Catch up

To say I've been busy is an understatement!  Funny how life can go from simple, effortless and quiet to complex, complicated and distracted overnight.

There is so much going on both at work and at home that there are days I can barely keep my head above water.

In a nutshell, here is what has been keeping me busy....

My stepdaughter graduated high school last Friday.  It was surreal to see her in her cap and gown.  My husband shed a few tears, but he won't admit it.  I think in my mind she will always be this awkward pre-teen.  So to see her enter this next phase of her life was mind blowing to say the least.

We are having her graduation party at our house on June 15th.  I've been working my tail off trying to get the backyard ready for such a shindig.  Short of still not having grass, it is starting to come around.

One of my favorite projects has been taking our plastic outdoor furniture and spray painting it fun colors.

As I mentioned, we have no grass in our backyard.  Well, I shouldn't say "no grass", but it is spotty.  This was going to be the year we put money into this project, but due to the expenses with the dog, it is going to have to wait another year.  This has been an issue since we bought the house.  Last year we put down stone and it made a big difference.  But, there was still a large area next to the house that was a disaster.  We haven't put much effort into this area because our end goal is to build a deck.

Spur of the moment I decided to tackle this area and it's amazing what a little topsoil and some colored pots will do.

(notice how the grass is "spotty")

These pots are currently full of flowers and the difference is amazing.  We are no longer looking at DIRT!

There is still SO MUCH more going on, but as I suspected, this post has to be cut short because I am needed by a million different people all at the same time....Ughhhh!

Is it Friday yet?

PS ~ I do not have time to proof read this...so I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors!

Stressed to the Max

I apologize for my absence....Life has taken over!

As I sit at my desk on this brisk Monday morning, with an ice pack on my back, a bottle of pain killers next to me and black bags under my eyes, I realized that maybe it's time for me to slow down.  I've been go, go, go for about 3 weeks now and my body is finally telling me it needs some rest.

It all started like this.....

There was a huge landscaping project that I knew I wanted finished before winter, so I decided to take the week before Labor Day off from work and get it accomplished.  And since I was already going to be off work, what a perfect time to have a garage sale (yes, that is how my twisted mind thinks)!

On Tuesday morning there were 15 yards of stone dumped on the side of my house.  It took 2 loads to bring it, as the truck could only hold 10 yards at a time.

Load #1

My little brother and I worked for 2 days spreading stone and laying edgers.  It was way harder than I had anticipated.

I was so excited that I forgot to take any "before" pictures.  I just happened to come across this old picture this morning though, so it will have to do.  Please disregard the numbers hanging from our dog run...I was spray painting our table numbers for our wedding.




"BEFORE"

 

"AFTER"



I know that our lawn is not the best looking.....that is next years project!

 

 

"Before" shot of the opposite side of the yard (we only added stone to the back corner and all the way up the side to the left.  You will also notice in the "after" picture our new fence)



"AFTER"

We worked on the rocks Tuesday and Wednesday, then Thursday we started pulling everything out for the garage sale the next day.  I had no idea how much stuff we had!!!  My original thought when I planned the garage sale, was to hopefully make enough money to pay for the rocks.  My new thought quickly became.... PRICE LOW AND GET RID OF EVERYTHING! And that's exactly what we did.  I can happily say that we started out Friday morning with ten 8' folding tables, a rolling closet with hanging clothes, a 15' long rack of hanging clothes, and tons of stuff just laying out in our yard.  By the time we shut down on Saturday I was able to pack all of the remaining items into 4 plastic storage totes!  AHHHH-MAZING!!  And the extra bonus is that we made enough money to pay for over 80% of the cost of the rocks.

 

By Saturday evening I was exhausted, but it was the opener for Michigan football so we decided to go over to my parents house to watch the game.  While we were there I noticed that Lainey wasn't acting herself.  Kind of low-key, not wanting to play with the other dogs and really keeping to herself.  As the evening went on I noticed that she had started limping (again) and she couldn't even get herself in standing position by herself if she was laying down.

 

Long story short....by Tuesday she could no longer walk on her own, so after talking to the vet for about 45 minutes on the phone, we decided to put her under anesthesia and do some testing.  She has been having problems with this same leg since May and we have tried bed rest, chiropractor, acupuncture, supplements...obviously, nothing has been successful.

 

The end result is that she has a torn ACL in her left knee and will undergo surgery next Wednesday.  In the meantime, we have to keep her "contained" as to not further damage the ligaments.

