June 20th is the first official day of summer in 2012. And we have a ton of things we’d like to work on this year. So I am picking 10 things from our massive to do list that we need to get done before summer starts…just to break things down a bit for us. So of the things we are well on our way to accomplishing…and other things will just have to be done because there’s no way around it!

Here are our projects to tackle before summer starts (which will probably also be accompanied by a bunch of other projects along the way!)

1. Sprout seeds & transplant to garden

I’ve half finished this project since the seeds are actually planted in sprouting flats already. But now I need them to GROW and flourish, do any mid-way transplanting necessary for the bigger plants, and then ever everything in the garden! Thankfully, I have spots for almost everything already mapped out.

2. Finish scanning magazines & pass on to someone else.

I started this project with the intention of doing 15 minutes of scanning a day, but I’ve sorta fallen off the bandwagon there. So I’m going to have to give this some further consideration and get back to scanning, whether it’s one day a week for an hour or whatever, because the number of magazines I’ve marked for scanning is starting to outweigh the ones I haven’t looked at yet.

3. Start some flower seeds.

I might actually have to do this right into the ground since April is right around the corner. I do have a plastic bin and some great sprouting dirt left, though, so it would be a good use for it…and lord knows I have plenty of flower seeds!

4. Bottle the red wine & Riesling that we made last fall. 

The wine has been in the big glass balloons for a while now and should be all ready to bottle. So we just have to round up our bottles, clean them, fill and cork everything.

5. Build the workspace in the mudroom to finish off the room. 

With the counter installed over the washer & dryer, now we need to focus on one more corner (plus a few small things like a shelf and some hooks) and then that room can officially be called “done.”

6. Get the water lines fixed going to the guest house.

I don’t even want to talk about this project because the water lines going over to the guest house have been nothing but trouble (thanks to the less than devoted worker we had doing the job). And despite our efforts to make sure the pipes ouside didn’t burst, they did anyway in our two weeks of -18°C weather. So we may be getting into a more involved project there than we would like. But if it keeps it from happening again, it’s 100% worth it. And we have to get this going quickly because we will have someone staying in there for a week on June 18th…which certainly means we need to get things wrapped up there.

7. Getting an estimate for all the “little” wall & ceiling projects from our neighbor. 

We have a closet that needs to be finished out, some repairs to make after our leak in the bath upstairs and a few other problem areas that we patch up and make pretty finally. The good news is that the insurance may cover some of that! But we’ve got to bundle a bunch of it together so we can get a contractor out here; otherwise the jobs are just too small for all of them one-by-one.

8. Get 5-10 chairs from the attic, paint them & list on Etsy.

As you noticed, we have a lot of projects that are going to cost us a bit of cash. So we’d like to start selling off some of the random furniture around here (and have some good ideas we think) so that recoup some of the money. Since the stuff we’ll be selling was here in the house already, it will really only be the cost of cleaning & painting things that will be our upfront costs.

9.Inventory the house, barn & storage areas to start determining what stays, what gets sold/given away and what gets thrown out.

There’s just a crazy amount of stuff in our barn, attic and storage areas, much of which was here when we moved in. It’s going to take us some serious time to get through all of it and figure out what we want to do with it all. But we figure that starting an inventory list is our first step.

10. List 10 big things on Freecycle.

We have a few things that are still great but that just won’t likely sell well on ebay (or just will be too much hassle to sell) like our cat tower (rarely used in the last 4 years) or some IKEA furniture that we will soon not be using. And Freecycle is just awesome for getting rid of stuff like that. Yes, I would love to get some cash for it instead. But I also want to spare myself a lot of headaches at the same time! 😉

What’s on your to do list for spring?

Link up with us at Many Little Blessings for Top Ten Tuesday.