Hey dare!
Okay so here is a dump update of all things house? Ready for it? Like to hear it? Cause here it goes….
We finally made a compost bin – hip hip hooray!!!! We have been wanting to make one from day one of stepping on the scene in this place (fast forward a whole year!) and we finally got around to doing it last weekend. It was tre’ simple to make. Observe.
Step 1: buy any sized that you deem manageable to your life Rubbermaid bin from your local store (Target, Walmart, HD or Lowes – whoever)
Step 2: bring it home and take a drill to it. Drill 8-10 holes in the lid and through the bottom (this allows for water to drain out after a rainstorm and helps with the aeration.)
Step 3: start layering….we did 1st layer shredded newspaper, junk mail and old homework, 2nd layer – attacked that pile of leaves in the corner of our lot that’s been sitting behind a tree taunting me, 3rd layer – found that hole the dog dug in the backyard and pulled a nice sized chunk out of that and made a nice enough mound that when spread out in the bin with the shovel it reached the 1/2 way mark.
Step 4: ran indoors and grabbed the first thing I could find to throw in there to start breaking down. Watermelon rind for the win! (not reinforcing any kind of stereotype here whatsoever…lol)
Step 5: turn the hose on it and do a semi light sprinkling – don’t douse it and don’t make a piddly attempt at it either, somewhere in between. I read on a composting website to make sure it’s like a wrung out sponge every time. Find that sweet spot.
Step 6: I used our shovel to mix everything all up and then just stood there and stared at it for like a minute like it was suddenly going to turn to me and be like “Great job and Voila! I’m done!” but naaaah….it should take me about 2 weeks before it’s good to start using.
I don’t know….it’s looking pretty good to me already.
What else, what else?….hmm oh! Right. We finally got the pool up and running again. Here’s the story on that. One day a long time ago (3 months ago) the dog was allowed to go outside and run around in the sides and backyard because it’s fenced all the way around. Then one day I was working at home and realized something was off…the hum of the pool pump. So I went to check on it and realized the breaker tripped and the motor had shut off. “That’s weird.” 3 months younger Lynn said to herself. It did that for about 3 days and then it just never turned on again.
So we called in our pool guy Ken. He said it needed a new motor. And who dug the massive hole right next to the motor? Dean the Dog did! Crazy dog… and then on top of that it rained and then we think that the massive amount of dirt plus the water mixed into a perfect storm of rust and then rendered it completely useless to us. And to fix it was nearly $300 greenbacks which we didn’t just have sitting in our mattress at the time. *Kidding…we don’t use the mattress, we use the freezer. :-p
Fast forward to a month ago and I was perusing craigslist – it’s what I do when I’m bored, that and Candy Crush I can’t get enough of, “Hook it to my veins!” – and saw a post of someone looking for website work in exchange for bartered pool services. Bingo and heeeelloooo! We met each other, assessed the likelyhood of each other being crazy….”Are you an axe murderer? No.” “Are YOU an axe murderer? No.” “Okay we’re good to go then!” <—those words were truly spoken. Haha! And thankfully it turned out well. It was alot of hard work on both our ends but in the end we both got a really great product. (Anyone in the Tampa Bay Area seriously look up Dave the Pool Tech with mysimplepool.com and Justin and Alex will help you out and they’re really reasonable with their pricing.)
So the pool went from looking like this for about 3 months…(don’t worry, we rarely went out back during that time so no wildlife got us.)
Sheesh…see how low the water line got too? No worries because by the end of the day after replacing the motor this is how it was looking…
And 3 days later it was even better…
Don’t mind the leaf in the pic. Dave the Pool Tech said to give it about 1 week to a week and a half before getting into it, which my health nut brain translated into 2 weeks at the least. You should have seen how much chlorine we had to drop. I should have washed my whites while I was at it…hmm…missed opportunity, oh well.
The final step is that we have to vacuum it out and then jump right in. It is perfect timing too because the kids get out of school in almost 2 weeks – gulp – and I think our new tradition will be I’ll let them wear their bathing suits to school and so they can change in the car on the way home and then just run right from the van to the pool and jump right in washing the year of hard work away and making room for endless days of….doing a whole lot of not much of anything.
I’m blessed because as a Realtor and with my husband holding a steady full-time gig, I can scale back my work schedule during the summer to maybe one day a week in the office and spend the majority of my time at home with the kids keeping them alive and occupied. I’m starting to make their “MOM I’M BORED” go-to list. Thanks to the invention of Pinterest and the Staring Contest I’m sure there will be no lack of things to do this summer.
Do you guys have any ideas for the summer and how to keep it light and fun for everyone? Let me know in the comments section below. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.
Our Useful Hands 