Upgrades!

Even though I haven't posted a house-y post in a while, it doesn't mean we haven't been kept busy slowly upgrading things around the house.

Most recently, now that the living room/dining room is done (for now) we spent some time in our room. The biggest offender was the doors between our room and our master bathroom. And by door, well, I mean bi-fold slatted doors. And they were so bad I couldn't even take a proper "before" picture.

Imagine the squeakiest doors that were made of long slats of holes really, no privacy, really having those doors was pretty much the same as having no doors, except both kids loved playing with them with game ending fingers getting pinched. Fun for all.

Well, thankfully, those days are over. Ami pulled them out and began rebuilding the all. You see, all the way on the right hand side of the door post below, there a few inches gap? That's the difference in size between bi-fold doors and a normal door. He framed it out and then added drywall to put it to size. It's cool stuff.

And here, in all it's glorious closed-ness, a bathroom door and a wall that you never would have known wasn't there all along. This project was one of those that seemed to take forever. It was a lot of steps, and taken an hour or so a day really, but the result is amazing and worth all the weeks of cleaning up, buying materials, etc. Right? A bathroom door!

Annnd project number 2! Project Headboard. In DC our bed backed up to our bedroom window so we didn't want a headboard to block out light, but as soon as we knew we were moving into this house, I knew I wanted to build an upholstered headboard. And by build, I mean for Ami to build.

We picked out the fabric in April, I fell in love with it, and I've been holding onto it, asking Ami maybe every other day when we're going to get to use it. He said it was a "low priority item" because it doesn't really function, unlike the insulating, etc, but finally we got to it.

The frame is plywood held up by three legs with foam and quilt batting so it's nice and soft to rest on while sitting up. I love it. Love love love it.

And a close up.

So that's what we've been up to after the kids go to bed at night now that we finished watching every episode of Breaking Bad. Lots of little upgrades making the house more home-y.

Pearlstone Farm

A couple Sundays ago Eitan's preschool had a family fun day at the Pearlstone center, a farm/hotel/educational center about 20 minutes from our house. The kids were tasked with planting garlic which I now know is done by sticking cloves of garlic in the ground. That's nuts, right? 

We'll see come Spring what actually crops up, I think these were not the most diligent group of 3 and 4 year old farmers, but hopefully there will be some garlic...

A Bear in the Yard

What more is there to say? There's nothing better then a baby dressed up in a striped bear outfit and beautiful colors of fall leaves. Sweet little Lev Levav Chanan turns one next Shabbat! 

Pumpkin Patch

Last Sunday was THE perfect fall day. Like crisp and sunny and the leaves! Everything. It was so perfect that we had planned earlier in the week to take the kiddos to the pumpkin patch with a few other friends. Eitan had learned about pumpkins the week before in school (Mommy, why do pumpkins decompose?) so I thought it would be particularly fun. We did hayrides, a corn maze, and just ran around with fun shenanigans all over the place.                                                                     Oh, and if you're wondering where all the dads in these pictures are, well, they're on the couch watching football. Their loss.

Redskins...

It's that time of year people! Redskins games take precedence over everything else, and although they've won only two games so far, the boys in the house, they're transfixed.

The good news is, they look cute in burgundy and gold.

Really sad about the score! Don't worry baby, they win this time!

Eitan is three!

Last weekend our little guy turned three! We had multiple celebrations, obviously, starting with his school birthday party on Friday afternoon where he also got the honor of being the Shabbos Abba (hence the blazer, because all dads wear blazers, right?)

He had such a nice time with his little friends and was very happy with the brownies that we brought and getting to show off his baby brother.

On Sunday we had a party for the family where somehow more toys arrived in our house then people. He loved it though. Ami's dad took more pictures, of my beautiful cake creation and other things,  but for now, here's what we snapped.

Real-life Vanderwalde friend (racing cars)

 Virtual Vanderwalde friends via skype

These babies are up next (and the moms look a lot happier then the babies!) 

Our Neighborhood Cemetery Duck Pond

A half mile down our street, across from a big main street there's a cemetery. Weird thing about this cemetery is that it's completely not spooky, and the side that faces our street just looks like a big park. People go to get family photos taken there (which is kind of weird, still) and there's a big pond where there are always people feeding the ducks.

We took a walk one late afternoon on a lovely fall indian summer day.

Eitan loved and then also was terrified of the ducks, especially as they waddled their way over and got a little too close for comfort.

Either way, it was a nice little walk and outing, and we got almost a decent family photo out of it.