Friday Projects

As I mentioned in the previous post, my parents helped w/ projects around here on Friday. Mom & the girls helped me unload the minivan that I'd never gotten unloaded from last weekend's trip to the old house (that rain all week slowed down projects like that) and then they helped to collapse the moving boxes that I hadn't yet collapsed & then we loaded all of them into the minivan and took them up to the storage area as well (a neighbor has said she wants them, but I'm tired of tripping over them while i wait for her to come get them, now they're out of my way until she asks for them LOL). The girls honestly did most of the box carrying at both ends LOL.

Dad had built the printer table for the playroom before they came so he assembled it, and mom & I moved it, and the printers & copier into place. I sent the playstands (that I'd been using as a printer stand) to mom & dad's house since we don't have a good place for them here.

Dad's main project (that took pretty much all day) was doing the lighting in the girls' room. When he built the loft bed, he took down the ceiling light because they would've hit their head on it going up & down the loft ladder. As a temporary solution (since he was short on time that weekend) he turned the ceiling socket into a regular plug & we got some "under counter" lights that he mounted on the top board of the loft railing & we plugged into that plug. So Friday he re-did things to the permanent solution. He'd found a flush mount fixture that was small enough to put in the ceiling socket so he put that there, then he put a switch on on post of the loft (underneath) and put 2 larger under counter lights under the loft to give light under there (which looks great) and also ran wires so that the original under counter lights could be plugged in and not on a switch and he moved them to be on the inside of the railing instead of outside so now they make perfect reading lamps when the kids are in bed. I think L, especially, is going to be thrilled with that aspect of it. So now we have decent light for the room as a whole, good light under the loft, and reading lamps for each bed. Woo-hoo! The girls haven't seen any of it except the ceiling light though, since Dad did most of that after they'd left for Grandmom's. They're on their way home now, I'm anxious to see their reaction :)

Mom also remembered, after the girls had left on Fri, that another time when she was here & she & the girls had gone "exploring" over by the creek, she'd noticed some "weeds" that looked like they might be blackberry or raspberry bushes. So we went hunting and sure enough all along the creek, and edges of the woods there are TONS and TONS of some type of wild raspberry (looking at the pictures on this site, I think they're thimbleberries, whatever they are, they taste yummy LOL) and a few black raspberries. There are even some of the thimbleberries right along the edge of the woods in our backyard, so the girls will be able to pick those whenever they want (the ones by the creek, they'll have to wait & have me come with them). So I'm excited to share this discovery w/ the girls this week as well.