Monday, June 20, 2011

Backyard Playspace....

When we bought our home four years ago, one of the selling points for me was the beautiful view on from the back door and nice large covered back porch. I told myself I'd sit out there regularly and enjoy the breeze coming off the lake and that we would get plenty of use out of it. I lied to myself. LOL. :) But since Brookelynne was born, we've gone back and forth about what to do with it. As she gets older she wants to spend more and more time outside, and lets just be real for a second, I do not like getting dirty and sweaty if I can't go take a shower as soon as I'm done. And lets just face it, with two kids, I barely get my one shower each night after everyone's asleep, there's no way I'm getting one at 11 am after playing in the park. So when we started talking about getting the playground stuff for the back yard, I started thinking about what I could do with the back porch for rainy days or time in the shade. I have wanted to get a 'playhouse' but knew there was no way I was going to pay $80 or $100 for one, and I knew I'd like a slide and coupe car, but wasn't paying full price for those either. So a few weeks ago, my mother in law, Jeanna, called me to tell me she was at a garage sale and they had a few different things and she was getting them for her house so the kids could play in them. I told her that I had been wanting some things like that and she said that she would keep an eye out for them. Later that day she called me back to tell me that she had found another garage sale and had cleaned up! And that she'd have the stuff at her house for me to pick up whenever.
So a few weeks ago, we started on our porch playyard, by putting together her new-to-us house. :) I started by bleaching them really well and scrubbing each piece and then put them together on the porch. Brookelynne was in love right off the bat! A couple days later I stopped by there to get the slide and 'picnic table'. We repeated the scrubbing process and added a step of spray paint to give them some new life and *tada* we had even more to play with!
 New Slide and Picnic Table! (The parts that are red were very faded, almost white. They look GREAT now!)

 Braxton having a blast on the slide and Brookelynne playing house!

Then I started searching craigslist for my coupe car. :) To my excitement, I found one that was being sold in a lot with 2 other ride on toys that I had liked anyway, so I bought all three on my way over to visit my nieces the other day. While at Jeanna's house that afternoon, she mentioned that the sand table was also supposed to go to my house, so we left the motorized ride on toy for my nieces, and loaded up the sand table to take home. Needless to say, we have quite the collection of plastic toys out there. Hopefully I can get the yard and house cleaned up in the next few weeks so we can have some of Brooke's friends over to check them out too!
 My babies in their cars!

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