color seasons

My Mom was asking me about what Color Season my girls and I were to help guide her in her Christmas Shopping this year.  I have a few favorite colors that I know look good on me, but I had no idea what my Season was!  So I researched it and I wanted to document it here so I don't have to research it again :)  (when you read all those descriptions, they all start to sound the same)  I used this website


I am a Soft Summer

• Eyes-Hazel, Hair-Med/Mousey Brown, Skin-Beige (A neutral coloring among the seasons)

Here are some tips the website gave

• Celebrity example-Sarah Jessica Parker & Jennifer Aniston
• Combinations to try:
• Try Monochromatic  
• if you want to be colorful, Purples and greens will look great on you.  You can also try some of the Autumn color pallets.
• neutral color combinations.  
• (mix of warm and cool, deep and light) 
• Try colors that are diffused with grey, making them look soft and cool. 
• Soft greens bring out the sparkle in your light eyes.
• here is the color pallet they suggest for soft Summers

Colors From Left: Slate grey, grey, light desert sand, taupe, mauve, deep rose, red-violet, raspberry, baby pink, deep mauve, burgundy, light lemon yellow, light green, turquoise, jade, emerald green, spruce, navy, periwinkle, lavender, dusty purple, blue teal.

Gwendolyn and Maggie both seem to be dominated as Medium & soft summers, but their dark brown eyes allow them to try the Warm Autumn colors also.

• Eyes-Dark Brown, Hair-Med/Mousey Brown, Skin-Beige
• Celebrity examples-Sarah Jessica Parker & Jennifer Aniston or Kate Beckinsale
• Being between a soft summer and a warm autumn they can follow the same color suggestions as Bri, or try some of the warm autumn suggestions below

Here are some tips the website gave

• If you dye your hair dark brown you'll be able to wear tomato red and black. (Gwen has been telling me she wants to dye her hair to be dark like her Aunt Desiree's  :)
• Blue is NOT the best color for you
• great neutrals for you are cream and dark Chocolate
• great colors for you are peach, greens & browns

Warm Autumn color pallet

Colors From Left: Camel, khaki, coffee brown, cream, medium brown, dark brown, light salmon, dark peach, salmon, pumpkin, rust, terracotta, aubergine, light yellow, light moss, evergreen, marigold, emerald turquoise, teal, forest green, light periwinkle, purple.

Maggie is a

Homemade Christmas Ornament 2017

Every Year I like to make homemade ornaments to add to our collection.  We move so much, that I just can't justify buying new decorations to customize every home we find ourselves in each year.  So a tree full of homemade ornaments helps us to add other homemade decorations to the rest of the house and it pulls together very well.

This year my daughter helped me choose a kid friendly ornament.  We found it here

And my Son brought home a gingerbread man cut out for homework that he was to decorate and send back to school for the classroom bulletin board.  I decided that our kitchen would be cute lined with gingerbread men along the top of the bead board.  So I just traced his cut-out on a bunch of paper bags and we had fun decorating them on black Friday after we set up the other decorations in the house.

We have our garden started in the planter and there are a few sprouts coming up!  

Here are our Brussels Sprouts and Corn Stalk

 I'm so excited!

I've always wanted a garden of my own, but I decided to make it small so the weeds don't make me want to cry constantly.

Once we had the first round of seed in the ground, we began installing the permanent fencing to keep Danny and maybe some day a small dog in the back yard without escaping.  We will put it all along the top of the retaining wall to keep people from falling, then along the wetland barrier at the back.

And as I work on the fence, I keep looking around the yard and wonder what fun details we can add to make it an even more awesome space for kids.

We already have a fire pit, playhouse, comfortable sitting area, and sandbox.  I think that is pretty awesome, so we don't need big statement details.  Just small details that will give it a real children's garden vibe that I could incorporate into some of the areas we are still working on finishing off.

 Tick Tack Toe Table or pavers

(woohome.com, thegardenglove.com)

Xylophone 

(sentequ.co.uk, kidspacestuff.com)

 Fairy/Gnome garden

(can't remember site for first fairy garden, but its not mine, anneofgreengardens.com)

ksassets.timeincuk.net V

Match box car race tracks

(princesspinkygirl.com, beafunmum.com)

  totally cool nest!

(tadmontgomery.com)

Whimsical Signs

(thediyfarmer.net, http://chelseasewbee.blogspot.co.nz)

Living Willow structures

urbanarboriculture.tumblr.com

there is a space where the planter and the steps meet.  An in ground slide would be neat there.

preschool playgrounds.com

Finishing new projects and dreaming of more

I am so addicted to Projects.  It drives my husband crazy to have things always a bit of a mess while I play :S
Right now the sump pump still doesn't have an electric outlet to connect to, and the sliding bathroom doors are not completed, but with he Weather so Awesome this spring, we jumped into the backyard project and we built the stairs to the lower section of the back yard.
We had some great helpers to assist us in hauling the leveling sand and concrete blocks to the back yard

Sam said Danny was so determined to hold on to the wagon that once or twice the little guy lost his footing, but never let go of that wagon.  When Sam stopped to help Danny back up, he was still just as happy as can be to be Daddy's big helper.

