A little catch up...

Just a little of this and a little of that.

February is one of my favorite months of the year. We start off by celebrating our anniversary, then Valentine's day which is always fun at our house and then a long holiday weekend. We usually leave the country each year in celebration of all of these things but this year for several reasons we stayed home. Either way, February is always a month full of lots of love in our house.

Rick and his best friends from growing up headed down to San Diego for four days to do some surfing which is something they do every year. He came back into town the day before Valentine's Day. All week while he was gone he reminded me how much he loves me by doing little romantic things. It started off with a love letter in the mail which I love getting. I have a whole treasure chest of love letters from him all tied up in a big bow like they did in the olden days. I was telling him just last night while we were curled up in bed how much I love his love letters and how I was excited for our great grandchildren to find them one day when we are gone, read them and know how much we loved each other.

A day or so later a private shared board showed up on my pinterest page. He had created a private shared board for just the two of us with some romantic and sassy pins on it. He still continues to send me little romantic messages every now and then on our board, which I love. I then got an email invitation for our Friday night (Valentine's night) activity which gave me some homework and a little prep work. On Friday night after the kids went to bed he pulled out our RC Cola wooden crate and had it filled with some deliciousness. He had my favorite cheese (Camembert) with a french baguette, a homemade passion fruit orange sparkling drink, chocolate biscuit cookies, fresh strawberries, asian pears, passion fruit and some fruit candies. He also made me a sassy blues cd mix. I won't tell you exactly what our activity was but it was romantic, thoughtful, and well planned. I love this guys. He is always doing thoughtful romantic things for me. What more could a girl want.

We decided to buy the kids a play structure one weekend. It was totally spontaneous and not thought out. We knew we wanted one and we were looking on Craigslist for them but we didn't think much beyond that. Over the holiday weekend we found a good deal on one in Livermore so we decided right then and there to take it. We thought we could have my dad and two brothers who live in Livermore help us disassemble it and help us loaded it up. However, none of them were home so it ended up being just Rick and I in our new Honda pilot with all 3 kids and a trailer behind us. It took us 5 hours (with the kids in the car) to take it apart in a few big chunks and get it loaded into our trailer and a truck we borrowed. It took us a long time to drive home since it was so huge and top heavy. We had the slide slicking straight up in the air. Once we got it home (at 9:00pm) we couldn't unload it by ourselves so we had to leave it on the street as is. The next day our neighbors help us unload the two towers and roofs into the backyard. We then realized that we didn't have a place to put this huge thing. The spot where we were planning on putting it was not ready for it yet. That side of our yard needs some re-leveling and some stone pathways and bushes taken out. We didn't want to put it on the other side with the grass because we had other plans for that area. We realized that our spontaneity was not a good idea. We ended up only putting one tower up temporarily until we get the yard ready for it. It has two towers, a rock wall, sandbox, picnic table, slide, and 3 swings. The kids call it their tree house and are loving it. Just wait until they get the whole thing.

A few more happenings this month...

Crew, a lover of all things sweet, a lover of all things messy and know a lover of flour mixes. I have found Crew in the pancake mix a few times now but this time he decided that a handful from the bag was not good enough. He had to dump the whole bag onto the floor and dig in head first. Once he saw me coming he put his head down again and tried to lick up as much as he could. 

We have been doing a little work on the inside as well. I have been working on my craft closet and Rick built a work bench for the garage. I have been into recycling things lately and making them into useable things. It gives me a project to work on and I don't have to spend my house money on it.

Our new neighborhood has donation days almost monthly, where you can leave stuff out in front of your house and the donation truck comes and picks it up on certain days. I am always amazed at what people are throwing away. I want to take half of it. However, I don't want to be the new neighbor who scrounges through peoples trash and takes things. I did see some old beige metal file cabinets that the donation truck did not pick up (must not have fit within their requirements). They sat in front of the house down the street for two weeks, so one night I sent Rick down in the car (in the dark) to get them. I painted them bright yellow and used them in my craft closet as legs to my desk. We found a brand new door in our shed when we moved is so we cut it down to fit in the closet and painted it white. I then used lots of stuff that I gathered from my grandma's house when cleaning out her house. She had several old vintage jars with the cutest cowboy lids. I used those to hold different things. We bought some peg board and used it for the work bench and the wall of my closet. I painted it teal. Here are a few pictures of my craft closet. It isn't done yet but here are some middle of the project pictures.

 Here is my door desk on top of the painted file cabinets. I put a wooden rod up to put all of my ribbon on. Down below you can see my vintage cowboy jars filled with craft supplies. On the right side wall is my old cabinet that my great uncle made. He was a really well know wood worker in San Fransisco for many years. I had this cabinet up in my loft as my jewelry box. I painted it red and now keep my paints and stuff in it.

 Here is the inside of the Bingham and Co. box with my paints.

 This is all in the right hand closet. I still have to do some work in the closet on the left. There are two big closets right next to each other that make one big one. This closet is in our library which has a couch bed in it for guests, along with a guest bathroom attached. Basiclly, this room is a craft room, library and guest room, but on an ordinary day it is all mine. We are going to put sliding barn doors on the two closets so they can easily be opened and used.

We went to Disney on ice a few weekends ago with the kids. Athen liked it but Crew was entertained for about 2 minutes straight and that was about it. While we were in Oakland we headed over to Berkeley bowl, the kids favorite store. We bought so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables including a buko (coconut). Every time we travel to the West Indies or anywhere tropical of course we have to drink buko and eat the fresh young coconut so now the kids love to get coconuts. Here we are drinking our coconut after a nice family bike ride/walk.

We have been working outside the last few weekends in the yard as well as making our lemonade stand with the kids. Athen has been so excited for our family lemonade stand, which we will use in our backyard for parties not as a real stand in a public place. He loved nailing the wood together and dragging the wood pieces all around the yard. He loves helping his papa work and is pretty much stuck to his hip at all times. It is so precious.