Attic Insulation

Our house is old, which means our insulation is old and THIN. Not quite the R-39 attic insulation depth recommended for our region. With Home Depot's free insulation blower with 20 bag green insulation purchase, we decided it was the perfect time to purchase some more before winter hits. We needed 40 bags, or $215 worth of Green Fiber insulation (the recycled, none glass kind). It took all of 3 trips to the hardware store (one for the insulation and a second/third trip to pick up/drop off the machine) and about 6 hours worth of time to get the job done. You need one person to be outside feeding the blocks of insulation into the machine...

And a second person up in the attic, with a mask and eye protection, spraying the insulation to the desired depth...

To top it off, we qualify for a small energy tax credit since we didn't quite max out the tax credit from our windows!

Hopefully we will see a difference in our electricity bills this winter.

Camp Ground Cemetary

Not far from our house is a small civil war cemetery. It's so close we can walk to it. It is one of my favorite places to walk Cove too, especially in the fall when the leaves are changing...

It is so old most of the headstones are too weathered to read and falling over...

There is also a huge fallen tree that no one has cared to get rid of...

For some reason that cemetery feels really peaceful.

On the way home we made Cove take a picture by a fire hydrant that matched her scarf...

I guess not all dogs like fire hydrants, because she sure doesn't look happy ; )

Little Porch Action

As I blogged here, our porch wasn't the prettiest...

So we put in a little elbow grease and stripped all the old layers of paint off...

Then we used a little Quikrete semi-transparent concrete stain...

To get a much smoother, rocky gray look (New England Slate)...

(Little tip if you are thinking about using concrete stain...purchase a small paint sprayer that attaches to an air compressor...our first coat we rolled, and you could see every roller stroke when it dried.)

Our front part of our porch was looking a little rough too. We had actually waterproofed the porch when we first moved in, but two years later it was looking like this...

So I got down on my knees and rolled on a fresh coat of ceder colored waterproofer...

As you can see, it was a BIG difference!

Ahhhh....finally, a porch ready for fall!

Last Lake Weekends

A few memories from our last weekends with the family at the lake before fall...

Gma doing the Gma does best- fishing...

Brandon taking our niece Emarea on a Seadoo ride...

Brandon tipping Emarea into the water (don't worry she still LOVES her some Seadoo)...

Jacque giving Cove some attention...

Cove taking advantage of the attention and deciding she can be lap dog...

My mother in law is WAY TOO nice, exactly why I love her!

Counting down the days until next summer...

Quick Fix

Ever pile stuff on top of your fridge? Ours happens to be right inside the doorway, so Cove's leash and our bread usually ends up on top of it...

I decided it was time to find something to put Cove's leash in. I ended up picking up two baskets, about the same color as our cabinets, from our local Wally World...

They aren't the greatest, but they conceal our top-of-the-refrigerator piles : )

Weekend Plans

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather this weekend and stain our porch with that fancy concrete stain stuff. It really needs a face lift...

Our front door was also in desperate need of a new, darker paint color. In case you couldn't tell, our dog is a  door jumper on-er....

I took advantage of my 1-9pm shift last week, and prepped...

and painted...

the front door. The paint color is Cooper Adobe Brown from the Valspar collection at Lowe's. I've now decided that I don't like the door window trim white, so I plan on painting it too when I put the second coat on today.

Stay tuned for the front porch stain reveal after the weekend!

Random Happenings Part 2

Brandon and I decided we should find a dog park to take Cove to a couple weeks ago. She has actually only played with our families dogs, and never really been to a dog park. We were lucky, and actually found one only 5-10 minutes drive away from our house. It took her a good 30 minutes or so to really warm up, but we think she enjoyed it!

When we were looking for the dog park, we came across a wild life reserve with a trail running through it. We decided to go back over the weekend and take a little hike around the trail. It was such a nice trail I think we may go back on our bikes sometime for fun too!

Finally, my dad bought us tickets to a Royals game last week. The new stadium remodel is AWESOME to say the least. Even though they lost, we still had a blast! Thanks Dad...

I still can't believe summer is almost over!