What Did You Do This Summer?

The summer is now officially over and Autumn has arrived.  Although with the heatwave this week it doesn't really feel like it.  We've been pretty busy this summer and have done a lot of work on the house.  

We finally got a new front door.  Our old door gave us a lot of problems.  The lock had been changed so many times it didn't fit very well, so you had to push the door in to lock and unlock it.  If it was unlocked it wouldn't stay shut and would blow open with the slightest wind and no one could figure out how to unlock it to get out.  The lock would occasionally fall off and we had to use pliers to unlock and lock the door until Jamie could super glue it back on.  I also broke two keys trying to unlock the door.  It was pretty bad.   

But now we have a beautiful front door, that stays closed, locks easily, and to our surprise keeps the house so much cooler.  We spent a few weekends painting it but it looks amazing!

We also needed to replace the wood on the back/side gate.  We would have loved to have completely replaced the gate but  it's a big gate and it would have cost a lot of money.  So we did the next best thing, replaced the wood and spray painted the metal.  It looks a hundred times better and I'm sure our neighbors are happy they don't have to look at the old, weather beaten wood.

The garden has looked great all summer.  The avocado is looking really healthy and has a lot of new leaves and branches on it.  We also got a raspberry bush (to the left of it) that we have been enjoying all summer.

The citrus plants have been growing like crazy and are now loaded with fruit.  They should be ready to pick around Christmas time.  It's been another amazing summer and we are so happy with all that we got done.  There is always something to do on the house but I think we have earned a few lazy weekends :)

The Griffin House

Today marks the two year anniversary of our house. I can remember going over to the house with a bottle of champagne and some finger foods and eating them on the floor of the living room. Our celebration party.

The house needed a lot of work but nothing a little man power couldn't handle. In fact, we are still working on it (We are giving the side gate a needed face-lift and hopefully getting a much needed front door in the next few weeks and I'm sure there will be more improvements to come).

Seeing the house two years later still amazes me. The fact that its ours and how much we have done to it is still shocking. At first it seemed like so much space to fill and now we are starting to fill the walls rather than empty rooms. It's more than anything we could have dreamed for.

So happy two year anniversary to our house.

House Update

Well, it's been two weeks since my last post and you would think I would have a lot to report. But we have mainly continued to work on the house. We started getting things framed and hanging pictures. We were given a full size bed complete with bedding and a headboard (it's amazing and we are so thankful for it) and we bought a queen size bed for the other spare bedroom. The house is slowly starting to fill up. I will take some more pictures this week to post so you can see the progress. Jamie has done a lot in the backyard/garden and only has 2 more stumps to remove from the bushes that were back there (there were about 16 to begin with - *Jamie would like this corrected as I've been told there were more like 20 to begin with* ).

I think we are anxious for the summer and want to get the house ready to have bbq's and guests. We've done so much in the last 6 months (yes we have had the house 6 months now!) but have so many things we still want to get to. Next weekend we will pick up another piece we had custom framed that Jamie bought in China, which will go in the dining room. So the work continues.