We spend so much time at Home Depot these days that I’m having trouble keeping track of how many visits we actually make. Racking up points on our credit card, though.

The long weekend was spent doing all sorts of house-related things, mostly outdoors. came over on Saturday and helped us out with yard work for 6 hours, and we didn’t finish! We weeded like crazy. In the garden, we used to have this lovely view:

Garden "before"

Turns out that most of that green there isn’t supposed to be there. Seriously. Everything along the fence – weeds. “Voluntary trees,” as said. Pulled all the dead stuff out of the daylilies and some other plants (have no idea what they are yet, but they flower). Discovered an additional rose bush. Pruned those two trees there (that we think will probably tell us to remove when he comes at the end of June, but we’re not sure). Ripped out a whole bunch of violets (they are everywhere), dug up this bush (she determined that it was truly dead and would not recover, and we weren’t sad) where later planted his lamb’s ear, and discovered some weird variety of rose bushes (that are beyond the usual thorniness of rose bushes – quite horrific actually). Oh, helped mow our lawn, too. (We also did a bunch of praying for weeds, and lots and lots of pruning.) Loaded up her car with a few bags of yard waste (she has pickup at her house, and we hadn’t scheduled any yet – that’s since been rectified), moved the remaining yard waste into a pile (including another bush that dug up, also beyond repair), and we were exhausted. And then we went to Home Depot (that’s 1).

Sunday afternoon I spent several hours (seriously) in my favorite tree:

Favorite tree "before"

You can’t tell from this picture, but there’s an awful lot of dead stuff up there.  Did you know that you can prune a tree for hours? I didn’t. I also didn’t know it would be so enjoyable. Truly. It combines my love of throwing things away and being outside – doesn’t get much better than that. There are still hours of pruning left to do on this tree (we did get it cut back from the power lines / roof, as well as the neighbor’s lawn, and a bunch of dead stuff), but I have to wait for the new yard waste receptacle to come on Wednesday to clear the ground (so I can move the ladder).

Unfortunately, I haven’t taken any pictures of our progress yet. Suffice it to say, the changes have been quite visible.

Sometime over the weekend (it's all blurring together now), I "finished" painting my office.

I say “finished” because, as I wrote on Flickr, there was a bit more bleeding of blue paint than I would have liked, and so I decided to do a thin stripe of the dark brown I selected to do the wall art with. I’m waiting the full 2 weeks for the paint to cure, however, so we can use the good tape, and not the “delicate surfaces” stuff. (It’s such a small room – it’s so hard to photograph well!) I cleaned the floor, too, before moving all of my crap back in (I didn’t put any of it away – it’s just sitting in piles in the room, away from the walls). Still a work in progress.

spent most of Monday wiring up the basement for surround sound (7.1, if that means anything to you – it doesn’t to me). This involved the removal of several ceiling tiles (oh, the mice crud that was up there – frightening, truly), as well as part of the wall. That was easy primarily because part of the paneling had already been cut out and replaced. The basement is the addition to the house, so we weren’t sure what was going on there, and were curious.

What did we find behind that panel?

That's right, a complete window. Glass, hardware, everything. Completely covered on the family room side with paneling, and on the laundry room side with plywood. You'd never even know it was there. Awesome.

If you can’t tell from that picture, we also found something else amusing in removing that panel. Here’s a closeup:

That's right, the paneling was installed over other, even uglier, paneling!

Our house is so fun!

My next project?

Removing the shower doors, installing a curved rod, and replacing the shower head in my bathroom.

I picked out a new shower head during a trip to Home Depot on Monday (that’s 3 – went earlier on Monday without me). Then off to find some replacement tiles. But first, we’ve got some more yard work to do. Personally, I think it’s time to get a refreshing beverage, don’t you?

Something new for the kitchen...

... that holds bottles of wine?

That’s right. Last week, in the middle of other projects, we (OK, did all the work) installed our new wine cellar. Ain’t she beautiful? So much better than the [broken] washer that used to be there. I’ll show you the other cabinet (with new shelves that installed for me) tomorrow, if I remember to take pictures.

New wine cellar

I don’t have much to say, so I’ll just share some cute photos I was sent recently (it’s true that second-born children get screwed – I totally posted pictures of all the time when he was a newborn, and Joey, well, just not so much – I will totally make up for that by spending more time with than I did with ).

This is from last month when we went to go visit. Or maybe before that? This spring is all a mushy blur to me.

really wanted us to read that book, but that doesn’t really go how you might think with two-year-olds.

Ooh, how could you not snorgle that up? I'm not sure if he's doing the Superman, or if he's just getting ready to be declared the victor in a boxing match. Either way, it's adorable.