The Little Things

Well summer is in full swing around here.  Which means no alarms and sleeping in and no rushing around in the mornings, I love it.  It also means it is really hard to get projects done when we are at the pool or gymnastics or baseball or the playground. It is wonderful and I love it because during the school year I don't get my kids enough, but it can make blogging a little challenging.

So I have a feeling I will be a little hit or miss this summer. Next week we are headed to Colorado and I have never been there in the summer. I can't wait to show the kids all the new sights, should be fun.

One thing I have gotten done is stained the kids picnic table. And I also realized I am accumulating a lot of pieces that needed to be stained and restained and they are all on the same schedule. So I have one year off and then the next year I have 52 things that need to be stained. I might need to work in some low maintenance items pretty soon.

So here is the before, I can't believe it has only been two years since I stained this last. It looks terrible.

I scrubbed it with soapy water and a brush and I can't believe how much more old stain came off.


And here is the after, so much nicer?

The stain is the same in both pictures it had just really faded and worn off.


Now onto the playset, which is big and I am not looking forward to sanding and staining that. I might enlist the help of the kids. I have never let them help me paint before, but it is outside and they could be helpful, right? Have any of you had your kids help paint? How did it go?

Hope you are having a wonderful lazy summer.

Little patio updates

We had such a nice weekend, weather was great and my parents came for a last minute visit. I can't believe the kids are done with school on Wednesday! Our weather has been so up and down it doesn't feel like summer yet. I think the high for Wednesday is in the 50's, brrr.

Today was perfect though so I got some painting projects done. It finally was not raining or to windy for spray paint.

Our steps onto our patio from our kitchen were never finished, so I am happy to say that was checked off the list today. I also stained the frame of our egress window, so that looks more finished as well.
I scrubbed them with soapy water and a brush to clean them up.
Here are some before pictures:

And for the after pictures:

The steps really look nice, what a difference, they finally look finished.
I used the same stain from the patio table so this project was free. My favorite kind of projects.
Now I just need to fill that pot and landscape around the egress window, the list just keeps going.