Saturday activities...

Kelley started working on "the list" ...

1.repair the chimney.

The trees from Leslie's yard hang way over into our yard and bang against the chimney when ever the wind blows. It's kind of beat down the chimney and knocked part of it down over the years.

When Kelley got up there, he found out it needed a lot more repair than that. He took down a big part of it and is trying to rebuild it stronger this time.

I remember when he was building our house, he was really busy! Several houses in the neighborhood were going up at the same time and he was doing the brick work on most of them. I think that was how we got to know a lot of our sweet neighbors...Kelley working on their houses. It has been a blessing over the years to have friends with different talents and skills....Everyone just helps each other out! It made it real nice for being able to do a lot of work on our own houses and getting some work equity.

Anyway, when he was building our house, he was really in a crunch for time...you know how it goes, they want everything done on their time schedule, then you sit and wait till they get around to all the inspections and closing on the house so you can move in.

Our's was really a joke. We had to be out of our old house (sooo grateful we could sell it!) by the end of June...I was 8 months pregnant with Candice, and we couldn't move into our house till the middle of July.

Soooo we moved all our stuff into the garage of the new house...(oh no you can't put it in the house!) Then we moved in with Kelley's folks for a couple weeks! They were really great to us and helped out so much with Katie and Camille while we were trying to get moved in here.

Anyway, while Kelley was doing the brick work on the chimney (back in 1986), he was doing some fancy work on it and making it real cute when a big wind storm came up and blew it all over. I remember thinking "oh boy, what else?"
Not doing it so fancy this time...making it more sturdy!


Picked this enormous cantaloupe ...the one that was hanging from the fence. It was delicious!

I got in one of those cleaning moods and decided to do all the blinds. I hate to admit this, but the last time I washed the blinds...I mean take them down and scrub them...was, well....Never! I have just dusted them and wiped them down with a damp cloth. Let's see, it's been about 15 years now! That's embarrassing!
So Kelley helped me take them all down and we took them out back. I scrubbed every fake wood slat...
We put them in when we remodeled the kitchen...a good friend of Kelley's, well his wife sold them..we thought they were really cool at the time..."some sort of magic material...completely indestructible...won't fade or yellow!"
Not so much. Several have broken, won't open and shut like they should and they have yellowed where the sun shone through the window on them. Then theres the one's in the living room...they are really sad! Daisy chewed on them and left big scratches and teeth marks all over them. She also broke one of the slats too! ( When I discovered what she had done, she had to be removed from the house to prevent a premature death)
Man I need some new blinds! someday.......


Anywho, after lots of scrubbing, they came pretty clean, but there was some spots that were just not budging. I got to thinking how great these magic erasers worked on the white lawn chairs, so I tried one on the blinds....it was like a miracle! They really came clean and white again! So I went over all of them with these and they look pretty darn good....except for the ones that daisy got...can't fix chewed!
Mr. Clean...my new hero!
(kind of reminds me of somebody...)