August 2022 – Planning a Mighty Fine Shindig!

August 2022 – damn this month that never lasts long enough for me. August has always been my favorite time to live here in northern Minnesota. Its a month that can almost always be counted on to be beautiful weather-wise. There’s a coolness in the air that takes the edge off the heat and colder evenings make it prime time for bon fires. I sure do hope we get a long fall to make up for a misery of a spring but, regardless, this has been one beautiful summer.

Our perennial flower gardens did extraordinary this year. (Even the sunflowers the chipmunks “planted” did really well lol.) And, for the first time since I moved it, my Grandma’s hydrangea actually bloomed too!

It was such a horrific thing to move (root bound beyond belief and growing down into our foundation) that I ALMOST didn’t care if it lived or died. It took hours… I even broke a trench shovel off on the damned thing!

Of course when the next spring rolled around I was incredibly relieved that it lived through the whole ordeal. This was back in 2018 and I was cool with it just surviving.

The fact that it actually bloomed just makes my heart happy!

This August we spent the majority of our time getting prepared for our reception out here in a couple of weeks.

Its going to fall within just a few days of our three year anniversary of when Lodi and I started dating – its amazing to think how far we’ve come in so short a time.

2021 was devoted to our garage addition, brand new lower deck and A LOT of new concrete poured out here.

This year we devoted ourselves to our wedding / honeymoon in June and now to our reception in the yard.

2022 We haven’t done much more than that as any improvements besides absolutely got put on our back burner.

(IMO I do think its fair – weddings are pretty dang stressful.)

Though there is certainly still time!

I was hoping to tackle our bunk house, fix the siding on the South side of the house, add an awning above our garage’s side door, build new “saloon door” gates for our deck and maybe even get some more work done on our “camping spot” out back.

None of which I am thinking about right now.

My brain right now is that my mom and I are about to cook for like 100 people!

(So glad to have a Costco membership lol.)

One thing I got done was replace the lower café lighting on the deck with LED lights. And we (mostly Lodi) tackled our garage both because it was absolutely necessary for the reception, but also because we’ve wanted to get this done for years.

August 2022 I am reminded that it doesn’t matter how well you organize a space if you put anything “extra” in it pretty soon its just a cluttered nightmare.

That was our garage for the last couple of years.

It was due to both of us honestly as I did the “best” I could to get it together right before he came into my life but that “best” was, honestly, not all that great as I had literally no budget.

Add in Lodi and I combining homes and our garage was really the last space of, “What have we done to ourselves?”

After completing the garage addition last year we have been so excited to utilize it even though we didn’t manage to get there until now.

August 2022

Lod was really the bull that dove in head first one weekend morning and got so much done I practically got down on my knees and started yelling, “I’m not worthy!”

He built wood over head storage in the extra stall and built in holders for all of our yard tools, rakes, shovels etc. My goal has always been to get our “yard” out of our main garage so our main garage could be devoted to hang out space and working on / storing our main vehicles.

I joined him that long day.

After several hours our third stall garage addition was looking like a Tetris champion had organized it. Our ATV, riding lawn mower, push lawn mower and two snow blowers all fit with all of our wood storage and still enough room for one of our cars besides.

During that time we went through the majority of our “crap” and completely filled our pickup with junk too.

Lodi still has some stuff up in the rafters we plan on entirely removing at some point but that’s gonna wait until we have some more time. (We’ve had to stop ourselves from tackling other projects in light of what we NEED to be focusing on and I just hate that…)

I removed the 40 year old florescent lights in our main garage and installed the amazing LED light bulbs we discovered last year.

The difference was just awesome.

August 2022 oh how I missed the garage!

With it all cleaned out we’ve spent quite a bit of time just being out there and enjoying it. I’m just kicking myself for not taking before pictures! The space feels just amazing.

We even worked on the old bar and made it look considerably better than it did.

Lodi drug the old livestock mats out of here (to never return) and we scrubbed and sprayed down the entire garage floor.

We are officially ready for our reception shindig with a few folks bringing campers and lots of family and friends coming from all over. Lodi even rented a bouncy castle for the kiddos not to mention we will have lots of yard games.

All we need now is good weather!

Wish us luck!