This weekend was busy. Busy as usual, I suppose, but it was also really great because we got to relax and spend some time with our families.

It was also messy, because really, the garage has been heavily used and little neglected lately. Ugh. We’ve just been piling stuff up out there, making a giant mess of everything as we work on the kitchen.

For starters, Wyatt got home really, really late Friday night/Saturday morning from a work conference. After showering and unpacking, and a little gift-giving (he always brings me back a present when he leaves for a trip), we finally hit the sheets for some shut-eye around 3:00 a.m. Yikes.

So, we slept in on Saturday morning.

Then, my sister arrived and we worked in the garage and basement to get ready for a garage sale that’s coming up. She had to deliver all her sale stuff ahead of time…so now our basement is even fuller and messier than before. (yay…)

Meanwhile, Wyatt mowed the yard.

All those things are good, and they needed to get done…but they didn’t exactly equate to any kitchen progress, which is frustrating.

After a quick break for lunch, Wyatt took our trailer and went to get plywood for the built-ins in the kitchen. My sister and I kept working on the garage. It started out looking worse than this…

Here’s the other side…

We can’t really clean it all up because we have to keep all our kitchen projects in the works out there, but we stacked everything a lot neater than it was.

We got it to about here:

Much better. (Because the trailer full of debris is gone now…hauled away–woohoo!)

That feels good to get rid of such a big load of trash. And maybe, just maybe, the cabinets will go soon, too…if someone buys them…or we donate them…

After staying inside out of the wind and storms on Saturday afternoon, we headed out to the store for a few more supplies…mainly plants for the garden, and for Mother’s Day gifts.

Wyatt also worked on starting the frame for the built in area we’re working on for the nook.

Finally, the day ended with some time planning the rest of the weekend, with a trip to visit both of our families for Mother’s Day.

After church on Sunday morning, we loaded up the CRV and headed to Westlakes to grab a few remaining plants for the planting project we were offering our moms for Mother’s Day–mosquito repelling planters, inspired by this pin:

I also did some research on other mosquito repelling plants and added those in to our mix. Plus, there were a few plants on the list we couldn’t find at our local garden centers but I’m going to keep checking and we can add them in later.

For Wyatt’s mom, we used a plastic tub they had in the barn. I think his dad gets feed delivered in them or something. It may not be the prettiest in terms of a fancy flower planter, but I think it works. Plus, it was FREE and RECYCLED, which are both right up my alley. And, I think the bright green color is fun. And, it turned out to be the perfect size.

In the pot above, this is the breakdown of what we used, some have multiple locations in the pot, which are partially marked. I basically just used the smaller things, like marigolds and ageratum to fill in around the edges, so they are all over.

My mom happens to own about a million planters that were already empty in her shed, so we just choose a couple of those and stuffed everything in there.

Both turned out pretty well, but the real test will be if they actually help repel mosquitoes. Not sure they will, but it doesn’t hurt to try I guess. I wouldn’t have normally chosen the plants we did (although the herbs are fun) if we were just going for aesthetics, but this is also about function I suppose. I’ll let you know how they work as we get into the summer.

Anyway, we grabbed dinner at a Mexican restaurant with mi familia (see what I did there?) before heading back to the city.

Oh, and we hauled these home…

Those are a few more plastic tubs to use in our garden (tomatoes!) and the old door from Wyatt’s old house before his parents moved. It’s not in great shape (one side is almost completely rotted out) but the etched glass and details are pretty cool, even though you can’t see them in the photo below) so we’re hoping we can salvage it somehow.

And, in the meantime, it can join the other waiting-to-be-completed projects we have around here, right?

So, tell us, what did you do this weekend? How did you celebrate your mom? With bbq? With Mexican food? With flowers? With mosquito-repelling plants? We’d love to hear about it!