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?

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!!

Weekend Recap....

Can you believe we had a 3 day weekend? Why does the time fly by so quickly? Although, it's nice to know I only have a 4 day work week :)

I can explain my weekend in 2 words YARD WORK.......I'm pretty sure I've put in about 12-15 hours into the corner of our back yard. Finally yesterday we got all the small trees cut down, all the leaves/brush cleaned up and I was able to use the rototill. We have 23 lawn bags sitting at our curb waiting for tomorrow's pick-up. That number doesn't include the 40+ lawn bags that we have already put out this season. I guess that's what you get when you buy a house with over a foot of snow on the ground.......it's a risk you take of what lies beneath that snow. In my case, it was about 1-2 feet deep of leaves, sticks, tree limbs, garbage, etc.

After all of the work I have done I wish I would have taken "before" pictures so I could remind myself of how far I've come in just a short period of time. It makes me feel good though that a couple of our neighbors came over to comment on all the work we have done and to tell me how good everything looks. We just L-O-V-E our neighborhood! I am so lucky.

It was funny..... while I was covered head to toe in nothing but dirt, with bloodied up arms from cutting down some pricker bushes and sweat literally rolling down my face I had the most sentimental moment. I was getting very tired and was ready to give up....i was battling the yard and the yard was winning......and then it occurred to me! "I was doing lawn work in MY OWN YARD!! I own this yard. I own this house!" It was the first time since I bought the house in January that it really struck me.......I am finally a homeowner!! And I live here with my fiance!! It was at that exact moment that I was able to reflect on how far I had come the past few years. Five years ago if you had asked me if I would have either (house/fiance) I, along with many family members and friends, would have laughed in your face. Five years ago I was in debt pass my eyeballs and barely surviving one terrible relationship after another until one particular day when the "light bulb" finally went off and I decided that I needed to change my life. I managed to pay off my debt in just over 2 years and I rid myself of anything that even remotely resembled a relationship. It was during these 3 years that I was single that I think I truly learned who I was and what I wanted out of life. Even though I was teased by family/friends about being "single" for so long I wouldn't change it for the world. It was that decision that led me to find the man of my dreams. Looking back, the road I have had to travel is worth it's weight in gold for the outcome it has given me. I cherish my life and know that it was all the bumps in the road that led to where I am today and I will be forever grateful.

Okay, I just realized this post has gotten much longer than what I had intended. My initial post was supposed to be about some gardening questions I have and somehow it got all sentimental and boring.........now I'm out of time so I guess my gardening questions will have to wait.