Mushrooms

Remember my comment about my yard covered in mushrooms on today's Monday Mantra? Yeah, I was totally NOT exaggerating.


I know it's hard to see in the picture, but every single little white dot is a mushroom!



These special guys are taking over our backyard! How can we get rid if them??

What a Weekend

Wow, I feel like I’ve been away forever! Guess it’s good it’s only been a few days. Ended up having a bunch going on this weekend. Don’t think I got on the computer at all all weekend! Crazy, huh? Well, here’s a little recap for you:

 

Friday: I hosted a Girls Night In at my house with my two best friends. We made spaghetti, French bread, and cookies and watched the movie 17 Again. We hadn’t gotten together just the 3 of us in a while so it’s was nice to hang out a bit. We had a good time and the movie was really good! And Val brought over this new red wine that I actually liked! (I’m totally not a big wine drinker, red especially, but this was awesome!) I tried to buy some at Kroger yesterday, but they didn’t sell that brand. :o( I’ll probably go to HEB this weekend for groceries, so I’ll pick some up there. They have a MUCH larger wine selection.

 

Saturday: Even though I didn’t get to bed until after midnight, I got up early so B and I could go do some shopping first thing in the morning. We went to Hobby Lobby and Michael’s and I got a whole bunch of bead supplies (and $0.99 Simplicity patterns!) so I can start stocking up for my Etsy store. This week all the chains and findings and metal things are on sale, so I’ll go back and get that type stuff sometime this week. Then I should have a pretty good amount to start with and can actually start making some stuff with which I can finally OPEN the Etsy store! On my way home from shopping, my MIL called and my SIL and her fiancé were in town and they were going to see the movie Nine and wanted to know if I wanted to go. So I went down to MIL’s house and we went to the movie (which was pretty good) and then ran some errands then went back to her house and we had dinner over there. I didn’t get home until almost 9pm so I ended up being gone pretty much the entire day.

 

Sunday: Hubby finally got home! He got to the house about 6:30am and just came up and got in bed. (Yeah, I was totally still sleeping) We ended up both sleeping until after 9am, I think! Guess I really needed the sleep! We got up, had breakfast, and made a grocery list. Then we took the dogs down to MIL’s house and had lunch over there for her birthday today. Then we stopped by FIL’s apartment to say “hi” since hubby just got back. We got back home, dropped off the dogs, then went to Houston Garden Center to take advantage of their 70% off sale. We finally bought a tree for the backyard! And thanks to 70% off, we got a 20 gallon, $130 tree for only $40! Hubby and I went back and forth for like 20 minutes over which tree to get. He really wanted the Sweetgum and I really wanted the Chinese Elm. We ended up getting the Chinese Elm since I told him, based on my research, that it had a much better chance of survival. And maybe later on we can go back and get the Sweetgum, too. But we’ll see. We brought the tree home and then I went to the grocery store while hubby started digging the hole to plant the tree. Turns out in this DROUGHT the ground is WAAAAAAY hard so it’s not planted yet. He had to have his brother bring back our post hole digger to try to use that to help out, but he didn’t bring it up until after 7pm when he was on his way back to school, so maybe he can work on it tonight. Good thing we bought some good Miracle Grow garden soil for planting it. From the looks of it, our backyard dirt is pretty nutrient poor.

 

So that was my weekend. I have another post brewing in my head about some other things going on, so maybe I’ll be able to get to that today. I at least have to start writing it before I forget! It’s just nice to finally have my husband back. For a bit, at least. He apparently might have to go to the UK in a couple weeks, but just for a couple days IF he goes. But he shouldn’t have to go back to Brazil until closer to the end of October. Gosh, I can’t believe there’s only a week and a half of September left! Good thing I started ordering Christmas gifts last night! Where does the time go??

 

When I say "can do"...

I guess I sure mean it!

Let me start by saying I had an awesome weekend. Want to know why? Because I made stuff happen this weekend! I'm super sore from it all, but it was worth it!

Friday after work I went to NY&Co to check out their BOGO free pants on tax free weekend with my $25 off $75 purchase coupon. I was a little disappointed, but I ended up leaving with a new pair of work pants, a new pair of jeans, and a new shirt for work. I was disappointed because they had some super cute button up shirts but I needed the torso of the XS and the arms of the S. Darn it. Stupid fat arms. After I got home, my mother and sister in laws came by and we all went to dinner. Then the hubby and I watched the last disc of Entourage Season 5 and called it a night.

Slept in a bit on Saturday, but after I got up, I went to work! I've been wanting to shampoo the carpets, but I had a lot of picking up to do before I could do that. I started in the guest room (because it had the fewest things to pick up). Once I got all the sheets off the bed (after my brother in law slept in there while watching our dogs) and picked up everthing off the floor, I decided that now was a better time than any to go ahead and paint the room! So I spent the rest of my Saturday painting. :o)

I still needed to shampoo the carpets, so after a pretty leisurely morning of blueberry muffins and 3 epsiodes of Royal Pains, I got back to work. I did any last paint touchups then put all the paint supplies away. Then I got to picking up things off the floor in the office (the main room needing shampooing since the dogs live in there). Since I was renting the shampooer from the grocery store, I worked on making a grocery list then hubby and I ran to the store, bought lots of food (I hadn't been to the store in a couple weeks) and after a minor mishap with the customer service booth, finally got the shampooer and got home. Hubby went to a soccer game with some guys from work so it was just me all evening. I cleaned the carpets in the office and upstairs hallway and the stairs. Ate my dinner, watched last week's Mad Men, then this week's, hubby got home and I went to bed completely and utterly exhausted.

