Yard Talk

I could have split this into a bunch of different posts… but I’m not going to. One of my neighbors brought over a bunch of raspberry bushes. Such a sweet old lady. When I finally planted them, I hoped for the best. I noticed that there was a teeny bit of tree stump left in the area I wanted to plant the raspberry bush in, so I just planed the little guys around it.

The smallest of the plants are starting to wither up though. I don’t know if I waited too long to plant them, or if it’s the tree stump that’s the cause, or if they just don’t like the dirt I put them in. I try to water them… maybe I’m over watering them? I don’t know. The larger ones seem fine. :-/

On the bright side though, yesterday, I noticed that my cherry tomato plant had a couple red tomatoes on it! Awesome! I meant to pick them yesterday, but forgot. Tonight, I guess.

In other yard work news, I spent a good part of the summer cleaning up the plants that were already in my yard. I trimmed the hedges on all sides of my house, and dug up the broken lights on the front right side. (I haven’t gotten to the front left side yet.) I don’t know how to fully get rid of them though… they aren’t plugged in like normal; there is just a box on the side of my house. *sigh*

I am wondering if it’s possible to trim shrubs too closely… patches of some of mine are turning brown. It’s really weird and not what I wanted.

For two weeks, on Friday, (but not last Friday) someone would come and mow my lawn! It was the weirdest thing! My lawn wasn’t over grown or anything… In fact, the days they mowed were the same days I had planned to mow.

I actually came home from work the second Friday to mow, instead of just going out with friends after work, and was almost upset that it was mowed. Just because I came all the way home for nothing. But that was dumb, so instead of being mad, I made a thank you sign at the end of my driveway with sidewalk chalk that wound up in my backyard somehow.

And I think that catches me up on all yard-related updates.  Some of the flowers I planted over Memorial Day weekend have died by now, so I am contemplating buying some replacement flowers.  But it might be too late in the summer at this point.  Thoughts?

New Norman Rockwell Prints

I won an auction on ebay for a set of 4 wooden plaques with Norman Rockwell prints on them, and they came on Friday. So on Sunday, I hung them up in the kitchen.

LOVE!  LOL, can you guess which ones are new?

PS: Update on Dune tomorrow!

Grrr

My garage door is broken. This picture doesn’t show it well, because I had already started working on it when I decided to take pictures of the whole thing, but the roller on one side came off the track. It looked easy enough to fix, so I got a wrench and took off the thing that holds on the roller, put the roller back on the track, and reattached the holder to the door.

I thought I was set! I sat in my car, fully prepared to be super proud of myself, and I pushed the garage door button to close the door so I could go to work.

The door came down crooked. Ut-oh! So I stopped it, sent it back up, and now almost ALL of the rollers on the other side of the door look like they’re going to fall off. They were fine when I made my fix. It’s scary looking.

The repair man will be here between one and three. Looks like I’m working from home today!

Starting of My Letter Wall

I forget which blog, but one of the blogs I read posted photos of their collection of “L”s, similar to this picture I found on google images, (edit: found it!) and I really liked the look of it. I decided that I was going to start collecting “P”s (for Panzer) and spread them along the wall going up the stairs.

I bought my first one last week from Paula. She was having a sale, so I got this for $2 + shipping. Sweet!  Now I want to have a painting party where I buy a bunch of “P”s and invite people to come over and paint them.  Would anyone be interested in that?

She even included these cute extras! Hello craft room wall!

PS: These pictures are brought to you by my new laptop, which has a webcam! Thanks Mom & Dad! Does anyone out there have Skype? I am so addicted to that now.

Gardening

I’ve been thinking about how I want my garden to look. I think I want it to be on the left side of the yard, and kind of start by the Lilac tree and extend to include the other two tree nearest to it. I made a sketch at work… it’s pretty rough. I did it on the back of a piece of paper… that’s what the typing is.

Oh, and this also includes the plans for the deck.

Click to see full size

The dotted line in the drawing that goes around the tree signifies the border of the wall. Now, I’m not sure how I want the wall to look… I know I want stone, but do I want a tall brick wall, or just some more flat stones lining the way? I like both…

picture by The Empty Nest

picture by Barney’s Garden

I know that no matter which wall I go with I want the plants to be surrounded by a mix of natural wood mulch, moss, and stones scattered about.  How awesome is the wood mulch and moss garden below???  And I love the mix of green and stones in the bottom image.

moss garden picture from Victorian Garden Tours
wood chips from IPMomedia

photo by Annie Johnson

Have any of you guys had any experience working with moss as ground filler? (For lack of a better term, anyway) Can you buy it at the chain stores? I have never looked for it before… I’m totally new to gardening, so any tips you guys can give would be awesome.

