Holidays at home. Project time!

It might be a stupid realization to have at age 30, but holidays don't always have to mean traveling. Ever since I remember, holidays were spent in far-(or not-so-far)-away lands, in tents, shelters, hotels and cabins of the world.

But it's a holiday week y'all! And yet for the first time in a long while it doesn't mean traveling for us. We love exploring new places and in the last couple of years we've spent our holiday time visiting Scotland, Portugal, Thailand, Germany, UK and Poland. And the list of places yet to visit keeps growing.

But this time we've decided to stay put and work on our love project, the house and garden. The first project on the agenda was the covered patio. The space is beautiful, gets a lot of afternoon sun and is surrounded by greenery so, understandably we love it.

Unfortunately, the previous owners left us with a poorly isolated flooring, covered with an ugly beige carpet. The carpet was all dirty (duh!) and the wooden construction underneath was half-rotten.

We removed the carpet and rotten plywood, put in new beams, isolated the floor and laid down hardwood floor suitable for outdoor settings. See the before and after photos below. Doesn't it look way better now?

And let me tell you, the feeling of working on the project together and accomplishing something that extensive with our own four hands is pretty damn great. Despite the fact that with have a very different ways of working, doing something like this brings us closer together and makes the house a little bit more into a home.

 All I need now is cozy, handmade carpet. I am thinking of this one or this one.

I also had some time to clean up a few more flower-patches and start the work on the kitchen garden. I planted rhubarb plants I got from my friends, american blueberry and elderflower bushes. I cleaned up raised-bed with herbs and dug vegetable patches, well at least part of it.

And oh boy, nothing charges my batteries like meditative work in the garden!