 My parent's came to help out while we laid the blocks.  My Mom watched the kids, while Sam, My Dad, and I laid the blocks.  They were HEAVY blocks at 60 pounds a piece!  It took us a half day to haul everything, and 2 full days to lay all the blocks in place.

We rested for a week or 2, then geared up to build this planter to cover some of the rusting hardware and wood that is poking out from the old retaining wall.  It will double as a veggie garden and bench for additional seating.

Over the next month or so we will be finishing up the backyard, we hope the major stuff is one before the girls are out of school.   But once the yard is done and the other projects that have been at a standstill are complete, here are the ones I've been dreaming of starting.  (Probably in the Fall when the big kids go back to school)

• a built in bookcase to go in a nook of the upstairs hallway for kids books and church books
• quick and easy bedskirts to make the TV room's sectional/twin beds look more finished.
• I'd also really love to make a built in end table to make the whole "sectional" customized to the room.  (I think that will make it look even more couchy and less bed like.)  I don't have a tutorial for this yet, but I will find something.
• sewing some new dresses for my girls.  (It's been so long since I've sewn anything.  and it is so difficult to find modest dresses for growing young ladies in the summer time)  I've just been mending items as needed and added patches to Sam's Uniforms upon request.  But Ive decided that sewing really relaxes me and it is something I need to make time for all through the year.  I just wish I had a room that I could leave a mess like the basement in Maine.  Having to clean up after my sewing messes really cuts down on the time I can dedicate to a project.

A the end of November I began executing my Sump Pump Project
I marked out the size of how wide the pit had to be, then and after about 3 days of digging during nap time I had gotten about 6 inches down.

                                                    

The ground was a dense and rocky clay.  It was SO difficult to dig in and there was of course not a lot of room down there.  The only way we could break through the dirt was to go at it with a tire iron, clear what had been chipped away, then whack it some more.  I went down every nap time with my helper Toby who found it all fascinating and fun.

My Dad is AWESOME, he came and dug the rest of the pit for me with the tire iron, and helped me set the pump in the pit properly with a hole garbage can and let us to put a lot of gravel all around it with the kids.


Then he came back another day with a concrete drill that he rented for us to make a hole in the foundation where we could thread the pipes through so the water could exit the crawl space.  The drill was long and heavy and we had to hold it in such an awkward way since it was so close to the ground.
Sam, Dad and I all took turns with the concreat drill.  It was hard work and it took us all day.  Dad was a pro at it.  Sam and I took turns too, but we certainly had a thing or two to learn from the old pro.

Once we had the pump in the pit, gravel around the pit and the PVC routing the water out of the basement and into the drainage outside of the house, the weather was so cold that we decided to leave it as it was for a few months.
Now that it is not so cold, our next project is to find a permanent electrical solution so that the pump is not attached to any extension cords.
While the electrician was here fixing the problems with the kitchen island I talked to him about doing the sump pump electrical.  He agreed, but then when it came time to fix the kitchen island, he told me he would come back another day to do the sump pump.  He quoted me $250 for hooking up the electrical, but that he would have to come back another day.  I was irritated that I would have to pay the expense of another the house call, so I want to see if I would save any money trying to hook the electrical up myself before I call him back to do it.

Here is the information I've found in my research so far

I should hook up one of these self testing GFCI outlets in the closet above the sump pump.  Then run some wire into the crawl space to hook up the outlet needed for the pump to work.  (If the self monitoring outlet is in the closet, then I don't have to go down into the crawl space to make sure the outlet hasn't kick off for whatever reason.

Here is a video that shows how to install the GFCI outlet

The sump pump is 115 volts, so this 125V outlet ($12.40) should work just fine for the closet and here is a 125V weather resistant 3 prong outlet ($4.50) that could be installed directly above the pump.

I still need to find out the expense of the wires.  (looks like about $0.80 per foot)  so far for the 2 outlets plus wire it would only be ($16.90+)
Dad told me that he would be willing to come and help out with the electrical install to make sure that I didn't forget anything important like to turn off the circuit breaker.  And to have an extra adult around to help out with the kids.

Once the wiring is done, I will go back down into the crawl space and begin digging some trenches to route water from other areas into the pump.  I think I will need to dig 1 deep trench, but the other trenches should be fine if they are fairly shallow.  Hopefully it can be finished before the weather starts to get too hot and the kids are out of school for the summer.