Christmas around the house

I was pumped to decorate for Christmas this year. We did it before Thanksgiving even! My our stockings were even velvety-er than I remembered and the basket of rediscovered Christmas stories (we box them up with our Christmas decor) was relieving me from repeating our standard books we read the other 11 months of the year. It's so fun to change up the throw blankets and switch out a few of the framed pictures.

I tried to take pictures of our Christmas decor but I quickly learned that 'photographer' - I am not, so this is probably my last foray into the world of interior home furnishing photography. Please laugh loudly at my oddly cropped and artsy-imposter shots.

Oooh, ahhh... out of focus tree branch in the foreground!

Unlike my own body portions, our tree is quite top heavy. Mostly because we have small children (the tree! not me! I should delete this line before I hit publish.)

Then the photographer got distracted by a small human trying (successfully) to peel his own clementine. Now that he can do it himself I guess he doesn't need a mother anymore.

Going backwards now. Here was the night we put up the tree.

DIY Patio Table from fence

The previous owners must have had a dog because there was a portion of our yard that was fenced off. It wasn't functional for us so we took it down (along with two trees that were there) and added a patio. With the extra wood Zach made me the table of my dreams. I know that sounds melodramatic but seriously I love it so much I could kiss him. He even spoke further to my love language and spent zero monies on it.

Now pay close attention to Zach's very attractive concentration faces. 

I've documented them for you in the next two pictures...

To make the table top, he leveled off the tops of the slats and then used the posts as our table legs.

(I found the chairs on overstock.com) (I move them inside whenever it rains like the helicopter mom that I am.)

Like a (tree) house.

(I hope you read that to the tune of The Commodore's "Brick House.")

As soon as we bought this house Zach had grand plans for our backyard, plans he revealed to me very slowly and usually while I had the boys with me on vacation, because he knew I would dig my heals in firmly otherwise. This guy makes things HAPPEN. I can't explain it any other way. He has a vision and he goes to work. If you would have asked 18 year old me when I agreed to marry him if I knew I would find so much value and pride in these qualities from a husband I would have balked. I tend to play the part of the griping wife through the process. And I do it so well! Complaining about how inconvenient it has made our day to day and how frustrating it is to keep the kids out of scattered tools, then when it's all said and done I'm like "Come friends! Look at how awesome this is!"

Something that Reagan and Zach have talked about for years and years is a tree house. When we had concrete poured the existing play set needed to be relocated and Zach used this opportunity to follow through on his word. After investigation (climbing in and looking at it) the enclosed area was covered in black mold so with the help of our week-old neighbor kids, Zach disassembled it.

Then I took the boys to South Carolina. Zach said he was going to do some yard work. Instead I was sent pictures (BY FRIENDS) of Zach renting a chainsaw and stump grinder and taking down 4 trees. YOLO. But that's a story for another post. Once we returned everything was set for him to work on retrofitting the play set into a tree house.

Can you spot all three of the boys above?

Big hit!