April Projects

I really should be posting on a more often. We may not be working on huge projects, but there are so many small ones that I have a hard time remembering everything that was finished in the last month! Can I blame it on "pregnancy brain"? Maybe a little... Posting once a week would help me stay on track and also let me share more of what happens with the inhabitants of Ireland Manor, not just our projects. I also might have a chance at keeping Liam out of everything if I wasn't taking so much time posting pictures!


Boys and I, heading out for Passover Seder.

As you know, I retextured the nursery a few weeks ago. The wall color is lovely, but that's really all I have done in there. Mr. Ireland installed the shelves in the closet and put the doors on. The changing table is still sitting on the porch, sanded and waiting for new paint and hardware. As for curtains and a chair cover.... They are on the list, but they may not get done before the baby arrives. Liam loves the room, though. His favorite thing to do is open the curtains first thing in the morning and look for the snowshoe hare's that like to nibble grass and twigs in the yard. Pretty exciting for a toddler.


Clockwise: Nursery before, mid retexture, nursery after, Liam feeding his baby.


Dresser, still sitting on the porch.

I FINALLY finished the homeschool area! All the boxes are gone (well, almost all of them) and we have a table to work at! I was so excited to have a nice, big, empty table that I promptly started another project and now the table is full of seedling trays. We can call that a homeschool project, right?

I did manage to make curtains for the boy's bedroom in April. With the sun now setting sometime after 10 p.m., they were staying up later and later into the night because their room faces west. The curtains are black cotton, unlined. They don't block out all light, but they help. We will have to get black-out roller shades to achieve real darkness. At least they can go to bed without a night light, right now.


What else did we do in April.....?

Oh, Mr. Ireland traded the living room fan with the light fixture over the stair well, and installed a HUGE fan in the living room. Our third floor really heats up in the summer, but with 2 fans circulating air, I should be able to survive the heat. The living room fan was a gift from my friend Joy and matches (our future plans for decorating) perfectly! Its just lovely.



Mr. Ireland and I found a day to clean our bedroom during my spring cleaning week. We dusted and moved boxes to the basement and made room for a baby bassinet in our room. It is always nice to have a chair to sit in while feeding a baby at midnight, so we moved my rocking chair from the living room into our room. We have found that the master bedroom is always the last room to get unpacked and organized, so we are very proud to have a bedroom that we can leave the door open to when we have company over. Curtains for our room should be finished soon.


Accordion coat racks are a standard fixture in our house. These are vintage and I love them! Can you guess which one is mine?

I put more things away in the basement, trying to reclaim some of our floor space. I can send a child down to fetch something with a 75% chance of having them find it, so things must be mostly organized. Last of all, the boys and I staked out the garden beds that will be within the rock wall. We have plans to lay our newspaper down and move dirt on Mother's Day. The wall is on my list for the summer, probably somewhere at the end of the season. Having a new born could bump it to next summer, which is fine by me. Some other kind of fencing will have to go up for the summer, though, just to keep the moose out.


View of the garden outline from the front steps, left to right; Attempting to organize the basement.

May is here and with just 3 weeks until the baby should be appearing, I have finally turned my attention to sewing. Check back soon to hear about our new arrivals and gardening adventures!