Summer To-Do List

We've been officially into summer for more than a week, but things at our little homestead are so behind that I'm just now getting around to figuring out what I want to accomplish this summer before going back to work. Too many things.



1. Finish the garden.

You know, like actually getting the fence done. Putting the rest of the mulch down. Weeding out the mess.

2. Clean up the basement.

The workout room is pretty much finished. And the bathroom is functional. But the main room is a disaster. Boxes and broken items, a stove and a refrigerator, a huge pile of recycling lie around waiting to be taken care of. This needs to be done before winter hits again (Hey, four months comes sooner than you think!).

3. Get the craft room organized.

It’s in the same state as the basement, minus the old appliances.

4. Finish those curtains!

Yeah, the fabric is still sitting on the cutting table waiting to be sewn up.

5. Paint the living room.

Gray.

6. Kitchen

The current plans are to refinish the countertops with concrete and paint the cabinets. This will be a semi-big project so this will probably be the focus of the second half of July.

That’s it. Only six items on the list, but most of the projects are pretty lengthy. This week’s focus is the garden. Then we will be heading on vacation, so by the time we come back, it will be time for the kitchen. If we are able to get that done before the end of July, that will leave only two weeks in August to complete the rest. Eek! Better get on it!

Big Winner

Mike likes to think that he’s unlucky. He frequently complains that he never wins anything and he sucks at gambling and that everyone else has an unfair advantage while playing Halo. Yup, he’s pretty optimistic. He should now consider his luck changed.



Mike got a text from a coworker on Friday to bring his SUV to work to pick up his recliner before it rained (her vehicle is a truck). Umm, what? Mike thought maybe it was a ploy to get him to bring the new car to work so his co-workers could put truck nuts on the Escape, but after a few minutes realized that he entered a raffle a couple of months ago for a Flexsteel recliner, valued at $1000.

After telling him that no, I wasn't going to switch cars with him (we have a tandem garage, the Escape was parked first), he got to work and told me that he had, in fact, won a recliner and I needed to come pick it up. I tried to put Leela in her crate but she was having none of that so I brought her with me.



Some co-workers loaded the box into the back and we squeezed Leela in there too. Then I had the pleasure of taking the pieces and hauling them up to the family room. Our staircases make a sharp right turn, and boy was that a tight squeeze.



Some huffing and puffing and a few choice words later and it was time to assemble. That part didn't take too long.



The end result is this beauty, as modeled by my handsome hubby:



So, about the chair. It’s a Flexsteel (the factory is a mere few blocks from our house!) Eclipse in brown with hidden recline function. Not my choice of color or style or anything really. Plus it’s leather, and not the durable kind. It’s the kind that your dog and cat will ruin in a week type of leather. But, marriage is about compromise. Mike is already in love with the recliner. He immediately came home Friday afternoon and re-arranged the furniture to fit the recliner in our family room. Sigh.



Since we're youngins and pretty newly married, I suppose I can’t complain about a free (well, $10 if you consider the entry fee) chair, especially when the husband has been complaining for months about our couch and even tried to convince me to buy a new sectional (with a puppy, are you crazy?). So consider this a semi-permanent addition to the family room for now. Despite this thing being an eyesore to me, it’s actually the nicest seating we have in there right now. Check out our dog-destroyed couch and chair. Duct tape has become a decorating staple around here.



So there’s our big win! Maybe this means a curse has lifted on Michael and he will start doing better at the slots! Or maybe we should just not gamble. Hmmm.

Ikea finds, or why I would be broke if I lived any closer to the Swedish superstore

I was in Chicago this weekend for a bachelorette party. Mike came with me. What an appropriate event to drag your husband to, right? We are Ikea junkies. We need our fix every so often to function, so I figured that if he could chill out in a hotel room for a few hours while I partied it up, we could hit Ikea on our way home from Chicago in the morning. What a good call.

There's nothing better for a hangover than the syrupy goodness that is the Ikea breakfast. For 99 cents you can get eggs, potatoes, give your husband the bacon, and drown that plate in maple flavored syrup. And a cup of free coffee. There might have also been a $1 cinnamon roll shared at the table.

You could spend days in there, but we have it down now that we can browse through the whole showroom, pick out our boxes in the warehouse, and get through the checkout in about two hours. We go to Ikea about twice a year, so there's always something new to check out, like this rattan chair:

Which we couldn't help but purchase. We picked out two of these babies for the living room. We figure it will do for now in the living room and if we find something different, they can move out to the front porch.

We also got one of these desk chairs:

Mike is so happy he has something comfortable to sit in. The gray (they say black) fabric is a necessary splurge. It looks so much more sophisticated and really looks good in our office.

And these adorable tea towels. I purchased an extra set for my sister, who is having her bridal shower this weekend!

We might have purchased some other things too. We have problems on going to Ikea without charging an arm and a leg to our credit card. It’ll be mac n’ cheese and cereal this summer while we are paying it off, ha ha ha. Has anyone else had a shopping spree at Ikea lately? Or has a problem with spending their entire paychecks on home furnishings?