A Load of Love: Enjoying the last of summer

August is coming to a close this week. I can't believe our summer is almost over. Of course, given that we live in southeast Virginia, we still have a few weeks (hopefully no more than just a few) of hot, humid weather left. But teaching starts for Justin next week - this week it's all teacher work days- and his classes for grad school started today, making our summer way of life is come to a close.

Today we loaded up on picture books at the library and then played and picnicked at a local playground. Justin was able to join us for lunch. It was one of those days that makes you love summer, even though you're sweating like a dog. The kids played so hard that Jackson even asked to sit in the shade and read while we waited for Justin to join us. We were overlooking the river and it was a picture perfect moment...except I didn't have my camera, of course. I hope I can remember it forever.

In other news, last week I finally started to feel well enough to start getting things done around the house. After our vacation I have had a cold that won't clear up. I'm still struggling with getting it out of my lungs, but overall I feel better finally. I have found eucalyptus essential oil has worked wonders with getting my chest to open up when it starts to get tight again - it works better than any medicine I've taken! Tired of doing absolutely nothing for at least a week, I painted a wall in our playroom with magnetic and chalkboard paint. That spurred us to also paint a wall in the kitchen the same way. Which then spurred me to paint more of the kitchen....funny how that snowball effect always seems to happen for me. I combined white paint, the leftover grey paint from our bathroom, and a touch of the blue from Jackson's room. It's a wonderful light bluish grey. I'm loving the new color and the kids are loving the magnetic board. We still need to get chalk so they can enjoy that part of the wall.

Before close-up of yellow wall and wallpaper border that I was OVER looking at.

This wall was the only wall in the entire kitchen with any color. Everything else was white.

I spent a lot of time working in this space (my baking "center") and I wanted to stare at something more than a plain white wall. I still want to add more inspiring accents to it, but I'm not sure what at this point. Whatever I do, it needs to be very easy to clean - this area is constantly covered in powered sugar and/or flour.

Unrelated, but, yes there's a jogging stroller in our kitchen. After at least three weeks of not running with it, I went to get it from the shed this morning and found it COVERED in mold and mildew. Apparently our shed isn't a good place to keep cloth items. I scrubbed it down with a bleach solution, let it sit in the sun, and scrubbed it again. I'm hoping it will dry well enough tonight to use it tomorrow morning. I'm itching to run with the kids again, and run in general. I guess I'll have to start storing it in the van until we can better weatherproof the shed - ugh, sounds expensive.