The little things

I was asked by a stranger at a party this weekend about what I like to do for fun. Well, the answer is a bit complex, I suppose. Chris thought it was inappropriate, or something to that affect, that I started out with…"well, I don't have too much time for fun." It's mostly true. But I also felt like listing off all the things I do in my spare time aren't most peoples' our age (or younger, in this case), idea of "fun." It's a little bit questionable whether I even consider them fun.

In my spare time I garden, do yard work, paint, run errands. Is it a bit sad to say that I like to hang out with Chris for fun? When we don't get too much free time together, it's the truth. We had a wonderful Saturday this weekend and let's see what we did for fun: we organized our trash to take to the town refuse and recycling center, we browsed for books at the public library, drove to a great farm stand to enjoy lunch and found a delicious berry pie, oohed and ahhed at other local farms along our drive, spent at least an hour at a gardening center (where I was ecstatic to find that they had the lawn fertilizer I've had my eye on), enjoyed ice cream cones from an outdoor summer shack, visited and chatted with a friend, and then gardened for two hours- planting our spoils from the gardening center. What a day! That was all definitely fun and I wouldn't have wanted to do anything else.

Today, in my spare time, I finally painted our front shutters. Ever since we laid eyes on our house, it bothered us slightly that the shutters were painted a forest green, but the front door a solid black. It's always been in our plan to paint the shutters black to match the door and the job is finally done! The photo above is the "before" picture- green shutters and all. 

Here is our house with sleek black shutters (and the gorgeous hydrangeas that we planted by the front door):

in limbo, awaiting the new black shutters

Now, before and after photos side by side to compare.

The difference may be very slight- at least in these photos, but it's the small things, isn't it? It makes a difference of night and day to me, and I think, very much rounds out the facade. It's the small things that are so fun and memorable, I suppose.

Was it fun? Maybe not as much as I had hoped and mostly a lot of hard work, but it will be so fun to come home every day to know what a big difference to us it's made.