Home Improvement

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M and I are not really the "Home Improvement" type. Part of it is time, part of it is money, and part of it is that we're renters. However, this week we decided to tackle two projects:

1) I needed to re-cover our dining room chairs. Here is a before and after picture. Some of the chairs had gotten really bad, since we have used them for Micah's booster seat that he eats in. I bought this fabric on clearance at JoAnn's for only $5, and then borrowed my friend's staple gun. This was one of those projects that looked a LOT easier than it was. Let's just say it took me 3 days and I was sweating profusely after each chair was finished! :) Because we can't remove the tops of the chairs, I had to just staple the fabric to the sides. From the top it looks good, but if you look closely at the sides it looks terrible. Oh well... It was cheap and saved us about $300 from buying new chairs (which we will need to do soon anyway).





For our second project:
2) We have a HUGE backyard - I believe it is almost an acre. Our landlord has always said he was going to landscape it, but 6 years later, nothing has happened. Since we are renters we hate having to spend hundreds of dollars of our own to fix it up, either. But thankfully M's dad works at a home improvement store and got us discounted bags of fertilizer and seed. M spent all day Saturday seeding 1/2 the yard. We need to go back for more seed now. We're hoping it works and we'll have a green lawn soon.

Lastly, I have raved about Freecycle before (see my other blog), but we hit the JACKPOT with this find!!! We've been looking at pools for awhile now but didn't want to spend the money. I had my eye on the "Easy Set" pool which at Wal-Mart is $275. That model was 4 feet deep and about 10 feet wide. A bit big, but I couldn't find any smaller ones in stock anymore since summer's almost over. Just this week I had been looking at them and we decided not to do it - it was just too much money. Then, lo and behold, I got onto Freecycle and someone posted that EXACT pool FOR FREE! I couldn't believe it. I was sure it had probably been taken, but the woman emailed me back right away and said I was first in line. We spent about 3 hours this morning setting it up and filling it. We haven't used it yet since the boys have been sick, but hopefully by the end of the week we'll get in - it looks so refreshing! The funny thing was that the woman who gave it to us emailed me yesterday, thanking me for taking it from her!!! What a blessing...Thank you Lord!!