{Recap} Half Relaxing, Half Working Weekend

We finally did it. We finally managed to carve out some down time this past weekend, for the first time in months!

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights were spent building a new cat door and ramp for the kitties, so they could finally go outside and explore their new backyard. Which is what part of the wood was for that you saw in my Wednesday night post.

I'm going to do a full post on how we built the cat door, since there's a lot of details on how to both make it safe for the kitties, and how to make it secure so nobody can break in through it. But here's a look at the mostly finished (as in, good enough for the first weekend to let the cats use it) set up.

We finished the cat door late Friday night, and just shut the door to the den overnight, so the cats wouldn't find the door without us around.

Saturday morning we decided to go introduce ourselves to our new neighbors. Gotta get that out of the way early, so it's not awkward to be waving at strangers when you pull into the cul-de-sac! I also made some quick little cards with our names and contact info on it to give out, which worked well to leave a short note on the back for the neighbors that weren't home.

Then, it was time to get down to cat/relaxing business.


We opened the door to the den and enticed the cats in with treats, so they could discover their new door. This is the 3rd iteration of this style of secured-cat-door-sandwiched-around-a-window that we've made, and the most challenging so far, since we also had to build them a ramp outside, because the window is about 6 1/2 feet off the ground.

But they loved it, once they got the hang of it!

We got to spend the rest of the day chilling (literally, it was pretty cold out, I had to wear my North Face jacket!) with a drink or two on the deck, watching the cats explore. It was important that we were around for the first time they went out in the new place, so they could wander around, but always be able to hear our voices, and not get lost or too overwhelmed.

And we resisted the urge to do much work for the afternoon, other than hanging up a second bird feeder on the clothes line. I'm not a fan of the clothes line, and we'll probably be taking it down, but we wanted to experiment to see if the squirrels wouldn't be able to reach the feeder on it.

Some steaks were grilled.

And some bird watching was done by all. And some reading.

Also, doesn't our backyard look just like the Hunger Games arena in the movie? Well, it was filmed in North Carolina! No flying balls of fire here though. ;)

Sunday was a less fun day, because we had to go to the old house to do the final cleaning, since we didn't get to it last week. But we scrubbed and vacuumed and bid farewell to that house. It was a good place for a year, but we're so happy to be into the new place. We also had to do a huge Costco run, but made it back home in time to enjoy a few more hours on the deck with the kitties Sunday evening.

We also had the opportunity to stomp around our 4/5ths of an acre property, roughly planning out where we'll eventually take out some trees to put in grass, add a fire pit (which I'm hoping we can do in the next month and a half as our anniversary gift to ourselves), and what we'll do for landscaping in the front yard. Some of our plans, like putting in grass, are still a few years away, but for now we really love the natural feel of our backyard. At least it's low maintenance, and gives the cats a fun place to play, stalking bugs through the leaves.

What did you guys do this weekend? Anyone get any relaxing time in?