatball subs, Shauna Niequest’s blueberry crisp – one of my very favorite recipes!

Saturday – Charcuterie Board/Snack dinner, soft pretzels, pints of Culver’s ice cream

Sunday – Chili, cornbread, pumpkin muffins (recipe coming later this week)