Well, we did it again — my husband, Mike, and I took a few days off from work for our annual spring project kickoff.

We jumped in with both feet, working on everything from painting to installing vinyl post wraps, planting flowers and using stone to freshen up our landscaping.

The front porch that we have long labored over is finally starting to look the way we envisioned it. Not only have our raw, wood posts been wrapped, but we have brightened up some other faded surfaces with fresh, white facades.

In addition to the post wrapping material, we also ordered plastic end caps for the posts, but they looked like plastic and just didn’t have the effect we wanted. So, we set out to make our own from pieces of wood topped with a bit of moulding. Mike cut, sanded and trimmed all 64 pieces that we needed then fitted them mostly together before we set out to paint them. We got the base pieces installed and are well on our way to adding matching pieces at the tops of each post.

While he was working on that, I visited Belmont Mills and ordered a ton of No. 4 river gravel for some landscape edging. To my surprise, the clerk told me it would be delivered “in a few minutes” — and the end of the evening I had moved a half ton of rock into place.

Now I have another half ton left to fill various spots around the property. We are both very pleased with the overall result.

Now our “break” has ended, and we are tired and sore. However, we both feel that the hard work was totally worth it.

Don’t get me wrong — we did take some time to enjoy ourselves. Since our first day off fell on my birthday, Mike treated me to a massage and took me out to dinner. We also took the time to make some great meals at home and even dined with friends and watched “Wrestlemania” together on the final Sunday of our vacation.

It may not be the traditional spring getaway, but it is our kind of getaway — one that leaves us feeling like it was all time well spent. Time to start planning for summer.