Happy Birthday to Amy!!!

Gus the Museum Curator

Parked...

Found this current favorite, neatly parked on the couch for the day while its driver attends kindergarten.

Entrepreneurs

Day off of school?  Bored, nothing to do?

Why not start up a Hot Cocoa stand?

That's what my entrepreneurial son decided to do today.  

We had to close up shop after only 30 minutes because we ran out of cups. . . . I've got to do a better analysis of supply and demand in future planning meetings, apparently!

The proceeds were split between my kids and the neighbors . . . and Gus still walked away with $7.25!  Not bad for one carafe of hot chocolate and some scrounged up supplies!

Farmhouse Tour

Welcome to our Farmhouse renovation!

I figured it was about time to give everyone an update on how things are going.  

The painters are finished priming and will start on the final color soon. It will look just about like it already does, since we're going with a creamy white.  Someday down the road we'd like to add working shutters.

So, let's get started.  Come on in!

Here's the floor plan:

 

On the left in the 2D drawing is the front door which enters into the central hallway. You can look straight back to the back door. 

When you turn left, you enter what will be the living room.

As you walk through the living room, you can get back to the hall through a second doorway toward the back of the hall.  Looking straight across, you see into the kitchen/dining room. 

If you look back to your right, you can see the front door,

and to the left is the back door.

At the back of the house is the laundry room and a small half bath.

This is looking at the kitchen from the dining room.  There will be a small peninsula separating the two rooms.

This is the dining room, looking from the kitchen towards the front of the house.

Now, up the stairs!

Floor plan for the second floor:

This is the kids' bath.  We bought a tiny little 4 foot clawfoot tub off Craigslist to fit in here!

 And this is the sweet sink base we got at Second Chance in Baltimore.

 This the master bath.  The part with the gray plastic on the floor will be our shower.

We also got this double sink table at Second Chance, along with the two matching medicine cabinets ($5 a piece!)

All the bedrooms look like this:

 And now we head back downstairs.

This is my brother and sister-in-law's deluxe camper, which we mainly use as a place for the kids to play and stay warm while we're working.  It's been a life saver!

Now, across the street is a huge campus, formerly the Crownsville Mental Hospital, which is owned by the county or state (I'm not sure exactly).

Anyway, it closed several years ago, I suppose for many reasons, but partly because it's chock full of asbestos and no one can afford to get it all cleaned up.

So now it's completely empty except for a couple of the newer buildings which are used by different county government offices.  It's kind of eerie-like everyone just packed up and left it just as it was.  Scott and I like exploring it:)  We're really hoping that someday it will be restored and all the old, beautiful buildings will be saved.

 Well, hope you all enjoyed the tour.  Come and visit with us any day......we'll put you straight to work!

Love,

Scott and Amy

Gus x 3

Gus's 3, 4 and 5 all made the long trek to the Air and Space Museum a few days back. Quite a place...and quite a lot of handsome men for one location!

The highlight (and underlying purpose for the trip) was the SR-71 Blackbird...something number 5 has been excited to see for some time. 

No trip is complete without a keepsake...for Gus V anyway! He worked very hard the morning of our trip raking  leaves so that he could earn a little pocket money. In the end, he chose a replica of the Blackbird and received the difference between purchase price and available funds from a very generous grandfather. 

Top of the Class!

Gus had his artwork displayed at our local Barnes and Noble last week. While his entire grade had their scarecrows there as well, of course we think Gus's was the best. 

The Old Man Still Has It

Update

Gus helps Kip organize:

Personalities!

Kip:

Gus: