The Fishing Tournament

Chad's place of work has a couple of fishing ponds open to employees.  Last Saturday they hosted a fishing tournament for the kids.  It wasn't based on quantity or size it was just a chance to fish and be entered in a drawing afterwards.  Bummer, but I guess its fair when at the age the boys are at they need so much adult help.

Nathaniel's favorite part, the worms.

Timmy doesn't mind them either.

Timmy caught fish after fish.

Nathaniel only caught half of what Timmy did, poor guy.

This was a dead fish that floated up and the boys had a lot of fun playing with it.  Nathaniel had hooked it earlier, and the fish swallowed the hook.

Nora wasn't signed up in the tournament but she did get to fish at the end and got a Bluegill.

Bathroom Remodel

 Our bathroom has been sorely needing a makeover since the day we moved in 4 years ago.  I have remodeled the rest of the house except the kitchen, dining room and main bathroom.  The kitchen and dining room are on hold till I have several thousand dollars to spend and people kept offering to help me with that bathroom.  It seems that at one time or another every close friend I have and even my father have offered to help me.  I guess they thought it was an eyesore too!

This is what it looked like before, note the early eighties sea themed pealing wallpaper.

The "S's" volunteered to help me peal wallpaper.  Matt has a fascination with pealing things, this was fun for him.

I had new flooring to go in the bathroom, it had been sitting in the garage since we remodeled the master bathroom.  At the time I had bought enough to do both bathrooms thinking I was going to get to it right away.  When we tore out the old flooring we found water damage and then had to replace the subfloor. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, after all it's a bathroom in a 40 year old house.  There had to be some leaks somewhere along the way.

I painted the walls a base color of light brown and then used one wall to paint squares on.  Above is the wall taped off and ready for more paint.

Here come the before and after pictures!  The best part of all!

 

Before                               After

I kept the same hardware such as light switches and towel racks I just spray painted them.  $5 for a can of paint was much cheaper than replacing them.

Before                              After

Before 

After

Because my budget was small (very small) I had planed on painting the vanity and giving it new handles.  But (Praise God!) the vanity got damaged when we removed it to do the floor and we had to replace it.  Then to match the new vanity we had to get a new mirror.  Yes, the budget was at that point blown.

Before                             After

Before

After

After

After

After

The towel rack and the painting squares are my favorite part.  My friend Melissa sells the vinyl letters you see above the towels, she also gave me the inspiration for the multicolored squares.  I really appreciate her help and inspiration!

The New Beehive

Chad has talked in the past about getting a beehive in the back yard but I haven't been too keen on the idea.  Then I saw an ad in Criagslist for a beekeeper looking for a place to keep a few hives.  We contacted him thinking we have the perfect place and could benefit from his experience and bees without the commitment of having our own.  He came to visit and told us he wanted to have 5 or 6 hives in our yard and it would require driving into our yard weekly.  It was decided that it wouldn't work.  But in the meantime he gave us a lot of information and told Chad how to make an affordable hive. Flash forward a month and now we have bees and a hive that Chad built.

Chad moving them from their old home to our hive.  Because the old hive was in a square and the honeycomb formed in a square he had to cut the comb into triangles to fit in our hive.  Therefore we got to enjoy some honey right away!

Yes, Chad did get stung.  Three time to be precise.  Nathaniel has also been stung on the cheek.  All of that was in the process of moving them from their old home to the new one.  They are much calmer now and we hardly know they are there.

I don't know if we will get honey this summer or not, it will depend on how much they bring in but we are looking forward to it!