 

Here is her new "hospital room" as we call it

She has been confined to this space about 99% of the time since Wednesday and she is handling it very well.  I think it is harder on me to see her like this, than it is for her actually being stuck in there.

You can tell she doesn't feel well

Our jack russel, Stewie, sits on the outside peering in through the holes in the gate at her.  He can't understand why she can't come out and play.  So, every once in a while, we let him in there with her for "visiting hours".

Please keep us in your thoughts and pray that surgery goes okay next week.  I will try to keep everyone posted.

It's time to apply the ice pack to my back again so I must go....Until next time!









The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

THE GOOD:

It is raining today! Did you hear me?  I said... IT'S RAINING!!!  I can't even begin to tell you how happy that makes me.  This means no having to water the lawn tonight.

And for those of you who think I am crazy for watering my lawn so much....just take a look at this luscious, green grass.  I'm very proud of how well it has done this year even though we have had such extreme heat with absolutely NO rainfall.

THE BAD:

It doesn't look like the rain is going to stick around....Ughhhh!

THE UGLY:

There are not enough hours in the day to water both the front and back yard, so we put all of our effort into the front of the house since that is the side most people see. 

As you can see in the photo below...our backyard is in desperate need of some aqua!

Does anyone else have a brown and crusty lawn this year?

Make a list and check it twice

The hubby and I sat down the other night and discussed a few home improvement projects.  There is a lot that we want done, but it is hard to prioritize.  I'm not very good at deciphering between a "want" and a "need".  I decided to make a list so we could SEE what we were dealing with. 

As we started looking at the list we realized that item #2 couldn't get done until Item #3 was complete.  And Item #3 could not get done until item #4 was complete.  And on and on it went....we finally realized that there was definitely going to have to be an "order" in which these items were completed.  And the order that we came up with is not one to make me happy.  The first item on our list is the most expensive and I really, really hate big purchases.

Here is the list of things I would like to have done by the end of the year(assuming our finances allow it)

1. Have central air installed along with a separate furnace for our basement
2. Build a deck in our backyard
3. Install sliding glass doors in our dining room to access said deck
4. Install privacy fence on the one side of our backyard that does not already have it
5. Replace all the screens in our windows (they are all broke and/or missing)
6. Replace all the old mulch with new
7. Paint the laundry room
8. Paint the master bedroom
9. Paint one of the spare bedrooms
10. Install a new front door
11. New counter tops in kitchen

This is not even the entire list, but only the "high priority" items.  I have a feeling it will be another 3-5 years before our list is completed.  It's a good thing we don't have any plans of moving any time soon!

If only I could win one of those HGTV makeovers.....

ME vs The Shed

When I bought my house and it only had a one car garage, I knew that a shed would become a necessity some day.  What I didn't know, is that it would become a necessity within the first few months of owning a home.  Between my husbands wheelchair ramp, the mower, the snowblower and our grill, there just isn't any room for much else. 

So last summer after 2 years of stuffing the garage full of more crap than I ever thought it could hold....we broke down and went to Lowe's to purchase a shed.

The weekend after purchasing the shed I got together our "working crew" and all of us gathered in the backyard.  Only Mother Nature had different plans.  There were 30-40 mile per hour winds that day which would have made building a "metal" near impossible.  So instead, we pushed the box aside and planned to get together the following weekend.  

That box we "pushed aside" sat there through fall and collected leaves around it.  It sat there through winter covered in a tarp to protect from the snow.  And it sat there through the spring collecting rainfall.  

Well, after two 90+ degrees days, a gazillion screws, and a handful of cuss words later.....WE HAVE A SHED!!!

Except, I don't have pictures because I was too busy cussing out the shed and handling a gazillion screws to take the time to grab my camera.  My husband did use our flip camcorder and got most of the progress on that so at least we documented the process somehow.

But, here is a picture of our shed straight from Lowe's website.



10' x 12' Arrow Highpoint Shed

 For someone with very little patience this is NOT the project for you.  And for someone who wants something done "right now", this is NOT the project for you.  It was truly a big pain in the arse...but, now that it's complete I love it and can't wait to begin filling it full of meaningless crap...LOL

All in all, I would say that in the battle of me versus the shed....I WON!!! (eventually, anyway)

Being a Homeowner is not always Rainbows & Unicorns

I used to love fall!  The change in temperature, the beautiful colors.  That was until I spent 7 hours raking and bagging leaves yesterday.  And this was just my back yard.  I ran out of steam before I could finish the front yard.