Couch!

I bought that couch that I mentioned in the last post. My friend Leah and I picked it up today. The lady lowered the price down to $100. I am not surprised she did though… that thing is CRAZY dirty. And the cushions aren’t even worth sitting on. They’re rocks! Just the seat part though; everything else is fine. And I was planning on replacing the seat cushions anyway, so WIN!

I have officially spent that $50 monthly budget though for June & July. Oh well! In August I’ll buy some fabric and hopefully will start recovering it.

I was reading through old entries on this thing and my sewing machine has been broken for over a year now. I am so lame. Like, seriously, what is my problem. I just need to find a place and bring it in.

Vintage Photos on Ebay

Since John signed up for the army, I’ve been thinking about putting a little grouping of army photos on a wall in my house. There would be one of my grandfather, John in uniform (whenever I get one), his uncle Larry, and whoever else is in my family that was in the military. But I also thought it would be neat to find old photos online and include them too, just to make the section bigger. Here are some that I’ve found and want. Only $5 each!

Man and Woman Army – Foggy

Army Soldier, Man in Suit, Woman

Soviet tank crew uniform army Russia

Aren’t they charming? I was thinking of sprinkling them on the outside, and keeping the people who are in my family on the inside. Thoughts?

Mail Inside

We have a mail box that is, quite literally, a box that sits on the side of our house.  And there isn’t a red flag or anything to signify when we’ve got outgoing mail in there.  Now, this isn’t a problem when we’re sending out Netflix or cards or something…

But it’s a problem when we’re trying to pay our bills.

See, the mailperson doesn’t always look inside first to see if there is mail.  So we could put something in the box on Monday, and it might not be picked up until Wednesday or Thursday.  This is unacceptable.  So I decided to do something about it this weekend.

It’s made out of felt and embroidery thread, and I sewed it all together while watching TV with John.  The same message is on both sides, so if the wind blows, the message is still displayed.  As you can see, my embroidery letter skills need a little work.

I put each end of the ribbon through the holes in the back (that mount the mailbox to the house) so it can fit inside or go outside the mailbox as needed. So far, it’s worked perfectly. Yay!

PS: Watchmen was AWESOME! Go see it when it comes out.

I can has house?

Oh blog, surely you will forgive me for not posting last week. I have big news!

JOHN AND I HAVE A HOUSE!

Here she is! It has 4 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. It is in a neighborhood with young families and on a quiet street. So cute! There is even a secret room (ok, so it’s the attic) in one room that you have to access through the closet. It’s like Narnia…IN MY HOUSE!

Sadly, John wants to turn that whole area into a big master suite, with its own bathroom and everything. That would be pretty great, but…Narnia!

We had our inspection today and the house passed with flying colors. Only a couple changes are needed, and the seller might have to pay for one of them. Awesome! The inspector asked John how we sleep at night since we “stole the house from under them.” or something like that. LOL.

Aaaaand this is what it will look like when we add a front porch next year. I’ll keep the brick and window and all that, but it was easier to photoshop over it all. Heh.

Guests

1. You can tell we have guests because the kitchen table is in the living room, lol. It’s so weird seeing it when I come down the stairs each morning, but all four of us couldn’t fit around the table if it was in the kitchen.

2. I don’t know if I posted my little collection of wooden plaques, but the Norman Rockwell print inspired a new little collection.

3. We went thrifting last night and found two Norman Rockwell prints for pretty cheap. I was super excited, and now I have a little gallery in my kitchen. Well, I will once John installs some shelves in the kitchen. Then I will know where to space them.

4. We also got, of course, some new little things for my minis collection. Although, the middle plate on the top shelf isn’t so much a mini… but it was a really pretty, and I think it makes the black and white bowl stick out less.

5. John has been taking a wood working class, and he completed his speaker boxes that he’s been planning to make FOREVER, but couldn’t because he didn’t have the tools. They came out really well, and who doesn’t love more storage?! (They’re the towers on each side of the TV unit.)