Our New Home ~ The Outside Before

We have lived in our home for two months now, and many have asked to see pictures of our house. So, the next few posts will be of our new house "before" pictures. These pictures were taken on the day we purchased our house, last year. Although our home is already looking much better, it will be a while before we will have "after" pictures to show. Most of our work, so far, has been focused on cleanup. As I mentioned when we moved, we purchased a foreclosed home and it is in need of a lot of work. We, first, had to fix the plumbing and make it livable before our permanent arrival. Currently, we are having a new furnace, central air, new duct work, and everything else that goes along with the installation completed. (We are not doing the heating/cooling ourselves.) We were afraid to use the old furnace and we have no air. So, this will help make our new home much more comfortable! I will be posting our rock garden and side porch soon, though!

 

 

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Mendota Sweet Corn Festival!

Welcome to Wandering Wednesday! A couple of weeks ago we attended the Mendota Sweet Corn Festival and had a great time! We met up with old friends that we had not seen in many, many years and enjoyed food, rides, games, and wonderful company. The festival also includes live bands, beer garden, 5k/10k run/walk (Cornapalooza), parade, craft market, and lots of other types of entertainment. There is something for everyone here!

The highlight of the festival, the sweet corn! On Sunday, it is free.

Brice and Hailey going up to try out the slide.

Brice and Hailey coming down.....

Swish!

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Wandering Wednesday

Brice's New Wheels

Welcome to Maintenance Monday! We hope all of you had a wonderful weekend! Ours was busy, as usual. We continued to work on our side porch, burn tree stumps, paint doors, windows, mow and trim the lawn and the list goes on and on and on and on and on. Today, we are sharing Brice's new/old lawnmower. It was Chris' dad's lawnmower and it needed some work before it would run. So while Chris worked on other outdoor projects, he talked Brice through the maintenance and problem solving to get the lawnmower working. Brice was extremely happy and proud of his work.



 

While Brice worked on his lawnmower,

Hailey helped haul wood for burning the stumps.

 

 

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Maintenance Monday

Side Porch Stenciled Planters

Hi everyone! Sorry we having been missing. We have been quite busy with the start of the new school year, soccer practices, and getting our new furnace and central air installed. Very exciting activities going on around here! So, I thought I would pop in and share one of our projects we completed for our side porch. We purchased black planters from Home Depot and I stenciled our last initial onto them. I, only, had scotch tape at the time, so the stencil kept moving. Thankfully, we have artistic children! Lexie cleaned them up for me! I think they turned out great!

 

 

 

This is the back side of the side porch.

 

 



 

 

This is the front side of the side porch.

 

 

We have some of the stone pavers, above, in the backyard

that I thought were part of a border to a little planting area.

But, a gentleman stopped by who is the nephew to

one of the prior owners and he mentioned that they were,

actually, part of a walkway that is now covered by a deck.

So, I will be digging them up and adding them under the front side planter.

Then, the front and back sides of the side porch will have matching stone pavers!

 

Thanks for visiting Our Family Inspired Home!

 

DIY

 

Atlanta, Cars, and a Job Well Done

Welcome to Wandering Wednesday! This one is a short post of some things we found interesting. I mentioned in last week's post that we traveled a lot back and forth between our old house and new house this last year (Traveling Back and Forth).

While we traveled we would pass this on our way and it always

reminded me of the movie Cars. Do you get it?

Then, we would stop here on Old Route 66 (yep, Cars again, weird right?) 

in Atlanta, IL to eat breakfast or lunch.

This was across the street from Palms Cafe, excellent food and service.

And on our way home, just outside of Atlanta, we would pass this.

Do you see it?

It was like the happy face was telling us, "Job well done".

 

 

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Wandering Wednesday

Removing The Tree Stumps

Welcome to Maintenance Monday! We hope all of you had a wonderful weekend!Over the 4th of July holiday we cut down four dead pine trees (Our Tree Cutting Adventure). But, then, we needed to decide how to get rid of the stumps. We could have used a stump grinder or tried a product sold in stores for stump removal, but decided against those ideas.

We, instead, chose to cut into the stumps and burn them out. 

 

 

 

 

Chris, first, tried charcoal.

However, we were left with the outside of the stumps still intact.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris found that the stumps burned hotter and better all the way around,

if we kept small twigs burning along with the charcoal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the stumps were taken care of, Brice cut the surrounding roots out. 

And, finally, Chris was able to fill the empty holes with dirt
to level out that part of the yard.

 

The process took several weeks and we still have a few more stumps to burn out, but overall it was easy. We were able to keep an eye on the fire while working on other outside projects. So, no time was wasted. This is the way we intend to get rid of the rest of our tree stumps.

 

 

Thanks for visiting Our Family Inspired Home!

 

Maintenance Monday



Traveling Back and Forth

Welcome to Wandering Wednesday! We have traveled a lot back and forth this past year while working on our house, before we moved. So, of course, we tried to keep the kids entertained.They watched movies, read books, sang songs, colored, told jokes, studied, finished homework, and, even, made up games. Sometimes, Hailey did a combination of activities all at the same time! And as we traveled, Hailey began to recognize the landscape and would follow the landmarks like directions on a map.

"Over the bridge,"

 

 

 

"Across the river,"

 

 

 

"Around the cloud factory,"

 

 

 

"Pass the windmills,"

 

 

 

"By the castle,"

 

 

 

"Look, there's our home!"



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Wandering Wednesday

Cleaning Up The Left Side Yard

Welcome to Maintenance Monday! We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! This weekend, we had a garage sale, attended Chris' company picnic, started putting together our wooden playset, and put the finishing touches on our retaining wall for the rock garden. It's hard to believe that most of the major outside cleanup is almost done. We, of course, still have a lot of clean up to do on the outside. But, at least, the major obstacles are out of the way! We have worked our way around our house starting with cutting down dead trees in our backyard (Our Tree Cutting Adventure). Next, we cut and dug up bushes on the right side of our yard (Cutting Down The Bushes) and (Cleaning Up The Bushes). Then, we cleared and cleaned up the bushes in our front yard (Cleaning Up The Front Yard). And, now, we have finally made it to the left side of our yard!

This is how the left side looked the day we purchased our house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is how we left it, last fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, quite the mess!

 

 

 

But then, our helpers got to work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is how the left side looked

when we finished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a difference a little cleanup has made to the outside of our home.

Now, we are able to start with a, fairly, clean slate for landscaping.

 

 

Can't wait to show you our rock garden and side porch!

 

 

Thanks for visiting Our Family Inspired Home!

 

Maintenance Monday