What I've Been Up To

Certainly not blogging!! I promise I've been busy doing other things, which I'll talk a bit about here. Most things have been great, so that's good!

In February Jim left his job at TradeKing to start his own business as a freelance computer programmer and consultant. Though it has its challenges--and there will be more to come, I am sure--I can tell that Jim is much happier working for himself. After a bit of a rocky start, he's going full-steam ahead and booking his calendar months in advance. I am really proud of him, needless to say, but I want to say it anyway, because he's most likely going to read this :) Right now he's in San Francisco in training--that is the one downside of this arrangement. He's traveling a lot to various places--Raleigh, Richmond, San Francisco so far--and I miss him!

My work is going well. Not really that much to say, since it's just an office job. This, however, leaves me a lot of energy most days to come home and tackle home projects. I'll show a few of them just because that's what I wanted to do in this post!

The first project is the garden. Unfortunately, I don't really have any pictures of the finished product, (I will post those tomorrow when it's light out), but everything is doing well, and there are already some tomatoes on the plants! So far I've planted 2 types of basil, 3 tomato plants, red pepper, arugula, rosemary, zucchini, yellow squash, and butternut squash. I had to "scalp the earth" (as I kept calling it so that I would sound like a badass) in the front yard, because it's the only place that gets consistent sunlight and drains well. It looks great. Here are pictures of the "scalping" process:



For some reason, my third picture isn't loading...hmm...

When I was in Fredericksburg for Easter with my family, Mom and I went to our Goodwill, and I found 3 chairs that I really liked, but they were in terrible shape. Literally falling apart, terrible fabric on the seat, and the wood's finish was just sad. They had a great look to them, and I could tell that they were solid wood, and at $5 a pop, it was hard to leave them behind. I took them all apart, stripped off the previous finish, sanded, stained, glued, screwed, nailed, and recovered them! Phew! I think they look great--a total "drab to fab" makeover. What do you think?





I think they look pretty awesome!! I'm going to use the leftover fabric to make some cushion covers for the other chairs in our den.

Since I'm having some issues with blogger now, I am going to end here for now. I will post the rest of the projects this week. Do you it's been a whole year that we've lived here, and I haven't posted too many pictures of the house. That will soon change!!! I plan to do a Happy Birthday House post soon.

Hope everyone is doing well!!!