Weekend recap

We just finished a typical weekend of projects and playtime. Being relatively new Wild Oak homeowners, we are still plugging through the string of initial projects that came with the house and setting things up to our liking. Since we did a slightly better job photo-documenting than usual I thought I’d share a little recap here.

We started off with some shop time on Saturday morning, auto shop that is. The chief tech was relieved that handy helper #2 didn’t lose any lug nuts.

After a while the helpers lost interest and took to climbing on our stump challenge course. I’m not sure exactly how we’ll configure them for the long-term, but I think there’s promise for a playcenter in these tree sections. They came from a cottonwood that died tragically in the septic work just before we bought the house, but the silver lining is all the tree materials that it left us with. {And a big thank you goes to Grandpa Nielsen for cutting it down with Erik a few weeks ago!}

After the balance warm-up was complete, it was time for a little stump-dancing!

The other future for the poor cottonwood is firewood. Last weekend we bought a new-to-us wood stove from a fabulous vintage boutique and this weekend Erik went to work installing the pipe in our chimney. Of course I couldn’t help calling him “Jim” and humming “chim-chim-en-ey” all afternoon.

Our primary time and money investments in Wild Oak so far have been on the roof. I can’t wait until we move that focus to more exciting eye-level projects! But here’s a rare pic that shows a glimpse of what we’ve done… solar panels, reflective sealant, radon mitigation system, rooftop ducting, and now a stove pipe. To think this roof was empty and black when we first saw it!

After shocking himself by looking in the mirror after the chimney project was finished, Erik asked for one more pic, the final ‘after’ just before showering.

The weekend also held a visit to the playground, pumpkin cookie baking, church, and much, much hand-wringing over ordering a couch for our back room. I decided on this one while it was 40% off, we’ll see what we think when it arrives in a month or so! Then we capped the weekend off by testing out the new wood stove. The kids carted in a pile of branches and eagerly awaited our stove’s first flames. Magical indeed…

Until we realized that smoke was escaping into the house, cutting the fireside show a little short. Of course it’s nothing Erik can’t fix (we hope!). Now we’re excited for a little Thanksgiving get-together this week, my darling harvest dolls included. I think I hear Eleanor awaking, so it’s off to buy a turkey for us. Gobble, gobble!

{More weekend pics here.}