Labor Day is a low key holiday for us. My husband always has the day off, so the kids and I take the day off from school, but we don’t plan anything big. It’s kind of become a thing for us to work part of the day outside–cleaning up the yard to get it ready for fall–and then chilling for the remainder of the day.
Our bodies were made to work and rest! REST just feels so much better after the WORK!
So here’s what we did! My husband cut the grass, edged, helped our son with his pumpkin patch maintenance, and replaced some rotting wood on a post at our front door.
I trimmed bushes, weeded the front flower beds, fluffed the pine straw, and cleaned up the front porch.
The plantings in this front bed are no longer balanced now that I took some dead plants out and cut the lavender back to the roots (it was overgrown and woody), but it’s ready for me to plant a few fall flowers in the coming weeks as time and budget allows. I’m also hoping to paint my front door as soon as the weather cools a bit. I can’t wait!
My son helped on cleanup (raking up the weeds, grass clippings, and shrub trimmings), and worked in his pumpkin patch. I’ll update on that soon!
My daughter spent a couple of hours cleaning the upstairs and then headed out to weed the side yard and assist with miscellaneous jobs that came up. She’s always so sweet to ask, “How can I help next?”
We had to really hustle because rain was in the forecast for the afternoon. Once we finished, we came in and showered off and put together a meal that took little prep. My husband smoked some chicken that was so juicy and flavorful! I baked some potatoes, roasted some broccoli, and cut up a watermelon. Yum!
I wasn’t even planning to use “real” dishes, but when I went to my cabinet to get out our patriotic paper plates, I found that they were gone. I guess we did more summer celebrating this year than I’d realized! So once I got out the real dishes, I started feeling a little festive and had fun adding red and blue touches. For a speedy centerpiece, I lit a patriotic candle (from Aldi this summer), and put some of our yard clippings from our earlier work into a little blue and white vase. This is probably my last summer table setting since I’m soooo ready for everything FALL!
For dessert we had red, white, and blue banana splits! I made a strawberry sauce from the remainder of our spring strawberries in the freezer, whipped up some cream, and tossed on some fresh summer blueberries. This was mainly for the kids. My husband is doing a detox of several foods after he saw how great I was feeling from my detox (the kids are somewhat off sugar as well, but this was a holiday splurge.) I’m now officially done with my detox, but can’t tolerate much sugar or heavy cream, so after just a few bites I was feeling a headache coming on and was done. Those few little bites were so good, but just aren’t worth the headache!
As it rained later in the afternoon, we nestled in the den to watch a Narnia movie.
The kitty joined us. She’s all about relaxing with the family!
And you might notice some fall decorating. Yep, my girl and I couldn’t wait this year. Maybe I’ll post about that soon.
Have a great (short) week!
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