January

We started off the New Year with a lovely few days of just hanging out with the family. Two kiddos under age one (I guess I won't be able to say that much longer...) kinda put a kink in any wild all night party plans. January was also the month of SNOW and single digit temperatures. There were a few ski patrol rescues of a certain weenie dog that got stuck in the back yard snow drifts.

Projects this month included a little reno of our laundry room. We used to have a little counter in there that pretty much just collected piles of junk. So we decided to take that down and make it more of a mud room.

Lucky for me- the Mazda is just long enough to slide 2x4's up the middle :) Shopping for lumber with a  munchkin in tow is a bit of an adventure. Lumber cart + stroller makes for some treacherous aisle navigation at the orange store. 

This is after a quick tidy... still quite the collection of clutter no? 

After removing the counter top

Starting the bench

The finished bench (pictures are a bit creative in here due to the room being tiny... it also made for interesting construction  namely me laying on the floor under the bench to screw in the supports (no pictures were allowed during that process). 

We added a foam cushion and peg board across the back to help add a little functionality and a place to hang jackets. We just need to finish up a little paint in here and possibly move the cabinets closer to the ceiling. Right now they are about a foot lower than the ceiling- which is great for getting things in and out but we don't use the things we store in the cupboards very often so to move them up a bit wouldn't be a big deal and it would give us more headroom when sitting on the bench to put on shoes. Hopefully this will help cut down on the amount of yucky outside things that get tracked into our house! :) 

We also added a little walk-through gate to the kitchen. Baby Houdini has figured out how to pop open the cabinet locks we installed and gets into all kinds of things. So out comes mommy with the drill- problem solved! 

Tah-dah! Baby proof kitchen! Cleo can wiggle herself under if she needs to. Jack hasn't quite figured it out but I have a feeling he will. 

Thatcher also tried his hand at a little finger painting. He wasn't too sure about it at first but he had fun playing with the blue and yellow colors. 

We promptly jumped in the tub to scrub off his little blue and yellow fingers before he was semi-permanently "finger painted".