Dogs and Jen: Home Edition

I had almost given up hope of harvesting strawberries, but check out what I picked today! Practically a bumper crop! Either my evil eye scared off the thieves, or they found something else to snack on. Yum!

The door to my basement is officially….unholy.

Dad was right - that bondo really worked.

The pendant lights leave the ceiling dark in my kitchen. I bought some like this to put on top of the cabinets above my microwave and fridge.

They lay flat, so you can’t see them unless you’re outside, down the steps, looking up into the kitchen. They help a lot. As a temporary measure, I spliced them into an old extension cord so I can plug them in. Now that I like it, I will eventually wire them to turn on with the switch.

It’s hard to take a picture that accurately shows this without making it look very dark or exaggerating the shadows, but this gives an idea. (Also, pardon my shoes and groceries - I’d reached my daily cleaning limit when I took the pictures)

Before

After

Do you ever have those minorly disappointing days? Like, hypothetically speaking, say you get your hair cut and buy a new dress and go to a Memorial Day party, but the 2 or 3 people you hoped would notice either didn’t notice or weren’t even there? My therapy for these minor disappointments has always been to clean and organize, because that makes me feel productive, and feeling productive makes me feel good.

So first thing this morning, I set out to reclaim my dining room from the kitchen renovation - a major project. Among of the dust and debris was a mummified frog. Seriously*. Another good find: I  realized that the contractor didn’t use any of the last box of flooring (I measured, just to be sure), so that gets to be returned tomorrow and get me some cash! I also photographed the old ceiling light for ebay and boxed it up. It’s nice to have this room back.

  Before

After

It sure is empty in there. Eventually, I may have to get some furniture…

*But don’t worry - he didn’t die in there. I acquired him in this mummifed state. He is part of the Flat Things Collection, which is  a story only a few of my loyal readers would appreciate.

The strawberry thieves have taken 3 more berries. It must be a squirrel who can’t remember that he doesn’t like strawberries, because I find them casually discarded in the grass.

But they didn’t totally defeat me. This one was higher up on the plant, and yesterday I picked it and ate it!

It was quite tasty, too. I’m not basking in this victory for long, though. This week I’m getting some nets to put over the berries so I can harvest the rest for myself.

This is one of the two sweet basil plants I planted on Wednesday. it was bug free then, but now look at it! It’s full of holes! The mystery bug doing this also attacked my beans and only one sprout is vaguely surviving. What can I do to stop this? I have not maintained my own garden before, so I don’t know what my options are. Help!!

Today, I tried to be both domestic goddess and do-it-yourselfer. I spent some quality time with Chompy, cleaned my desperate bathroom, and it was a beautiful day so I bondoed the door since I could flee outside to get away from the smell.

I am pretty impressed with the stuff. I’ll need to do a second layer, but Dad was right - it works really well and will make for a nice smooth finish.

The girls also appreciated the extra outisde time.

K’s right eye is puffy for some reason. We treated that, too. And finally, to really hit goddess level, I tried to make some cookies. I usually do quite well, but these just did not turn out.

Michelle pointed out that I’ve had two days in the last week where I didn’t post. To be honest, the end of the semester has really been gobbling up all my time and I haven’t been doing too much on the house. I’m lucky to be cleaning on occasion.

But, I am in the middle of the door project. As I mentioned before, there were plates on the door. It turns out they were covering some useless holes.

I’ve removed the plates. This is a project where dad is helping remotely. He sent me some holes (well, plugs for the holes, but whatever).

I tried saw dust and wood glue as a filler, but that didn’t work well. Dad sent me bondo, but I was hoping to avoid it since I can’t stand the smell (Dad is a car guy and he said I’ll learn to like it. Dad is also crazy). However, I’m going to use it once I have a full afternoon where I can keep the windows open and run outside while it dries. Perhaps this weekend…

I’d really prefer another door all together, but I want to keep the interior ones original. I hope once this is filled, sanded, and painted that it will look as good as the others.

My garden is growing. There are lots of green strawberries on my plants, but this weekend one started to ripen. Today, I went out to check on my ripe berry to find that something had enjoyed half of it before I got there.

Hopefully my peas will fare better. They’ve been growing like crazy, but today I found the first flower that promises to become a pod.

And finally, a gratuitous dog picture.

Yesterday was a day of twists and turns in the house’s ant issue. I was outside in the morning thinking “Wow, there haven’t been any ants lately. I guess that Terro shaker really worked. I should post about that.” But then when I came in, I found at least a dozen ants all running around the window sill in my living room. This is near where I originally saw them over the winter. So I got out my Terro liquid and set off to destroy them:

As I was taking this picture, thinking the ants would never go away, K came over, very curious, and sniffed at them. The terror of her giant nose set them running.

I noticed they all eventually ran into these teeny tiny spaces in the window frame that looked just like gaps in the paint along the routing. You can kind of see them to the left in the first picture. I had no idea there was any room in there, but easily 10 ants followed one after another into that space.

So I caulked it and all the other spaces around that window, and viola! No ants! Not a single one since then. Perhaps K’s nose has finally solved the problem of the living room ants.