Today, I am feeling... MOTIVATED

to get the outside of our house & our yard done.

The last of the snow is melting, and it looks as if it is going to be a gorgeous day outside.

For those of you who don't know, when we bought our house, it was a fixer-upper. I'm talking - all that this house consisted of was a concrete floor and walls. And half of the kitchen cabinets and all of the tile (that I wish wouldn't have been done, because I would have chosen it differently!) We bought it from a kid that bought it as a project, hoping to fix it up and flip it. A year into it, he ran out of time and money, and we jumped on the chance.

Let me just tell you, though - all of those shows on tv where they totally remodel a house??? It is NOT as easy as they make it look. We spent a few months - mostly my husband, his brother and a friend doing all of the work to make the house liveable. Then we moved in, and we've been struggling to finish everything else since then. We moved in in May of 2006, and we still have so much more work to do.

We have been talking a lot about trying to finish everything over the next year so we can sell this house and buy a new one by the time we have a second child. I just don't see how we will fit 2 kids in this house, especially if the next one is a boy.

So after much talking, we have decided to dedicate this summer to finishing the outside of the house and the yard. Last year we wanted to, but it just didn't happen. Josh wasn't working, so we were poor. Josh has a push mower, which takes forever to mow the lawn, and makes it so your grass grows so fast that you have to mow every other day. His dad gave him his old lawn mower once he bought a new one, but that mower died before the summer was over. So basically, the whole summer was spent mowing the lawn for Josh. And watering the lawn, since we don't have a sprinking system. I spent the summer pulling weeds in the flowers and taking care of the garden as best as I could since I was pregnant and totally unmotivated to be out working in the sun.

So, in order to have time to do things besides mow the lawn this year, we took part of our tax return and bought this:

And we will be spending part of our tax return on a sprinkling system this year as well.

Isn't it fun to be grown up and responsible???

I realize that this list is long, and that we probably won't finish everything, or have the money to finish everything, but I'm making a list so that we can start checking it off!!

• clear out rocks and garbage from the side of the house
• remove the bushes that keep growing back on the side of the house
• install sprinkling system
• curbing around lawn and flower beds
• remove 2 bushes in the front yard that I hate
• replant flowers
• fix front gate
• re-pave driveway, including filling in part that doesn't have pavement
• fix east fence - or replace it
• finish gate into the back yard
• put up fence on west side of the house to block off back yard
• till garden area and plant garden
• repour back patio
• paint garage
• re-shingle house and garage
• new garage door
• paint side of garage
• gutters
• backyard landscaping - to include bushes and wood chips under big trees
• paint front and back door
• clean out garage
• tear down storage shed in garage
• trim tree in front yard

This list may get longer when we get outside this afternoon and I notice more that needs to be done. But at least we are getting a start on it!