Picardy Project

building shit & raising girls

A Whole Lotta Nothin’

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Normally on Mondays the girls go to my dad and step mom’s, and Tuesday – Thursday they go to day care. That gives me 4 days a week to do day job stuff. But a funny thing happened: my dad and Wendy AND day care are gone on vacation the exact same two weeks! My wonderful friend has been coming for a couple mornings each week to watch the girls so I can get in a couple hours of work, but trying to put in 32 hours worth of work into about half the time is, well, not really happening, lol.

Instead, there’s been a lot of, “uh, that’ll get done later,” and attempts to bring a 3 year old and 1 year old along to work with me. On one adventure Merritt inadvertently turned on the water in a  showroom’s shower

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Luckily they’re one of my favorite showrooms and are a husband a wife who own their own business and have two kids they used to bring into work with them too, so they just laughed.

Last night we went to a tile shop with both kiddos in tow

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That was an adventure. Luckily I waited till Chris got home from work so he was on kid duty while I looked at tile. Still, the tile shop employees didn’t find our children as endearing as the showroom….

Mostly it’s just been about hanging out together more though, and with the kiddos being pretty good, it hasn’t been quite as stressful as I thought it would be

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Baby + diaper wandering = adorable

I’m super thankful for my friend because otherwise I’d basically be getting none of my work done, and I can’t exactly take a 2 week vacation, so thank you Stephanie!

Next week I shall return, maybe even with some work we’ve gotten done!

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Our Succulent Garden

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The wonderful news is that Monday afternoon we finally got the call that our doors have arrived! And yesterday morning the truck dropped them off at our house!!! Now we just have to find the time to install them. Then find the time to seal them. Then find the time to paint them... But they're here!!! AND our last light arrived on Saturday, woo-hoo! And the replacement glass arrived yesterday. Yay!!!! PROGRESS! So with that progress and the prospect of a before and after looming I decided it was finally time to plant our succulent garden in the front. When we first moved in, the house looked like this And as you know we posted the palms on Craigslist and they got taken away for free, hooray! But then, like so many things around the house, the front planting bed sat only partially worked on for months. Until Saturday, woo-hoo! I was supposed to hang out with my mom Saturday morning with the girls, but plans got shifted around a little bit and she ended up not being able to … Keep Reading...

Our Bedroom Closet! Be Still my Heart!

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Our bedroom closets have sat like this for 3 months Just patiently waiting to be organized. Why have they been waiting so long? Well, there's a giant gap between the top of each cabinet and the ceiling, and I wanted to give the units a more built in look by adding some molding. We had to figure out which molding to use (very, very simple - we looked at what they used in the kitchen where the cabinets are original and will match that closely), so we would know how high to build them up off of the ground. And well, we've got a bunch of other stuff going on, so this wasn't a priority. But I finally silently got frustrated enough that when we had our work party two weekends ago Chris showed me how to use our new Kreg Pocket Hole Machine (it's awesome) Chris hadn't used it before either and bought it for a couple jobs for work we have lined up to make life easier (it's amazing what having the right tool does...) It took about 3 minutes to figure it out, and after that I used … Keep Reading...

These Orders are Killing Me

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Remember how we ordered these front doors? We ordered them almost 7 weeks ago. And they were supposed to take 4-6 weeks to arrive. They still have not arrived. It's not like I'm purposefully hiding the finished paint reveal, but I WANT THOSE DAMN DOORS CHANGED! I don't want you guys to see the new plaint in all it's splendor with these super ugly front doors And then remember how we ordered these lights? We ordered those lights OVER TWO MONTHS AGO and as of about 10 days ago only one of them had arrived. I emailed my trade contact, customer service, their general email....all to check on the status of our order. Nothing. So I called. Oh, they were on back order and NO ONE told us. Then we got the lanterns, but not the wall lights. But when the lanterns came EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of them had broken glass. Jesus. So then I had to call back again and ask, "Where the fuck is our 4th light that was supposed to come a month ago after being on back order?" and "We need … Keep Reading...

Ripping the Gazebo Down

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There's this really awesome gazebo in our front yard Can't see it? Oh, here it is Totally awesome, in this case, means super shitty. You can't tell 100% from the picture, but it's a total piece of shit. Like, I'll huff and I'll puff and I could totally blow that house down. My step dad CBH LOVES to tear things down, so after he and Celia dug the post holes for the future playhouse in the scorching sun, I asked him, "Wanna rip the gazebo down?" To which he gleefully replied "YES!" (in as much a way as CBH is gleeful : )). Chris's mom was over at the house by this time in the afternoon, so she, CBH and I removed all the landscaping equipment from underneath the gazebo (there was about twice as much as what is in the above picture by this time). Once it was all cleared out we got Chris to remove some of the top of the gazebo so it cleared the cable lines Then CBH went to town. Although, he's not a wild man wielding a sledgehammer, he is a very methodical man … Keep Reading...

Planning for a Playhouse

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Because of course :) It's not on our to do list or anything, but of course we have to build a playhouse. OF COURSE. We just need to add all sorts of projects to our list. It all started on Pinterest. That's where most of my problems start. I get caught in a rabbit hole of problematic creative inspiration and soon I feel like all our future kitchen cabinets should be emerald green (I have a couple years to convince Chris to get on my train). You see what Pinterest does? This post is supposed to be about building a playhouse and somehow I got to talking about our kitchen (holy jesus I still want to re do it so bad). So I was on Pinterest looking at something about backyards (I don't even remember) and then I started looking at pictures of playhouses. I had the pipe dream that we would build a playhouse, but wasn't really sure if it would ever happen. I started paying closer attention to what I was liking about the ones I was pinning: simplicity This one This … Keep Reading...