Photo Shoot!

Photo shoot day! Lots of running and giggling and screaming and jumping. And yet I was still able to get some good shots.
Hartwell:
Beckett...much harder to photograph...He was "busy."
And even Barkley:
 Here are the two photos that best represent their personalities:

And

Chalkboredom

Everyone was busy yesterday so I decided to paint my thrift store coffee table. I think I paid $15 for it on some 50% off special. Its partner is still in my garage awaiting my genius/oops paint spectacular.

Someone pinned something similar on pinterest the other day. A chalkboard table. I had thought of that while staring wistfully at my bargain but nixed it because of the chalk dust and the idea of seeing the chicken scratch of two non-writers would distract me too much so I'd always be cleaning it. But, you know, boredom, monotony, the thought that if I left the house I'd be spending money all came together in my head in an explosion of energy. It's like my super power. Boredom turns into creativity. At least I'm not Aquaman.
One of the reasons the table was $15 was because it had large gouges scratched into the top from what I can only assume was a dwarf werewolf.  Small paws and all that. So I had to bust out the wood filler. It dried pretty quickly in the 10am sun of southern California. Two passes of that with sandings in between left me with a pretty smooth top.
The top wasn't as smooth as I wanted so I sanded between coats. I did around three coats and finally switched to a foam roller to get a clean top coat.
 Matte black!
This photo is after I primed the top with a piece of chalk. I just rubbed the chalk over the entire surface. Otherwise if you write something it stays forever until you evenly apply the same amount of chalk to the surface. So if you write, say, "knuckleheads" it will be there for months before it finally fades. Plus, now it looks a bit like a fancy zinc tabletop.
 I like the dark gray better than the matte black.
I had a friend stop by to help carry it in and before the legs hit the floor, Hartwell found the chalk and got busy.

Also, I realized that I was absolutely right, I have to wipe it down every night or go insane at seeing the mismatched scrawling from the short, drunken frat boys who live in my house.








Salad Days Garden

John built a raised bed! With mole blocker! That's what the chicken wire is supposed to do...

Very exciting, but then we had to fill it. Lots of options. We decided just to buy a yard of potting mix and a couple of bags of "chicken poop dirt."

Here's the dirt arriving:
The boys helping us wheelbarrow the dirt:
The boys helping stomp the dirt:
It's all fun and games until someone steals your shovel:
I decided on a sort of salad bar garden. I wanted tomatoes and bell peppers and herbs and stuff. We also chose vegetables that the boys would enjoy watching grow like corn and artichokes. And John wanted hot peppers. Three kinds of hot peppers.
While we wait to decide on what kind of tree to put in the ring, we planted for artichokes. They should grow pretty tall and kind of take over the space. Acting all tree like.
I also bought some seeds and am waiting for them to sprout before I plant them. Sunflowers, basil, radishes, carrots...more stuff for the kids to maybe like if they grow and harvest them. 

This would be a lot easier if sushi and cupcakes grew on trees.

Afternoon in the Garden of Color and Insanity

This weekend, John built us a raised garden bed for us to plant vegetables. I've selected a sort of salad bar concept for the vegetables, i.e. tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, bell peppers, onions, etc...

But before we could buy the plants, John hopped out of town and there is no way I'm planting anything without a second party present. 

1. Too hot. I need time to see where the sun is over the bed during the day.
2. I have no idea if things should go together or be faaaaar apaaaaart...
3. That's a lot of money to spend without coming out of it with new shoes.

So I ended up buying some thyme (that works on two levels), and some other cool succulents I found. 

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that my garden and backyard are a work in progress and most likely this will always be so. But in vignettes, it's pretty.  So here are a few I noticed today:
This last one is a plant that Beckett selected at the nursery. He just sort of grabbed something and said, "Here, Mom!" But it turns out it's the perfect foil for all the green and bright colors everywhere else.

Crazy Boy Day

So hard to organize a photoshoot for these knuckleheads. Which is why these are the most recent photos of the boys. Crazy Hair day.