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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A Facade Restoration

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It is no secret to anyone that this facade needed a lot of work And that experience has been super exciting. And terrifying. And challenging. As is usually the case, when the market is hot, it's tough to get contractors. I called over 10 different people to try and get this siding removed. It was a clusterfuck of who would get it done, what amount of work they would take, blah blah blah. It was quite an adventure. Why wouldn't we do the work ourselves you ask? Well, it's a shit ton of work, and it's at least an hour away from our house. In shit ass traffic. So it would make for not great time management and the project wouldn't move very fast. Plus, the exceptional carpentry involved would make it pretty hard. We finally settled on a painter and the painter gave us the contact of a great contractor they've used for projects like this. That process started literally over a month ago. Like I said, it's been an adventure. And we still haven't really even started. Well, … Keep Reading...

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Where Have I Been!?

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Oh, hi! :) I know, I've been a little absent lately. Lots has been going on in our house, lots of changes, not a lot of house progress though :) First off, last week I didn't post at all, but about two weeks before that I didn't post at all either. What were we up to? Oh, we just went to Alaska And it was AWESOME! Chris and I are finally trying to take family advice and give ourselves a little bit of a break every once in a while. We went on a long weekend vacation to Las Vegas last year when I was about 8 1/2 months pregnant, but before that it had been at least a couple of years since we took a REAL vacation. And since we didn't do much when I turned the big 3-0, we decided to take an Alaskan cruise as a belated birthday present to me. WITH NO KIDS. Oh my god. 8 days with no kids. Our family is amazing for letting us go on that vacation. Seriously, beyond lucky. Don't worry, that doesn't get past me. I'm hoping to write a post about it for later this week because we got … Keep Reading...

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And While We’re at it: How About Our Utility Closet Too

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Clearly we're on an organizing kick at the moment because after we got the foyer closet done it was finally time to get the utility closet done downstairs There was crap everywhere because we had no place to put all our cleaning supplies. Because, hello, noooooooo shelving It also made the laundry shuffle a little challenging. And when we needed to find cleaning supplies we had to go through a giant box or shit all over the floor. Like the upstairs closet Ethan ripped out the old stuff in here. There wasn't much so it literally took about 5 minutes for him to rip everything out Then Chris got things patched, primed and two coats of white. Because it's a utility closet we don't need any fanciness. We opted for standards and rails with wire shelves, simple and inexpensive. And the good news is all the brackets were leftover from another project, so we didn't have to pay for them, hooray Once we got the standards and rails installed I spent about 30 minutes … Keep Reading...

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The Perfect Front Door Color

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Chris and I were really inspired by my dad and Wendy's front doors at their house Those orange doors POPPED and they get a lot of compliments from folks around the neighborhood Remember how boring it was before? We really loved that huge, bright pop of color. And we wanted to replicate it for our house. Originally I thought about having a bright blue front door, but as I thought about things more and more I wasn't super excited about it. It seemed really safe to me, and not the fun impact that we wanted to have. Then I thought about a BRIGHT Citron or Chartreuse. I Pinned colors I liked and inspirational images like this one It just made me happy. Chris was a little on the fence about it, but also really wanted that bright impact that we loved about my dad and Wendy's doors, so he was willing to let me try it. So week or two ago with a list of far too many paint colors, the girls and I made our way to HD to get samples And I brought out my sheet of … Keep Reading...

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Happy Birthday Merritt

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A couple weeks ago we celebrated this little cutie's first birthday! If you couldn't guess, we went to the beach :) Zoe loves the water, Merritt loves the water - so it seemed like a good fit. It was also enough of an outing that it felt just special for her, but not so GIANT. That little chick is pretty laid back so it seemed perfect. My dad and Wendy met me at the beach and help set up a couple canopies while my mom and Chris got the girls ready to leave. By early afternoon the party girl was in the house and all our friends and family were celebrating It was a lot of fun and I wish I had gotten more pictures of all of our friends. But everyone was having a good time and seemed to really enjoy themselves, so that made me happy of course. Who doesn't like pizza and the beach? It was really an awesome time. I was actually surprised that Merritt wasn't an into the water as I thought she would be She was not very please … Keep Reading...