January

This week I've been pretty busy around my house. We got two of these shelving units for Christmas for our food storage and I've been assembling them. It's taken longer than usual because I decided to give the wood a nice thick coat of high gloss paint. That way if any liquid gets on the shelves it will be more water resistant. They aren't the sturdiest thing out there but for the price they will do the job. I'm contemplating getting a third shelf for our camping and other miscalanioius storage items. Our basement is getting WAY too cluttered for my liking and I've been working on organizing it better this week.














I've also been using a bunch of this:









and this:

















on our tile floors. We have a tile floor with thick grout joints. They never sealed the grout when the house was built. When it was just Jared and I it didn't bother me because we never got the floor that dirty. But now that there are blueberries, grapes, leftover lunch and other morsels thrown onto the floor by a certain munchkin on a daily basis it's been driving me nuts! My sister Teresa has been working on hers and thanks to her I'm following her lead for a new and improved sealed & waxed floor. It is taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R but I finished the laundry room today and wowza does it look good. And best yet, water when dropped on the floor pools instead of sinking into the grout.

Third, I've been drooling over these gems today that I found at
http://naturalyards.com/raisedbeds/













This spring I want to build some raised garden boxes on the side of my house. I've been debating how to construct them them. I like the simplicity of how these are built, the edges notched with a pin in each corner to hold them together. So my wheels are a turning for spring to show up so Jared and I can try to make a few of these. They are pretty pricy, so I think we'll try our hand at making them ourselves. I'm already wishing I could have more garden space. The only room we have is on the west side of our house. It's pretty sunny over there, but I'm still worried that it may not be enough. I'll just have to try and see. I'm used to my parents garden which is... well the size of my entire backyard. Were talking 80'x50' or something like that.

That's been my week. And surprisingly (with what I've been up to) it's been a good one.