Month: August 2020

Gardens Galore

The veggie garden has exceeded my expectations this year. The girls love it, I love it and it takes almost no work after the initial build which was a lot of work mostly on Ryan 🙂

I’ll let the pictures tell some stories…

Mid-July … growing is under way
First harvest of peas

The peas never make it inside – the girls just eat whatever is ripe each day — it’s one of their favorite parts about visiting the garden.

Green beans – we’ve had 3 small harvests (meals worth) — not the girls favorites but I enjoy them. I’m going to look at a climbing variety for next year.
green beans
Cucumber trellis is working well – this was mid-July – now it’s covered fully and has baby cucumbers
First cucumber of the season – the kids eat 1 or more cucumbers a day
Peppers – again this was mid-July — this pepper was recently picked – it never turned orange but was delicious.
We moved the pepper plants out from under the tomatoes that got crazy — they are doing better now
Cherry tomatoes are a huge favorite – Evie and Alex eat any ripe ones they find (evie just pulls them herself – orange or red she doesn’t care) 🙂
This bed is mostly just tomatoes now with some marigolds and basil tucked in
The cucumber forest is the corner now — and doing great. I may actually do a larger trellis next year for this – it works great as the cucumbers hang down
This weekend even with eating cucumbers constantly we built up a stash
So we made pickles!

It’s been a wonderful summer in the garden. As planned we’ve learned a lot and experimented quite a bit as well. We have lots of ideas for next summer and we’re enjoying the early harvests.

Next up I have to figure out how to make fresh tomato sauce and use these awesome tomatoes!

Trim Update

It’s been almost a month and we’ve been busy with trim in the diningroom and kitchen and Garden projects (I’ll post a different update there).

At the end of June I got the kitchen island painted with the paint we had bought when we got the cabinets — so it matches very nicely.

Island Primed
Finished … the paint really matches well but it’s oil based so it was stinking up the house!

Next up Ryan spent a few weekends working on the diningroom and finished up the trim. The one last thing in there is to make the box for the chandelier but otherwise the trim is done.

Wall trim done
Ceiling boxes done

The diningroom will look amazing once that trim is all painted!

Speaking of painting. The last 2 weekends I’ve spent working on 1/2 of the kitchen – sanding, caulking, priming then painting this last weekend. It’s almost done (1 more coat on the walls) and Ryan has to build out the pantry shelves next.

Little helpers
Sanding away
Priming finished up last weekend
Trim paint finished – 1 coat on the walls.
Loving it

So excited… the walls go quick so one night after bedtime I can finish up that second coat. I have to touch up the ceiling paint too so add that to the list. Hopefully next weekend the pantry build out starts!