There are 40+ of these lining my curb at the moment...I hate Fall

Needless to say...today I can barely move!  My lower back hurts, my legs hurt and my forearms hurt!  It is a task I hope to not ever do again...or at least not until next year!  I will be paying a neighborhood boy to finish the front lawn because I just can't do it.

It is times like yesterday that remind me that being a homeowner is not always rainbows and unicorns!  It is hard work...

Summer Projects

We had a huge list of home improvements we wanted to accomplish this summer, but here it is almost the middle of August and very few items have been crossed off.

I don't think we anticipated the amount of time we would spend at my parents house getting ready for the wedding.  Our house definitely took a backseat on our priority list as we were prepping for the wedding.  But, as soon as the "I Do's" were said, we jumped right in.

In the last few weeks we have pulled out all of our landscaping from the front of our house.  And I use the term "landscaping" lightly as we pretty much just had a bunch of dead evergreens, a couple bushes and a lot of over-grown ivy plants.  So far we have been able to lay down mulch and have purchased a few plants that still need to be planted into the ground.  It may not be a finished product yet, but the changes are remarkable already.

The original "landscaping"

(not sure why this is sideways)  After we removed the "Landscaping"

We also cut down 5-6 trees from the backyard opening up our back corner.  We aren't sure what the previous owners used this corner for, but it was nothing but dirt, weeds, and a lot of buried garbage.  This was not a simple project as this area is almost 50 ft long by 30 ft wide.  It's a BIG area that needed a lot of work.  We managed to use the rest of the leftover mulch from the wedding in this area and oh, what a difference.  I also moved some of our hanging plants back there to add a little color.  It's not a finished product, but boy does it sure look better than when we started. (sorry I don't have any "before" pictures, but you should consider yourself lucky that you will never have that image stuck in your head)

Corner in the backyard

And finally, we decided that the front of the house needed a pop of color. We decided to paint our green shutters BLUE! We love it and the change is just what we were looking for. (see the green shutters in photo above)

Green Shutters have now become BLUE!!

Wedding Recap #1

It's so funny because I've been following wedding blogs for almost 2 years now and after each bride got married I read their posts explaining how difficult they found it to start their wedding recaps.  I never quite understood why they were having a problem.  Start with the beginning and move forward...seemed pretty simple at the time.

And yet, here I am 13 days after my wedding and I don't have a clue how to begin putting into words the sheer magnitude of what took place and how I felt (and still feel).  So my apologies if my wedding recaps seem a little scattered, out of order, and filled with a ton of pictures.  I will also apologize right now for the sheer amount of posts that will soon follow.  There are SO many things I want to talk about (and so many pictures to post).

So, as I patiently wait for our professional pictures to come back, I will start with the days leading up to the wedding and will then move onto our rehearsal.

Our wedding took place outdoors at my mom and step dad's house so I spent nearly every waking hour in the weeks leading up to the wedding working in their yard.  And when I wasn't spreading mulch or laying down flooring under the tents I was finishing centerpieces and the other gazillion little details that needed to be done.

Besides all the "physical" work and the sore muscles I encountered, I would honestly say that the most difficult part of the entire process was when I finally had to open myself up to the idea that I needed help from family and friends in order to pull off this shindig.    It was terrifying planning this huge party by myself, but for some reason in my mind I found it "more" terrifying to have to ask for help in doing it.  And to my surprise, the moments in the days before the wedding where I recognized and accepted this as a necessity, will remain some of the most important and most memorable moments of the whole wedding process.

On the Friday before the wedding, my family, wedding party and close friends pulled together as a team.  We had people hanging paper lanterns, stringing lights, ironing the linens, setting up centerpieces, folding napkins, putting final touches on our photo wall, pulling weeds and blowing leaves, and so much more!  It was such beautiful chaos and it brings tears just thinking about it.

Centerpieces waiting to be distributed

200+ Paper lanterns

Brother in Law working on the photo wall

Grandma ironing the table linens

Best Friend Kevin blowing leaves off the "wedding aisle"

Bride to be with Mother in Law hanging Lanterns

As soon as everyone arrived and we started setting up and I could really see things coming together, it was as if someone waved a magic wand over me and all the pre-wedding anxiety was gone.  I absolutely, without a doubt, loved this day just as much as my actual wedding day.  Totally AMAZING!!!

Mulch, Mulch and More Mulch

We've had to make some necessary changes to our wedding location (my parents house) over the last week due to the weather. It has rained more in the past 3 weeks than I remember getting all last summer combined. And as a result of the rain, the area where the reception is being held continues to flood causing major problems.

