Where has the summer gone & Renovations Continue

Hard to believe it's September already; where has the summer gone? Well actually I know where it's gone to!... from an RV trip to Ontario to visit family & friends, a couple of family & friend visits to our new home here, the installation of new windows on our main floor and a few other small renovations here and there as well as outdoor yard work & regular maintenance. Well that's where it's gone. Thought I'd share a few pics of some of the happenings around here.

So all the Main Floor Windows are brand spanking new! Hubby & Our Two Darling Sons helped install them all except for two smaller ones in the back which I helped Hubby with. Saved a ton of labour costs by DIYing it! Just cost us a few pizzas and beer! Front door & Shutters were painted a warm grey, better known as Welded Iron from The Behr Collection. No more Pepto Bismol blue here except for some remnants of it on the front step. Yeah still need to work on that one; just need to think about it some more!

Penny Lane loves hanging out & ripping around in her new Penny space. So much easier for us to just open the door & allow her run freely outside. 

We didn't want to fence off the whole yard due to the expense of it and we really didn't  need a big fence either cause Penny's one small pup, so we just fenced off a smaller portion of the yard using chicken wire and discounted pieces of pressure treated lumber from the remnant bins at our nearby Lumber Yard. The existing 8 foot or so frost fence on the left side of the yard, saved us from having to fence that side. Just had to block off a few possible Penny escape routes along the bottom! 

Meet some of my new neighbours! Just happened to take a break from my computer and peeked out of my office window to spot this Mama Pheasant & her 9 young ones across the street on my neighbour's lawn.

We had a couple of rain barrels back in Hamilton Ontario and wanted to carry on conserving water here as well. Always trying to do our part for the environment & re-using water saves money too. Got this one delivered right to my door for free. Well not exactly for free. Been doing surveys for a company for several years now and finally decided to redeem some of the points I had earned for this new addition. Kind of late in the season to put plants in the planters that are meant to sit atop of the barrel, but come next spring they will definitely be put to good use.

Sometimes you just gotta stay home & do stuff!

Well you can't always go places & you can't always go shopping cause that costs money. And unfortunately money isn't something that grows on trees, well at least not around here. So sometimes you just gotta stay home & amuse yourself. Been amusing ourselves with this little project.
Took our old medicine cabinet from the downstairs bathroom & re-purposed it. Hubby removed the mirror glass, painted it & the knobs, and added some chicken wire. It was a fairly inexpensive project since we had the chicken wire from a fence project currently being built for Penny L & the paint was left behind by the previous homeowner. I know it's the Pepto-Bismol blue that was used to paint my front door & outdoor trims which I so want to get rid of. But somehow in it' s freshly-painted state & on this particular project, it doesn't look too shabby at all. Doesn't mean we're gonna re-paint our front door & trims this colour though! We've been experimenting with colours on photo shop and so far we're leaning towards a grey colour for those projects.
Last month we had a weekend where you put out usable stuff that you no longer want & where others can pick up perfectly good stuff & prevent it from going in the landfill. We put out a bunch of stuff & thankfully most of it found new homes.Not a fan of seeing good stuff go into the garbage. Hubby wanted to put this medicine cabinet out cause we didn't have a use for it at the time. So glad I convinced him to hang onto it for the time being!
Oh and I painted the memories sign with chalk paint and searched my many boxes of  collectibles to find some decor stuff to add. If you check out the pics below, you will see that the old metal irons have a dual purpose. Sometimes hubby can be such an Einstein and I don't mean that sarcastically!

If you forgot what the medicine cabinet looked like before, here is a before pic when it was still hanging in the downstairs bathroom.

Hubby was looking to find something to flatten homemade burgers on the grill and remembered we had these old- fashioned irons. They work amazingly well!

We transported this plant, a Passion Flower from Ontario in the midst of winter and it survived. Here is it's first bloom in it's new home. However it is a plant that must winter indoors.The bloom almost looks unreal don't ya think?