The Playhouse Diaries - Part 1

While we were at the beach this summer, we discovered a little playhouse in a park on Sullivan's Island. I don't know who was more enamored, me or the girls. :)

It was actually eerily similar to a house I had seen and loved while Will and I were doing a drive by shooting on a date one evening.

He drives while I hang out of the window, snapping pictures and swooning over old beach houses...what can I say, he is a patient man. ;) And doesn't this house look like something straight out of a Faulkner novel?

But I digress...

...back to the playhouse.

A few Saturdays ago, Anna Cate and Will sat down at the kitchen table to work up a design for a playhouse in our very own back yard.

He put his Clemson engineering skills to good use while she developed a headache double checking all of his math.

There is this awkward spot in the corner of our backyard where a raised bed of some sort was built with railroad ties. We've tried to have a little garden back there, but it is very shady and we can never get anything to grow. Last Saturday, my dad came over to help Will level the ground and start working on the little house.

By lunchtime they had built four walls and a floor. The girls went out to investiage their work.

"Hmmm...this looks more like a bunch of wooden poles than a playhouse."

Despite the lack of a roof,

closed-in walls,

and the heat,

they have had a ball in their new space this week.

Every morning after breakfast, they each pack a little bookbag with their coloring books, crayons, and a snack, and head over to their new little corner of the yard.

Will set us up with an outdoor fan which has made it quite tolerable in the heat,

even though we enjoy coloring and eating our snacks in gale force winds (but hey, it keeps the mesquitos at bay too). Also, I didn't realize until I uploaded these pictures that Caroline was using this little piece of wood as her table sans a plate. Yum yum, nothing like a slice of american cheese freshly peeled off a piece of lumber.

This evening, the guys put in another hour and a half and we now have the roof framed. I can't wait until it is finished! I have grand plans of planting flowers all around it (that don't need much sun of course!) and fixing it all up inside. I'm anticipating many hours spent out in this little spot of the yard!