Memorial Day

Well, the long weekend is almost over.  The weather behaved much better today than yesterday.  It wasn't hot by any means, but there were sun breaks on and off and we were fortunate enough to spend most of the day outside.

Our morning started out with breakfast burritos.  Scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, and bacon rolled up in a tortilla.

Immediately after getting breakfast on the table, I headed outside.  The Dad had gotten me a small roll of sod to fill in the bare spots in the lawn, so I mowed and then got busy doing the patch work.

What would a post from me, after being outside all day, be without a flower pic?

One of the buds in the side-of-the-road wagon opened up today!

Gazania

And the Lantana in a mixed pot is trying to show up its competition.

After doing the inspection walk, I got to work on a project I've been putting off for several years.  Before we tore out our old bathroom, there was a built in cabinet in there.  Since I find it impossible to get rid of anything, it has been sitting on our patio ever since.  I use it to store outdoor candle holders and sometimes set it up as a drink station, but it was in dire need of a makeover.  Especially after sitting in the elements for so long.  

Here it is in all its misery. 

This pink was the color of the bathroom when I bought the house.  And when I say the bathroom, I mean it was the color of the cabinet, the walls, the trim and the ceiling.  Seriously.  Pepto anyone?
 

 I got out the putty knife and started scraping all the loose paint off.  Then I took the orbital sander to it.  After waaaay too long, it was ready to prime.  I had some leftover exterior primer from when we painted our house, so I used that.

Then I used leftover exterior trim paint.

I put two coats of primer on the inside of the cupboard and drawers and it was tinted sort of a sage green.  I decided I liked it like that, so I only painted the outside with the white.  The top was tiled when it was in the bathroom.  I ripped the tile off a long time ago when I was first planning on doing something with it.  I still may tile it again at some point, but for now, I put a piece of vinyl on top that we dug out of the neighbors "going to the dump" pile.  Yep, I dug it out of the garbage.

My plan is to get some feet from Home Depot to get it up off the ground.  The drawers need to be sanded a bit more - they won't close because of being swollen from getting so wet.  And a hinge on one of the doors was rusted so bad it broke, so that will need to be replaced.  

Soooooo, it's not completely done, but it's a hundred percent better than it was when I got out of bed this morning.

To cutesy it up a bit, I hung one of the windows I painted the other day above it.

There's still work to do, but here's the patio right before it was time to start dinner.

Aaaaand, speaking of dinner, we got to grill up our steaks and corn on the cob I had mentioned last night.  I made cheese ravioli with browned butter to go with.  Why is brown butter so incredibly fantastic?  I also had the best beet salad in the land, leftover from a birthday dinner on Saturday, (more on that delicious dinner to come), so we had that and bread as well.  Everything was deeeee-licious.  And it stayed dry the entire time the grill was on.  Amazing.

Here's dinner on my plate (yes, I know the steak is the size of Texas - I can put away a lot of food, but I absolutely did not consume all of that meat):

So that's our holiday Monday in a nutshell.  Couldn't help but think, as I was cutting into my steak, that I may not be fortunate enough to be sitting around a table with my family if it weren't for the men and women who fight to keep this country safe.

I'm linking up to parties here:

Nifty Thrifty Sunday








Metamorphosis Monday