Finished Picnic Table

Remember when I mentioned that we bought a unfinished kids picnic table for Claire? Well, one coat of primer, three coats of paint, and two coats of poly later, it's officially finished. 

I really like the emerald green color, but my friend Natasha very wisely pointed out that it may not be the best color for a future backyard with lots of green grass around. So, it might get a transformation to turquoise or teal in a year or two. That's the beauty of paint. 

See all the weird dark splotches on the concrete? Well, that happened when I was staining our desk and really, really wasn't as careful as I should have been. Adam used TSP to scrub most of it off and it actually worked pretty well. It turns out stain is way messier than paint! We used rags to wipe off the excess stain and then stuck them in the washing machine. But since stain, you know, stains things, guess what happened? If you guessed a huge mess all over the drum of the washing machine that had to be scrubbed with Comet, you would be correct. We're basically the poster story for smart people completely lacking common sense...



On a lighter note, let's continue with our tour of the balcony.



In the corner, we have Claire's rice box. The orange bucket is filled with pool toys and sidewalk chalk. The bucket itself came in handy a few times this summer as an apartment-size baby pool.



The door leads to our storage closet. We don't have anything stored at our parents' houses anymore, all of our worldly possessions are tucked away somewhere in this apartment.



In our storage closet, we keep four folding chairs and a broom/dustpan for sweeping up the balcony. We have seven containers holding...

- extra decor
- holiday decor
- quilts
- kid books {we inherited a lot when my parents moved to China}
- toys {ditto, there's some fun stuff like a doctor's set and cash register in here}
- sleeping bags
- textbooks {in case Adam went back to grad school and now we just haven't got rid of them because they're at the very, very bottom}



In addition to...

- a carpet steamer
- a folding table that seats eight
- a Christmas tree {the red bag in the way back}
- my wedding dress {the white box at the bottom, hopefully to be made into first communion dresses for Claire and Maggie one day}
- two big suitcases {with smaller suitcases and other luggage stored inside}
- a basket that we currently have no use for but will surely come in handy again
- an infant car seat {for the next few weeks until we install it for Maggie}
- a kids shopping cart {we found it at Goodwill a few weeks ago, but it's harder to steer than the doll stroller that's currently in the living room, so it's in here until she gets bored with the stroller and we switch them out}

Whew. That's it! Moral of the story:

I'm so glad we didn't register for china, because I have no idea where we'd keep twelve place settings. Ten years from now when we have a dining room and a china cabinet, we can start collecting it ourselves. And I have feeling our tastes will have changed a little from age twenty!

Also, be really, really careful with stain unless scrubbing is your favorite hobby.