Laundry Room Floor = All Fixed Up

  Remember all the rain we had this last summer? And all the water that came into our basement? And our 5 day power outage? (refresh with: McBrides Back On The Grid post) We had to pull up the carpet downstairs, remove all the carpet padding, and pull up the linoleum tile from the laundry/utility room... To help remedy the whole situation: we had our front yard regraded, the front of our house excavated and resealed + new drain tile (see The Excavation Site post), + we NOW have gutters...
  So now - FINALLY! - we have our laundry/utility room back in business. Kevin sealed up the floors with a 2-part Epoxy and it looks great! Time to put this place back together!

  Before Floor:

left side = the dehumidifier we had to purchase to get the place dried out and SMELLING dry -  Sheesh!

 
  After Floor:

Kevin sprinkled the the little flecks by hand :)

Slowly but surely we will get this house put (back)together! Good job Kevin!!

Nursery Progress: Layout

  So much to do and never enough time! We have JUST reached the 3rd Trimester mark - yikes! A milestone that seemed REALLY far off not that long ago...
  We're trying to get the nursery started and mostly done before we get all that Minnesota snow and all we feel like doing it holing up in cozy pants and vegging out until baby arrives...

  The Nursery: Here's what we have to work with...

Yes. We have a bookcase - Expedit from IKEA. Yes, it needs to get cleaned off + prob relocated to another wall...

Kevin's been patching the drywall around the vents. (shorty after we moved in, we had a company come out to clean all the duct work in the house - they weren't gentle when removing the heat/color air return vents...)

    Nursery To Do List:
  - pick out paint color(s) - check! you'll have to wait and see...
  - paint walls
  - new light fixture?
  - order crib + mattress
  - put together new chair + dresser
  - drop off fabric & chair cover at Sara's mom's house, so she can made us a lovely cushion cover
  - pick out fabric for roman shade window treatment
  - swap out old, almond color outlets/light switch for new, white - check!
  - create some cute new artwork?
  - hang shelves + artwork
  - empty all the junk out of closet...
  - order cute rug - check!

Wish us luck!!

Pup Windows!!

  Part of Finch and Rigby's main jobs are to be good watchers. They keep an eye on what's going on, and let us know if they are concerned with what they see...
  Back in the Mpls house, Finch would perch himself on the couch, and look out the front window ALL the time - occasionally a little "burf" or soft growl would be Finch's way of letting us know that he was looking out for us.
  In the Minnetonka house, we don't have any windows for the pups to look out of except for the sliding glass deck door (where Rigby is occasionally concerned with the passing chipmunk or squirrel) or the downstairs office window (but we're not down there as often...)
  So! We decided to add 2 Pet Peek Windows into our deck fence!

image from the website: this is a really short fence or a really tall dog....

Here is OUR more realistic Before & After:

Finch supervising...

Rigby getting in the way...

  The pups REALLY love their new peek windows - Rigby oftens asks to go outside JUST to use them. He enjoyed keeping an eye out for Trick-or-Treaters headed our way