I never dreamed I'd be a DIYer

Ok, so in reality I'm not. But, I'm married to one. I think even if we could afford to have other people do the work we need done around the house, Evan would never go for it. At any given time, though, he has more DIY projects in the queue than he can manage. Currently in progress or in the pipeline: Finish painting the exterior of the house, deal with the backyard, rebuild the firebox, mantle and surround so we can have a functioning fireplace for next winter, patch the spot in the floor in our bedroom that got ripped up from restructuring the closet, and choose colors and paint the hallway and den. Phew! I get tired thinking about it, and I'm not the one doing the work.

When I think back to what the house was when we closed on it, it really does make me proud to see how far we've come. We've got a long way to to making it our dream home, and sometimes I forget to remind myself about how much has already been done toward that end. it was too depressing to even take any 'before' pictures of the inside, but here's one of the exterior from just before we closed on it: lovely shade of green, eh?

My mother has good words of wisdom, though about all of it. She reminds me that we have plenty of time to get our house in the shape that we want it, but only a finite amount of time to enjoy our children while they are young. I do take that to heart, and make a point of pulling Evan away from his many projects as often as I can for 'family time.' The projects can (usually wait) - the children (usually) can't. :)