Unplugged Weekend

1/2 of Front porch, Before

1/2 of Front porch, After

Other 1/2 of Front porch, Before

Other 1/2 of Front porch, After

Ok, the floor and walls need serious painting attention, but I have to say, I am pretty happy with this transformation. I was feeling that the enclosed front porch needed a face-lift. I love the porch, and the porch swing. It was one of the main selling points in the house, truth be told. I pictured us lazing about with a glass of ice tea, a good book, rocking the day away on the swing, dog contentedly sleeping in a heap on the floor. I was actually pretty happy with the front porch when I first set it up. But over the 3 years it has accumulated a pretty thick layer of dust, dog hair, and crap that had no where else to go. There are no electrical outlets out there, so that hanging light? The cord has always just...dangled, with no happy place to be plugged. And also, due to the lack of outlets, it is very difficult to vacuum out there. I mean, I have to dig out an extension cord, for god sakes!

Oh, but yesterday! I mustered the energy and vacuumed, dusted, mopped, even cleaned windows! And I rearranged the furniture (and switched out some old stuff for some new stuff). Now it feels much more usable. And cozy. Perfect for lazing. In fact, we did spend quite some time out there after I was done. G discovered the mail slot and spent, oh...7.5 minutes, give or take, opening it, closing it, peeking outside. I am going to have to start watching for things to disappear and end up on the front steps. I could just see her thinking....what would happen if I dropped something OUT there??? It's science, people. I should encourage it, right?

So, what else did I do this weekend? Well, first off, I spent all of it disconnected from the internet. Intentionally. I didn't even have my cell phone within reach most of the time! No blogging, no twittering, no texting even...well, except for a couple texts to Kate, but other than that....

My other big project was The Back Yard. Oh the backyard. Those of you who have been to my house can relate. Those who haven't...I took pictures there too, but decided that I am still to embarrassed to post them. We have a large dog, you see. And a small, fenced in yard. Perfect for G to play in...but a disaster due to said dog. Holes dug up everywhere. Dirt patches from dog pee. Dead grass. It's gross. So, my big, BIG project on Saturday was to clean it up. And I did. I mowed the grass, raked the dirt, put down fresh top soil to fill the holes/uneven spots, spread grass seed, watered. I even planted a forsythia bush. I am also going to plant a wildflower border along the garage wall, but ran out of energy to dig it up. Whew! I have the callouses to prove that I am not much of an outdoorswoman, usually. But it felt so good to get it all done. And, it looks about 1,000x better. But still not good enough to post. The fence is still falling apart, the garage needs to be scraped and painted...oh well, I will be happy with my efforts anyway. We got G all set up outside, too. Moved her fort outside, filled the water table, bought sidewalk chalk and bubbles. Needless to say, she runs to the back door the moment she comes downstairs in the morning. I forsee spending much of the summer on the patio.

To top it all off, I even rearranged the dining room on Saturday, too. G's fort had been taking up a lot of space in there ever since Christmas. When we moved it outside I was able to actually move the dining room table back into the center of the room. The dining room is still Toy Central for the downstairs (is your dining room Toy Central. I find that if you don't have a designated Toy Room, it usually becomes the dining room. Why is that?) but at least we can now eat dinner at the table, like a Norman Rockwell family. Yippee!

Oh, I almost forgot. We even made it to church yesterday. That's two weeks in a row! After...oh, a year. I had almost forgotten how awesome everyone at our church is. They really are great people. Totally welcoming, loving. There is no sitting in the back anonymously at our church, which would be my natural inclination. No, everyone there comes and says "hi", remembers your name, asks about your job. And there is none of that "churchy judgment syndrome" that seems to plague so many of the churches I have been to. So happy we found that church. John and I made a pact to kick each other in the butt to make it on Sundays.

Hope you had a fantastic weekend, too. I think I'll take a little nap at my desk now.