Basement update: Bathroom

Just a quick post to update the progress on the bathroom.  Our basement is almost complete!  Just need a bathroom mirror, carpeting on the top 8 stairs, and some finishing touches!  I am really happy with how the bathroom turned out since it was studded at an awkward spot (at the bottom of the stairs) and I think it's a nice size as well, even though the shape is a bit odd.

The cabinet and hardware matches the rest of the house

Happy with the size of the shower

View looking out of the shower

Happy Memorial Day weekend, all!

Basement update: Flooring!

Last week the flooring was installed in the basement.  Well, most of it anyway--looks like they ran out on the stairs.  And we got lights in the bathroom and bedroom now.  All that's left is to finish the bathroom and the carpet on the stairs!

Living room

Bathroom- note the tile and the vanity

 The bathroom will be tight.  Here's a shot of the shower, the stub where the toilet will go, and the vanity.  The door won't be there...

 My wonderful storage closet!

Bedroom

Otherwise things here have been relatively uneventful.  Been keeping busy with work and playing after work.  Went to the I Cubs this week as well as Rain, a Beatles tribute band, which was a lot of fun.  We went home last weekend for Mother's Day and spent some time with my family and Rick's dad is coming up Memorial Day weekend for a visit, so naturally this weekend was a combination of relaxing and cleaning.  I can't believe that May is almost over!

Gardening

I tried to be patient while waiting for my plants to emerge.  But, it's now the first week of May and finally nice enough to go ahead and fill in those gaps.  I'm so happy with how much of my garden came back from last year (I planted perennials for that reason), and how healthy it looks!

 The azaleas and rhododendron are evergreens and the hydrangea was dormant and bushy all winter, but I had cut all of the others down to the ground.  The hostas, the lilies, the bleeding heart, were all under mulch all winter.  I am amazed with how they have come back--I'm going to have to split some before there isn't any space left in the garden!

Darby supervised

 The bushy-looking plants with the slender leaves are groups of lilies.  I'm hoping that this year there will be enough blooms to cut some flowers to spruce up the house.  The azaleas have already bloomed, but the rhododendron has just started.  I had a foxglove not come back in front of the rhododendron, so we put a day lily in there this morning.  I'm always a little concerned about plants requiring full sun in my bed, because I feel that most of the spots are part sun, but I think the day lilies should do well.  And they're a perennial that I see coming back at work, so they can't require too much care.  Sadly, I dumped the cart after hitting a pothole in the parking lot so the day lily took a hit, but I think it will come back.

 I am so amazed at the bleeding heart.  I lost the other one I planted last year (I think it was too much sun in that location), but this one is thriving in this corner spot which is the shadiest part of my garden.  This was cut to the ground and came back beautifully.  It's getting a little big for its space, so I may be dividing this one as well.

 In my sunniest spot of the garden, the columbines have really taken off.  The lilies behind them are doing well too, but I'm getting impatient waiting for the blooms!  There was a hole behind the columbines and due to their height, we wanted something that would be a bit taller.  We planted a small lilac bush there this morning, and I'm hopeful it will fill the space nicely.  We went with a smaller one so we could prune it as it grows to fit in the space.  I hope it does well!

 The columbines are so thick and doing so well with virtually no care on my part--my kind of flowers!

 The rhododendron looked sad at a couple of points this winter and spring, but it finally bloomed which made me stop worrying about the silly thing.

With all the plants doing so well, I'm hoping to be able to cut flowers to spruce up the house.  The columbines are out of control and have plenty of blooms to spare, so I thought I would give them a try as cut flowers.  They look pretty good, but now I need to learn how to arrange flowers!  Also need to research how to divide these plants and find new homes for them!

Basement Update: Almost there!

The basement is really coming along!  The past set of emails said that it will be completed by the end of May!  And a lot of things have been happening downstairs, so I thought I would give a quick update.  This past weekend, we went to pick out flooring (carpet and tile) which was far less painful than I thought it would be.  Trim went up last week as well.

But more exciting was coming home today to the fumes of paint!  We had picked out colors a week or two ago, and they finished painting today.  The colors look a lot darker than we had expected (funny how a whole wall looks different than the little color sample), but I think it looks nice!  We had picked vast sky for the living room, resolute blue for the bedroom and banana cream for the bathroom.  And who could forget the white for the ceilings.  The first thing both my grandma and dad said when they saw our new house was, "The ceilings aren't white."  So behold: white ceilings four our "guest suite".

Heading down the stairs

Bathroom on left, living room on right

Looking into the bathroom

Looking into the storage closet.  Same color as the  trim I think.  Unimportant.

Living room looking into the bedroom

Bedroom closet

Bedroom window.  Is it crazy to paint a scene on the egress for a better view?

Looking out from the bedroom to the living room

We wanted to do a darker blue in the bedroom for a soothing, sleepy effect (thinking of putting something similar in our bedroom) and thought we could pull it off with the large window and light colored closet doors.  Putting light colored window treatments in there will also help to make sure the room doesn't get too dark.  We flopped on the living room color, but decided on the hue a shade lighter on the same color pallet as the bedroom color.  I wanted something light and bright for the bathroom since it has no windows and is in the basement, so I hope it feels warm and not gloomy.

The carpet and tile are much like the carpet and tile upstairs in the house, but a shade or two lighter.  We figured that they are close enough to flow well with the rest of the house and also may actually look the same shade since the lighting in the basement is darker.

The bathroom is still pretty bare bones: shower but no toilet or sink yet.  The cabinet is on back order and I didn't want to compromise on color, so hopefully it comes in soon.  Then some plumbing, minor electrical finishes, and flooring!  So close!  Rick's dad is coming to visit Memorial Day weekend, so hopefully it will be all ready for our first guest!

