Slow-cooked spaghetti, salad, clown cupcakes and Hungry, Hungry Hippo

Happy 3rd Birthday, Lauren!!!

  

and the water kept rising…

Sorry I haven’t blogged in almost a week. We were stranded in our neighborhood for two days as the entrance to our subdivision was submerged under water. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. We were able to finally leave the neighborhood today, for the first time since Sunday. The damage just breaks my heart. Many homes in the subdivision sustained substantial flooding.  

Those of us trapped in the back of the neighborhood ventured down to the bridge to see how high the water was… it continued to rise throughout the day and eventually covered the bridge on Monday night.

 

The water covered the fence posts. (This is the road that leads into the back of the subdivision, over the bridge)

 

Quickly rising…

Many homes whose properties back up to the river had flooding in their basements and other areas as well.

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All four tennis courts, the playground, parking lot and pool were under water for two days, all areas have suffered tremendous damage.

Seeing the tennis courts, pool and playground areas this morning was utterly devastating. Being an avid tennis player, seeing our formerly beautiful courts in such a state of destruction is heartbreaking.

       

Tennis Pavilion for courts 1 & 2 is buckled and broken.

Looking through the fence onto courts 1 and 2

 

Courts 1 and 2

 

The wooden boundaries for the playground were uprooted.

  

The pool furniture has been moved to the parking lot for cleaning.

The pool and clubhouse sustained extensive damage.

 

There is a bench in the tree about thirty feet off the ground…

 

Hopefully, with the help of many hardworking volunteers, we’ll be able to restore the common areas to their former glory.

Hooked on Teacups

Hooked on Fridays

I adore antique teacups. I love to explore antique shops looking for the perfect antique teacup. When we were in Maine this summer, I purchased twelve teacups to add to my collection and believe it or not, I did practice some restraint. Here are a few photos of my collection so far…

     

The pink teacups are my favorite, but I also love the really colorful ones too. They are especially hard to find.

DIY Dining Room Decor

A few DIY updates to our dining room gave it a fresh new look. We have a very casual dining room table. We wanted something that would seat a lot of people comfortably and could be used for other activities as well as accommodate our young children. We bought the table at IKEA and it seats twelve when extended. We love it. The chairs had simple white cloth-covered seats.

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I decided to pick out some fun fabric, recover the seats and replace the “Gone With the Wind” curtains with something light and airy. I sewed a coordinating band of fabric along the bottom of the curtains to match the seat covers. I can’t believe the difference. The room gets much more light now. Next on the chopping block… the hideous light fixture above the table and the paint color. The room will be painted in Petal by Restoration Hardware. I can’t wait until it is all finished.

Yikes! I HATED these hideous curtains! Good riddance!

 

Up on the rooftop…

No, not reindeer, not Santa Claus, but roofers! We had extensive hail damage on our roof and were fortunate enough to have it replaced. The roofers arrived at 7:00am and promptly began the demolition. It sounded like a herd of elephants were up there. Poor Fergus didn’t know what to think. Craig reminded me of the skylight in our bathroom… thankfully.

 

Yikes! Glad it’s them up there and not me, I would probably fall off the roof.

 

What a mess!

These guys worked SOOOOOOOOO hard. They only stopped long enough to eat, which wasn’t very long at all. I can’t imagine how exhausted they must have been at the end of the day.

 

They started and finished it ALL in one day. Luckily the weather cooperated and the rain stayed away. We are really pleased with the finished product. We upgraded to architectural shingles and it definitely makes a huge difference. We chose a very light colored shingle, “Driftwood”, and we hope it helps to cut down on the hot summer heat.

 

Tada! It’s a gloomy day here today, overcast and blah. Sorry for the dull photo…

Now we want to replace the shutters with black, raised panels… essentially I would love to paint the exterior taupe and then redo all the trim work in white. If only money grew on trees…