Fall is a wonderful time to settle in and catch up after a long hot summer. It’s a time to get some projects done around the house now that the weather is cooler and it is also a good time for looking ahead and looking behind to what was good and memorable.
Recently I opened up my iPad which hasn’t been looked at much since I moved to my computer about three years ago and there are some photos from our Big House that I thought you might like to see. Some are candid family photos but they also show off our last house well so today I thought I’d bring them out for you…
🙂
 |
| An early summer photo after the rock was put in the pathways… Realized quickly that we should have gone with smaller stone but I wanted white. Live and learn! 😉 Roses were exceptionally beautiful this year, 2015, just before we moved. |
Hubby was home this day and the year was 2012. Our son was on top of his pole vaulting game and won most of the events he was in and was talking with his future university coach, Olympian Derek Miles and University of South Dakota grad himself, about going to South Dakota. He wanted to major in Broadcasting and Journalism as he loved being behind a movie camera. Work was going well for Mr. Ethereal and myself and for once life was going pretty smoothly. Peter would go on to win the CIF State track meet that year and graduate solidly after taking 10 classes that previous fall earning almost all A’s his senior year.
Our daughter Amy, who is two years older, was enjoying her classes in Art and Design at the local community college and was now working and driving and the three of us shared my car to get places. This was a happy time for all of us enjoying life and friends coming over for sleepovers and pool parties, and an occasional
tea luncheon party for me.
It’s nice to look back and remember this time and see this home and garden at its best again… I can look at it and think what can I do differently this next time? What worked and what didn’t? Funny as I wanted French partierres out in the garden but didn’t really know what they looked like or how to create them ~ they are a central garden bed often surrounding a fountain in the middle with four identically created corner garden beds with pathways in between. We created what worked for us and made that partierre garden as best we could.
I was determined to put in a rose garden when we first moved in even though the kids were early teens then, so we created pathways with pressure treated wood staked into the dirt for moving people and the lawn mower around {and the occasional son who loved to ride his BMX bike around creating small jumps for those years before rocks went in}. When the pool was put in a couple of years later we had the builder lift and move that Norfolk pine to its new permanent spot. Then we moved the shed to the back left hand corner of the garden behind the Norfolk pine. The whole family made a weekend of it creating a 12 x 12′ framed pad and filling it with cement, Peter and Dad doing the heavy lifting. The yard came together beautifully!
The Norfolk pine can just barely be seen in the top photo on this page.
 |
| There’s our little garden angel holding treats for the big flocks of sparrows and mourning doves who came to our birdfeeders. |
One of California’s rare rainy days ~ this summer photo shows the pool at its best when the rocks were clean and the spa was full and ready to step into… ahhh! We are talking about having a small pool or even just a spa again for this next home.
🙂
It took a year and a whole lot of liquid B1 for the pine tree to recover from when it was laid down, then rolled, breaking off many of its branches while the pool guy dug it’s new hole. The Norfolk was a beautiful tree and full of branches and life when we left. A large scrub bluejay had just decided to make it its home in that tree and the doves and sparrows loved to hide in its shady leaflets.
Kids Projects
Now moving on… Here’s Hubby out in the garage looking in a box at papers the kids had done when they were little. I had written when and who created each ~ and I was so thankful that this had been done! It made going through them and packing them all into one small box that much easier.
This house had a three car garage which was perfect for setting up a workshop! We made Scout pinewood derby cars in there with our Cub Scout troop and little wood crafts for our daughter and the girls in our Brownie and Girl Scout troop. Later, Peter worked with his Eagle scout friends from BSA Troop and Venture Crew 604 on cutting, creating and putting together parts of his Eagle Scout project when it was time to create a new pole vault rack for the new shed Murrieta Valley’s track and cross-country teams had at the high school. We had a surprisingly large number of Eagle Scouts come out of our Tahquitz Council! Way more than the national average. 🙂
 |
| Lovely little sewing corner in my 8′ x 10′ craft room. This back table was where I would scrapbook sometimes but often it was used just for storage. One of our sweet little chandeliers hangs above. |
Crafts2Make ~ Message Board from an Old Frame
Here’s a craft I ought to share and I’m pretty sure I never have. This one is easy to make using an old picture frame and it was already painted white when I bought it used from an antique mall.
* All I did was add in a pre-made magnetic white board to the bottom back, which fit almost perfectly.
* Then I added part of an old broken cork board to the middle section nailing it also to the back of the frame.
* Lastly, I added in some hardware cloth to clip cute cards and doodads to which I picked up for only 70 cents/yard from a good, old-fashioned hardware store which carries everything. This screening was stapled to the back, too, of course. These stores are hard to find anymore but when you do… Keep their address and phone number handy.
 |
| The craft room set up for sewing… Looking forward to having another craft room/office so we can have a permanent ironing board set up again, of all things! Lol! |
I had seen something similar somewhere and decided I’d like a message board of sorts to hold all of my bits of craft ideas. Frankly, I could use something like that here if we had more wall space. Still thinking I might create some kind of cork or chalk board just for fun… 😉
Watering for Free
One of the last lost photos for now is this trashcan set-up we had for catching rainwater sheeting off the back roof over our living room and our master bedroom above when we did have big rainstorms. No need for gutters ~ we just set out all the old trashcans and the galvanized metal washtub and collected all we needed for the next week or two. This was handy during the winter saving us money on watering the yard. In desert areas like much of Southern California is, it’s a good idea to collect rain water all year or dig up the ground and put in an underground water collection system of tanks which would be attached to a large gutter system along the roofline.
With our little watering system I’d go around with leftover chlorine buckets from our pool hand-watering all our boxwoods, the rose bushes and the small palms and African orchids and the other plants to the right of the pool. Recycling the rain water, repurposing those buckets which would have been tossed otherwise and reusing them this way was something my recycling heart loved to do!
 |
| Fall pumpkins waiting to come out and play again. 😀 |
Well, that’s it for today. I’ve been backing up my computer and moving off photographs again so I can hopefully get back to posting more often. That’s why I haven’t been on much lately.
Coming up next I should be back on track to finishing the second post about our visit to San Antonio, the Alamo and the Riverwalk around the San Antonio river for you later this week. I have just a few more photos from the St. Anthony Hotel to share with you, too. 😉 Such a lovely place!
Here’s a little pin to share, thanks!
Will be sharing with
Style Showcase ~ Savvy Southern Style
Waste Not Wednesday ~ Faeries and Fauna
Thursday Favorite Things ~ Katherine’s Corner
Friendship Friday ~ Create with Joy
Feathered Nest Friday ~ French Country Cottage
Sweet Inspiration ~ The Boondock’s Blog
Hearth and Soul ~ April J. Harris
Blessings and happy fall to you,
Hello Barbara, thanks for sharing a wonderful post! Especially the way you maintaining the swimming pool is really amazing.
This was a lovely pool. We enjoyed it for the last eight years we were in this home before we sold.Thank you for your thoughts,Barb Chapman 🙂