Indoor/outdoor work

For whatever reason, I've been very sensitive to light when I'm sleeping in the bedroom.  The sun has been rising earlier and even with my little pillow over my eyes, I can't seem to sleep through my usual morning hours.  Perhaps I'm stressed because of the golf qualifier?? I believe the sleeping problem did start around the time I signed up.  Ha!

Anyhow, I thought that maybe it was time to finally put up the black-out curtains. We'd had them in a box since Abu Dhabi - so that's over 5 (maybe even 6) years ago! 

For some reason, I thought I had taken off these hooks from the drapes. I'm so glad I didn't because these will be handy when I hang up the drapes:

Thankfully I was able to find some reasonably priced rail/tracks to hang the drapes on the ceiling (rather than off the wall). However, most of the time the paper instructions are sufficient but wow, this is the first time I actually had to watch the instructional video:

Here goes!!!

I had to get some new anchors - hopefully these rails/tracks stay on the ceiling as the new blackout drapes are super heavy!  I also decided to swap out the yellow drapes (that were original to the house) with our sheer drapes that we had also purchased from Abu Dhabi:

We spent a lot of money on drapes in Abu Dhabi! Ha ha!

Now, this should block out all that sunshine in the morning :-D

Unfortunately, I haven't really been sleeping through any better.  There is one more window but I don't think it's really the culprit. Maybe I just need to practice my golf more so I'm not so stressed. Ha ha!

I decided to also change out a few door knobs to these fancy glass ones. I love these and they were on sale. So even better!

I actually wanted to paint the door too, but Bobby vetoed that decision. 

Here are the door handles that came with the house.  The finish is a bit different and we have other darker ones too.  Hopefully it won't be an issue when it comes time to sell the house.  Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't even talk about that since the unpacking hasn't even finished yet. Ha!

As for the outdoor work, the garden needs so much work!  We seem to be losing some mulch around this area due to all that water coming down the downspouts:

4 bags of river pebbles later... not enough!

Here's another 4 bags of river pebbles...! 

Well, I can't seem to figure out what's weed and what's not.  Bobby thinks everything in this section is a weed. Hmm, I say let a few flowers pop up and then we can decide :-P

Looks like it's time to try out some fire-wood splitting:

Looks like Daddy is leading the pack here.  Success!

Graham is going to try it next:

Pretty good form, but I think the axe is rather heavy for the boys:

Even for Bobby, sometimes it's a hit or miss:

This one was a miss and I obviously had a good chuckle.  Ha ha!

Well, you can definitely tell (or hear!) when they are successful at splitting that wood:

Too funny!  I didn't give it a shot. Maybe after my qualifier.  My body is too fragile right now. LOL!!

It's going to rain these next 2-3 days.  Perhaps I should just use the time to clear up the weeds in the garden. There are soooo many! It might be too overgrown in a month/after the qualifier.  We'll see. My body is already starting to feel sore after the workout today. Being in my 40s is so different from being in my 30s. LOL!!