Buh-bye Moss!

There are changes going on outside house. Back in 2001 (I’m not that old!!!), we bought our house. One of the things we loved about it was the wooded backyard. It was full of trees and felt very secluded, but with neighbors close enough to hear you scream. That was a must for me. You never know when a rogue mouse will come out to attack with their chainsaw and you must always be able to run to a neighbor so they can be killed first.

Over the years, however, everything just become overgrown. The grass became moss. Especially after I became pregnant because I didn’t want to poison the unborn Autobot in my uterus and then I was afraid she’d end up eating or bathing in the chemicals.

I bet you are so jealous of my moss.

While we still loved the enclosed privacy afforded by the trees and even the feeling of living in the woods, we started to realize, we needed to do something.

Love this.

Part of the problem is OP. She needs a safe place to play, away from the street and not on a hill that she can easily careen down to be hit by a car. She also LOVES playgrounds. Let me rephrase that. If she could run away to a place that sold playground sets, she would think her all-spark had transported her to little OP heaven.

The other problem is the bugs. The mosquitoes and gnats that love the dark, watery forest and the fact that there is this lovely little take out place that serves people only a few feet away. I don’t go out much because it gets pretty bad.

(Check out all the pictures from before…)

So after some thought, we decided to clear out the backyard a bit. This would mean cutting down trees, but we needed a clean up around the house of the dead and crooked trees that would take out our house or a neighbors.

So some trees went away out front.

You can see a few missing trees.

And quite a few disappeared out back.

So different!

It’s quite empty.

My house looks naked.

It still retains some of the trees and we’re going to have bushes put up at the back for privacy.

I’m not sure of the change yet. Of course we have a lot more to go–the bushes, grass, patio, plantings, etc. I’m saddened by the change because we destroyed some homes for animals and yes, I am just that sappy. I’m also very excited by all this because we’re going to have so much more space for OP to play and even us. The backyard is HUGE! I never really imagined it to be this big before because it was just space I think I had been in about 10 times before.

Once it’s done, we’re going to have a big BBQ to celebrate the space. If we’re lucky maybe we’ll have a few thousand less bugs from the millions we seem to have now. Otherwise, they will be having a BBQ themselves.

(Check out all the phase 1 pictures…)

Nursery work has begun

We’ve started the nursery. You can check out the progress at our flickr site. It’s been a long process.

We decided to convert our guest room, with the hideos original wallpaper and paint, to the baby’s room. We started with the idea that we would do mostly butter-colored walls with a purple accent wall. Then we changed our minds and went all purple. The idea was to go with a room that could grow with her instead of one that would be outdated in 2 years.

Now, I’m not one for frilly, girly things, but something about this kid being a girl has turned on the girl. That and the fact that we found the girliest pulls and nobs for the dresser. Once we found those, we started going with “Pretty Purple Princess” as the theme to the room.

Unfortunately we had to shut down progress for 2 weeks because we had workers in the room and painting space. See, our windows are old and, well, suck. They are drafty and hard to open. We decided to just take the plunge and replace the windows. Oh, and while we were at it, let’s improve our insulation. Unfortunately, if we added insulation, we ran the risk of starting a fire because of our original lights, so we had to replace the lights.

Two weeks later and we were able to start back in on the room. We’re far from done, but you can check out the progress. I think we can get it done in time. If not, hey, she has a bed and storage. That’s all you can ask for. Well, maybe curtains. Curtains would be nice.