Garage Makeover

We had a garage makeover the past couple of weeks.  I had enough of the dirty walls, worn floor, and clutter everywhere!  We rented a pod, moved everything out, thoroughly cleaned, painted the walls, and had an epoxy floor put down.  We organized and purged - to the tune of 2 garbage cans, 2 recycling bins, 2 car loads to Goodwill, and a large trailer load to the dumpster at Evan's office.  I couldn't be happier with the end result!!!

Before:

Day one, emptied the garage, cleaned, and painted half of the garage:

Day two, the other half of the garage complete:

The garage floor installers arrived on Monday, and this is at the end of their first day of work - they filled all of the holes/damaged areas and removed the stain we had applied 10 years ago that was wearing off:

End of day on Tuesday - first coat of stain applied to floor:

On Wednesday, another coat of stain and the flecks went down.  On Thursday, they put down a clear coat which sealed the floor.  We were unable to be in the garage for almost a week.  While it was difficult to be out of the garage, the end result was well worth the wait! :)

After we purged our junk, we went to Lowe's for new storage cabinets to replace our old cabinet and shelving that had seen better days:

Seriously love my big cabinet!

Yes, the third stall is still very full, but has things we use regularly and need to keep:

Our pod, 20' x 8' x 8'.  So glad we had it.  Without it, I have no idea what we would have done with all of our stuff!!!!

















I know our garage isn't magazine quality, but I am thrilled for our little makeover!

Professional Pictures - Football

A friend of one of Ryan's teammates is a professional photographer and took hundreds of photos of one of Ryan's football games.  The player's parents were kind enough to share them with the team.  Here are a few that Ryan is in:

If you are interested in seeing all of the photos taken, you can view them here.  I am in awe of the clarity of the photos he took, given it was dark and raining the entire game!

Jewelry

I haven't had a lot of spare time to work on jewelry, but I did manage to squeeze in two quick orders in the last two weeks:

Instagram

Time for another Instagram dump:

Carter came home with his first all star slip the second week of school:

Carter and I back in our running routine in the mornings before school:

Ryan's football team - 3rd Grade Bengals:

Ryan: 0, Driveway: 1.  He wiped out on his bike and it took forever to heal because every time he put on his football pants, it would wear the scabs off and be an open wound again.  Poor kiddo!

We are recarpeting the main and upper levels of our house next week and trying to decide on a carpet style and color was stressful for me!!!

Ryan dunked his principal, Mr. Johnson, at school, after earning 2 dunk tickets for his walkathon earnings: 

Super proud of himself:

The boys and I went to a Wild Suite with Evan's coworkers.  The boys had a blast and managed to talk me into new Wild shirts for both of them!

Enjoying a lazy day, reading:

Wednesday night lights.  Our first mid-week game:

I was the first "guest reader" in Carter's classroom this fall and the kids surprised me with a bouquet of flowers, each flower made by a student in Carter's class.  :)

We had black skies, thunder, and finally lightening.  Ryan's game was called 10 minutes prior to the start!

So proud of my little All Star - this was his second all star slip in two days!

Proud of my co-captain, #14, Ryan Mackey! :)

It was a rainy, cold day - first at Ryan's football game and then at Kyle's soccer game:

A view from my morning run through the woods - gorgeous:

I made chicken for dinner, but Ryan wasn't interested in chicken when he could cook his dinner over the backyard bonfire!

My pond pump went out on Monday.  Thank goodness I had filled the tank last weekend and the winter home for my fish was ready.  They are 9 years old now!!!!

This made me laugh.  Ryan had to write a synonym for the word digest.  Check out what he answered! :)

The boys and I spent the day at Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America yesterday.  Carter and I spent most of our time waiting for Ryan on his ultimate thrill rides - the roller coasters!!!!  Love my time with my boys!!!! :)

School and Football Pictures

It's been ages since I've posted.  Sorry for the silence.  Life has been even crazier than normal around here!

Here are the boys' school pictures, 
Ryan, Grade 3: 

Carter, Grade 1:

and Ryan's football picture, Bengals #14: