A day at home

We didn't leave our house yesterday. And it was great.

We're hoping to have Biscuit in his big-boy room by the end of the summer, but it's one of those things that will have to happen in shifts.

And by that, I mean that we have a cubbyhole bookcase to put together for the room, but it has to be bolted to the wall. So we can't put it in until the walls are painted. And we can't paint the walls until a couple of pieces of furniture are moved out. And we can't move the furniture out until we can sell one piece and move the other into the attic. And we can't move the one piece into the attic until we clean out the attic.

So that's what I started yesterday.

I knew the attic job would be overwhelming, so I planned to do it on this long weekend. Breaking it into three parts made it seem a little more doable.

I got a little more than the first third of it done yesterday. I cleaned up and cleaned out.

We had our roof re-shingled a couple of months ago, and I had no idea the amount of debris that would rain down on everything up there. So everything up there had a coating of dust and dirt and little bits of old shingles. It's a messy job. Luckily, we've been pretty good about not being pack rats. I could imagine it be SO much worse.

By the time I got done, Biscuit was getting up from his nap. So we had some playtime.

We've been looking for some kind of storage piece for our remodeled bathroom, so we went to a furniture consignment store. We found a couple of possibilities, but after doing some measuring, nothing worked out quite right. The store has the furniture set up in room vignettes, which is nice because you can see the scale of the pieces and how they work with other things.

They had a kids room set up with bunk beds and a dresser and they had some toys scattered around as well. Among the toys, I spotted a builder set of magnets. I will readily admit that I LOVE these things. I got Biscuit to play with some last fall at a local toy store to see if he might want some for Christmas. And of course, I was thinking how much fun I'd have, too. But he wasn't the least bit interested in them.

These builder sets are pretty expensive, so I wasn't going to take a chance that if I bought one, he would gain some interest. But guess what I found at the consignment store? The box of magnets I priced online at $69.99 was displayed on a table with the price tag of $12.

I grabbed the box and Jeff asked, "Are those for you or the boy?"

"Yes!" I said and smiled at him.

And lucky for me, Biscuit has really taken a liking to them.

Yesterday, I built a castle and a guard tower. And he took pieces and made a princess (whom he perched on the top of the castle because the wicked witch had put her there), a knight with a feather on his hat (because SOMEone has to get the princess down) and of course the wicked witch (who has a mean voice with a nasty cackle).

With my building skills and Biscuit's imagination, we had quite the drama going on.

We played for a long time until we were distracted by wildlife in the backyard. The bunny who ruined my garden last year came hopping across the yard. Imagine his surprise when he got to my garden patch and there was nothing but weeds. That'll show him!

Then we saw a robin digging for worms. It got one, too.

Here are some pictures from our day:

A cookie sheet works great as a
foundation for magnet structures.

The castle is on the left with flags on the top. The guard tower is
on the right. The short pieces in the front are guards. The blue
piece in the front is a knight. The red piece on his head is
a feather on his hat. I can't remember which one is the
witch and which one is the princess.

When he's wearing these things, he's super hero Wolverine.

Why yes, Biscuit, your feet DO stink!

Too bad I have such a grumpy kid!