Instead of worrying about adding landscaping that is going to wash away or blow away in the next storm we just decided to have mulch brought in. My fiance is good friends with a family who owns their own mill and they produce and color the mulch to your specifications. We had them come over and measure how much mulch we would need to order and when he said 30 yards I had no idea what that meant.

I had no idea until the truck pulled up this morning and I saw him unloading this.....

I'm not even sure the pictures do it justice....let's just say THAT'S A LOT OF MULCH!!

Spring Lawn Care Got You Down???

Oh, how badly I want a nice, plush green lawn. Nothing is lovelier than a well-kept, lush, green carpet surrounding the home oasis. It increases property value, makes the home more inviting, and enhances the neighborhood. This is exactly the type of lawn that ALL my neighbors have. Oh, what they must think as they drive by my house!


As most of you know I looked at my new house in December with snow up past my ankles, bought the house in January with snow up to my mid calf, and moved in with snow past my thighs. Well about mid-February we had a break in the snow and I was finally able to see our lawn (or lack thereof). Underneath all that snow was about 2 years worth of leaves that had not been raked. In April I finally got a chance to rake up all those leaves and the site they left behind still brings a tear to my eye. Nothing but dirt......yes, 2/3 of my so-called-lawn is nothing but dirt! And now that spring is finally upon us, the grass that I do have has been taken over by dandelions and crab grass! Uuurrggghhhh! That's where AllGreen comes into the picture. They will be out on Saturday to give me a full analysis of my lawn/dirt. We will be discussing possible options such as aerating, seeding, fertilizer, etc. I hope these men are miracle workers because that's what it's going to take!! In the meantime, for those of you who don't have such a "severe" lawn problem as I do, here are some helpful time-saving tips to maintain a healthy, green lawn.


1. Water deeply and thoroughly each week, at least 6 to 12 inches down into the soil. A bluish tint, slow growth, and lack of resiliency (footprints remain when grass is walked on) indicate the need for more water.

2. Keep grass strong and healthy with proper applications of fertilizer, fall and spring. This will insure resilience to traffic and drought, and keep the lawn a healthier green. Apply about 4 pounds of fertilizer per 1,000 feet. Slow release fertilizer is best.

3. In the spring fertilize with a ratio of 2:1:1 (ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash). In the fall use 1:2:2 ratios for healthy root growth during the winter.

4. Treat weeds and pests immediately; don’t wait for the problem to get out of hand.

5. As long as you mow the lawn often, clippings can stay on the lawn, adding nutrients and humus to the soil. This means mowing every five days during the wet season, and every 10 or 14 during dry.

6. Use a lawn mower you can manipulate and change blade heights on easily.

7. Dull mower blades wound and tear the grass, so keep blades razor sharp by sharpening monthly. Sharpen blades more often if you hit hard objects like sticks or stones while mowing.

8. Reseed bare spots early fall or spring. First rake away debris and get rid of weeds. Loosen the soil 4 to 6 inches deep; add humus and a light application of fertilizer. Rake soil smooth, spread grass seed, and tamp down. Keep moist until seed germinates. At other times of the season, use sod or plugs to fill in bare spots.

9. An even lawn mows quicker and looks better. Humps and dips in the lawn created by freezing and thawing or other factors should be leveled. Raise low spots by spreading soil on top of the grass, no more than ¼ of an inch at a time. Smooth, and repeat twice a year until level. Remove humps by taking out wedges of turf in patches, 6 inches deep. Soak with water, and roll. Repeat spring and fall until the hump disappears.

10. Plant ground covers between the curbing and sidewalk instead of grass. This makes mowing the yard easier and quicker. The ground cover will also be easier to maintain there than grass.

11. Mulch and edging around tree bases will decrease mowing time, and help protect the bark on trees from possible damage caused by mowing too close to the trunks.

Most home owners have better things to do than spend every spare minute caring for their lawn. Fortunately, that isn’t necessary. Not when care to maintain the yard is routinely provided, and paced to accommodate the caregiver’s schedule.

The key to a successful, great looking lawn is routine, consistent care. The chore can become a pleasant habit instead of a dreaded duty with the right attitude and a little expertise. The secret is to do the right chore at the right time.

Provide care as a preventive measure, before it is needs it. Fertilize to maintain a green, healthy lawn; don’t wait until it needs fertilizing. Feed it before it needs feeding, mow it before it needs mowing.


Now get out there and tend to those lawns!!!