Patio Delays

Sean worked like a dog in the hot sun on Saturday last week removing the yellow cedar and 3 Yucca's in the front of our house so that our Contractor could dig the footings for the new porch this past week.  Of course the porch didn't end up happening and the concrete guy had to delay the pour for the patio.  However our fence is in !!!  

Oddly enough our backyard seems bigger now that the fence is in, not smaller.

We were crazy busy yesterday moving dirt around to fill in the double deep slab removal.  We ordered 4 cubic yards, but it ended up taking 7.

The plan is to buy new edging stones in the Spring to finish off the re-directed Hosta Garden.

We are throwing down grass seed after the new patio slab is pored, hopefully this week.  Crossing our fingers the grass takes a bit before the frost ???

Bye bye wacky neighbour lady !!!  Above is our view of her now :)

Fence Update

Things are ticking  along at a slow pace.  We are being held up by the concrete guy.  He was do to pour the pad tomorrow, but that is now delayed to some time next week.  Good news, I came home to the crew putting in our fence posts - HURRAH!  They think they may have the back fence done tomorrow.

This fence is completely on our side, NOT on the property line.  

Our nutty back neighbour was pestering our contractor wanting to know if he had a survey, he better have a survey.  He did have one and had already measured accordingly.  Sean and I wanted to keep the fence line the same to butt up to the each side neighbour, so we didn't take back more from her side, which we could have.

 Hopefully, I'll have more to update tomorrow.

Boo's Birthday Spooktacular

Due to upcoming renovations we decided to have Boo's 13th birthday party early this year.  Apparently the 2nd grade Halloween party we thew, is a prominent memory for her girlfriends.  So we promised after last years birthday that Boo could have another Halloween party for this year.

Day of the Dead - Sugar Skull

A Zoo Keeper riding an Ostrich

Halloween Twister

  

We had 3 cats, 1 Zombie soccer player, Harry Potter, a deviled egg, 1 Hippie and Day of the Dead Boo.  Most of my Halloween decorating will be curtailed due to construction, so it was a great excuse to haul it all out for the party.  

We set up a beverage station in the new Kitchenette.  Check out the floating eyeballs in the punch jug.  I wasn't willing to sacrifice my new couch and area rugs so all clear beverages.  Learned my lesson from last year and also NO CAFFEINE.  

Inspired by my sister Jen, we also used the Kitchenette as a mock photo-booth or photo room.  Using their own cell phones, they played with Halloween themed frames and props to take loads of photos and selfies.

Here come the fun food - thank you Pinterest: (apple faces not pictured)

Donuts with Vampire Fangs

Lychee berry eyeballs on sword skewers

Puking pumpkin Hummus dip - Boo carved this bad boy!

Mummy Dogs

Party Mix - nothing cheesy to stain my coach with

Chocolate Spider Trifle - *sigh the chocolate syrup ran

We had a costume contest, Halloween Twister, Freeze Dance, a photo booth contest, Karaoke and believe it or not ALL of the girls begged to play Musical Chairs (throw back to Gr. 2), so we improvised and did Musical Pillows.  Very scary movies were out since we had some scaredy pants present.  Warm Bodies and Coraline scared the $%&@ out of them LOL.

Musical Pillows

Karaoke was CRAZY!  I was crying from laughing so hard.  We had to call Karaoke quits around 1:30 a.m. when it got a bit too loud and screamy.  I think most of the guest went home without their voices. 

Click here to see Karaoke JoJo Siwa "Boomerang" 

Click here to see Karaoke Back Street Boys - "Tell Me Why?"

Outside Renovations Underway

Before:

Old Fence

 

Cement slab & broken bit - before renovations

After:

Renovations have finally started.  I came home from work and the driveway fence was gone, that next day they started on the cement patio

 Low and behold we had an unknown cement patio under our cement patio.  Yeesh.

One cement slab down, one to go

Hello extra pad - who knew?

Bye pathway

So the concrete guy has to come back after this weekend to finish by using a hydraulic jack hammer.  Thank goodness we planned for the contractor to remove the slab.  Sean wanted to take it out himself next summer.  After  finding the second slab the contractor said there's no way Sean could have gotten the bottom one out himself.

Bathroom Signage

So it's been a while.  I think the house renovations, starting with Boo's room and closet have eaten up all my crafting mojo.  As well, my crafting room is now housing my 1 million and 1 IKEA kitchen boxes.  I can't even so much as open a cupboard in there.

I had a friend who recently repainted her kids bathroom and requested a sign.  I had planned differently lettering, but since my craft room is clogged up, I could 't get to the old machine that I use Sure Cuts A Lot on, so I had to resort to using a Cricut cartridge.

I wanted to add Enter at own Risk along the bottom, but my friend didn't want that.

This pre-made distressed wood sign was $7.00 at Michael's using a 50% coupon.  So quick when you don't have to assemble anything or distress it yourself.

I cut out the vinyl template using my Don Juan cartridge.  I read a tip online eons ago that to help the lettering remain crisp when painting, to Modge Podge over the template first.  I can say 100% DO THIS.  It really works.

So here is the IKEA mock up of our kitchen.  We have moved appliances around so we can have more counter space.

The stove was on the other wall, by moving it that whole space can now be counter top.

And here is our mock up for the basement bathroom.  We aren't doing it through IKEA, but I used the free online IKEA planning program to play around with it.

We went back and fourth about tiling a bathroom stall vs a prefab stall.  Since we have seriously hard water and it's meant to be the kids bathroom, we have decided to do a prefab that looks like it's tiled.  We aren't settled on the exact one, but I did see one at Lowes that is faux Carrara tile.