A place to relax

I've been feeling lazy lately.  But now, I have a new place to be lazy:

Outside on my new porch swing!  Well, not new, but newly hung.  My dad made this porch swing for us last year and it was late enough in the season that we didn't get it hung up, but Easter weekend my dad stopped by and hug it for us.  I love it!  I love being outside on nice evenings and this is the perfect addition to our porch.  Also the perfect length for napping.  Thanks, Dad!

Been busy, but not much to report.  Just work, home, repeat.  There was a terrible storm a few weeks ago, some roller derby that didn't turn out well for the home team, and Professional Bull Riders with the family last weekend.  Also went to the musical Memphis last night which was very good.  Otherwise pretty standard.  I need to fill in the holes in the garden, but it seems my weekends are either busy or cold and rainy.  Maybe this weekend...

Easter weekend

Our Easter weekend was tiring, but it was nice to be with family.  A whirlwind of emotions and travel.  Before I get to the weekend, however, I thought I would show off my Easter tree.  Growing up, my mom had an Easter tree just as normal as everyone has a Christmas tree.  She would trim off a branch from the apple tree, put it in sand, and with water it would bloom.  This year, for the first time, I had my own Easter tree.  I do not, however, have a nice apple tree in the yard so I got my stick from the thicket in the ditch.  It's ugly, but it works.

When Mom was here a few weeks ago, we made these embroidery floss eggs that I found on Pinterest.  Essentially, you run embroidery floss through fabric stiffener and wrap them around a water balloon, let them dry overnight, and pop the balloons.  It was a little more complicated than it sounds, but they turned out pretty good.  One tip, though, don't simply put the glue on the balloon and drape the floss over--they will not hold their shape.  We learned the hard way.

My Easter tree

Easter weekend started on Friday.  An extended family member passed away last weekend so Friday night was the visitation.  My cousin's grandmother was 93 years old and when I was a kid, my cousin and I tagged along with Grandma Lillian and Little Grandma (her mother, who was under 5 feet tall) everywhere.  Eerily, she passed away exactly 24 years after our shared grandmother.  Although the circumstances were not ideal, my cousin flew in from New York City and it was great to see him and his significant other--we don't see them nearly enough.

Saturday morning was the funeral.  After spending some time with the family, my sister and father and I headed to Des Moines to run a few errands (pictures of my new porch swing soon) before going to Here Come the Mummies.  My dad is a big fan, and though they were a bit unconventional, the instrumentalists were incredible.  They were very high energy and fun, but dirty.  I kept thinking that any of them could be guys from the Swensen house in college--slightly odd, perverted, great musicians that really knew a good time.  I lived in Swensen after its heyday, but my freshman and sophomore years it was a breeding ground for Mummy-type musicians.  Anyway, the concert was great, we had a lot of fun, and even got to meet some of the Mummies after the show.  They don't talk, just grunt and moan.  Did I mention they were all dressed as mummies?

Bread bunny

After getting home a little after midnight on Saturday night, we went to the sunrise service at 6:30 AM.  Breakfast at the church and then preparing for the family!  My parents hosted 17 for Easter lunch, and it was great to see everyone.  There was so much food!

Mom's Easter tree

After we got done eating, we decided to work some of the food off.  There were several rousing games of washers in the front yard and though it was a bit cool and breezy, everyone lined up to cheer and watch as we refreshed our tailgating skills.

Rick and my cousin's 4-year-old decided to take advantage of the breeze and went kite flying.  Darby loved running around from group to group.  Take a look at that alfalfa the first week of April--so crazy!

It was a great weekend with the family, but it was also nice to get home and sleep--two 2.5 hour round trips in three days seemed like a lot of road time.  Then back to the grindstone--we're almost over the filling and shipping hump, but it's just the lull before the business of summer!

How does your garden grow?

Last year we started a garden, and the flowers are coming back strong!  Many of the bigger (and more expensive) plants came back and I've been holding off on planting the replacements for those that haven't come back.  I figure we're a month ahead of schedule anyway, and it wasn't until looking at last year's photos that I remembered what I had planted where.

 I cut the bleeding heart to the ground (left, above) and it came back wonderfully!  It was one of the first things to flower.  The azaleas are starting to bloom and I've uncovered most of what I think will come back (hostas and lilies).

 My columbines are coming back here and the lilies too.  The bleeding heart died, but I replaced it with a mum  that doesn't look like it's coming back.  My foxglove isn't popping back up either, but I wasn't crazy about them last year, so I'm happy to replace it.  So two empty holes here...

 Most excitingly, the hydrangea is coming back!  I splurged for the bigger hydrangea to hopefully get it to last through its first winter, and since we had no winter it is doing great!  

 I had a bit of a hole in the front of the garden and saw some grape hyacinths at my sister's new place, so I planted these little guys in one of the empty holes.

 The azaleas are now blooming!  And I think I can now fill in the holes... if they're not coming in by now they're likely not going to.  A project not for this weekend but likely next weekend.

We've been keeping busy otherwise.  Two weekends ago we volunteered at the 4-H state awards and last weekend we helped my sister and brother-in-law move from Ames to Des Moines.  I am so excited to have them closer!  Her yard is fully landscaped--if I get the chance to go over and work in her garden I'll be sure to take some pictures.  I'm jealous of her landscaping!  Otherwise we've been enjoying the weather, put some time on the bike and lots of walks with the dog.  Work has been very busy prepping for planting season and while we'll have a bit of a lull in a month or so, it will pick up again shortly after that.  Ahh, the joys of working in agriculture!  I likely won't post again before the holiday, so Happy Easter!