Overall it was a great weekend. Hubby got the second doghouse almost completely built. He took down the fabric off the gazebo until hurricane season is over, and we got covers for our patio furniture and put those on.

I'm super pumped about my guest room. I can't wait until it's all put together and I can post some pictures for you guys. I can finally unveil my new bed set that I never put on! (and the matching curtains) I'm actually hoping to get a lot of it finished tonight, so keep your eyes peeled for an update!

Canopy replacement

Oh! Oh! I forgot!

John FINALLY called about our gazebo canopy this morning! We'll be getting a new canopy frame in 3-4 weeks. For FREE. Apparently the lady said they don't normally cover acts of nature, but since we had only had it one week when it happened, she'll go ahead and send it out.

Woo hoo! I can't wait to use the patio again!

What the heck? Are you SERIOUS?

Remember our gazebo we put up last Sunday (just one week ago)? We had a WONDERFUL week enjoying it. Dinners on the patio. Evenings sitting on the patio reading. Just lovely.

Well, today, we had a sudden rain storm. We had gone out to Lowe's to get some things to build our doghouses and it starts pouring on our way home. We had left the dogs outside so I'm feeling super sad for them having to be out in the rain. It had only been raining maybe 10min. by the time we got home, but it was raining pretty hard. So we get home, and right away I run to the back door to go out and let the dogs inside. I reach the back door, look out the window and see our lovely gazebo canopy, has imploded on itself!! NO!! Our canopy!! But I'm still worried about the dogs so I just blow it off and run out to get them. John comes in and sees it, at that point. He is PISSED. We've had the thing for ONE WEEK. Well, I find the paper work that came with it and no where does it say in the 1-year warranty that rain fall is not covered, so we are definitely calling to have them send us out a replacement canopy. That is just ridiculous, that the first rain storm we have, it comes falling down. And my table and chairs got so much more wet had it not fallen in on itself. Now the wicker top on the table is starting to warp. :o( Yeah, here's our imploded gazebo...

Sad, so very very sad...

Best investment ever!!

I think adding the gazebo to our patio has been one of the greatest investments we’ve done to the house so far. And we’ve only had it up for 3 days! Even so, we’ve already spent more time outside under it than we’ve spent out in the backyard in a while.

I already told you how I sat out there Monday morning and read with my brunch. And then again later that afternoon, I sat out there to read more and have a snack.

Yesterday, when I went to my workout class, hubby was out in the backyard starting to cut up some lumber to build our dog houses. He had started a fire in our fire bowl to burn the small leftover pieces. He was still working on that when I got home, so I took my book out to sit under the patio while he worked. After a bit, I went in and got dinner ready. We were having grilled fish and corn, so I prepared the fish to put on the grill and put the frozen corn in an aluminum pan to stick out on the grill as well. Hubby started up the grill and put the food on and I sat out and read a little more while there was still some daylight left. We decided it was just too nice outside so I went and got our plates and silverware to eat on the patio. We had a lovely dinner in the fading twilight, with the embers glowing in the fire bowl nearby. So very relaxing. Unfortunately, not long after we finished eating, the mosquitos started to come out as the sun had fully set. Back inside we went, after cleaning up our dinner and lumber messes.

And I still cleaned up the kitchen, made my lunch for today, and ironed both our clothes for today before getting in bed at 9:30pm to read a bit more before falling asleep. I can’t even begin to tell you how great the feeling of getting so much accomplished in the evening and still having time to enjoy a good book before drifting off to sleep. Time used to FLY by in the evenings. We would eat dinner and all of a sudden, without having gotten anything else done, it would already be 10pm! Of course, that was when the TV would turn on about as soon as we got home and would stay on for the duration of the evening. Don’t get me wrong, I love my shows, but it was always just such a time drain to sit in front of the television night after night. Now, with the DVR, and the fact that most of the good seasons have ended now, it’s nice to have nights where we’re not a slave to the “boob tube” and we can enjoy to beautiful weather and each other’s company.

Ahhhhhh….

Done and Done!

We finished the gazebo! Put our patio furniture under it. It is AWESOME!! I spent half my day off yesterday out there reading. It was spectacular! And now our living room windows are nice and shaded in the afternoons, too. I am SOOOOO happy we decided to go ahead and do this. It's WONDERFUL! Here's finished photos:

See? I painted those two pieces of siding so it looks much better.

Hi, Major!

Getting a gazebo!!

As you know (from my constant talking about it), we've been working a lot on our home projects and trying to spruce the place up, right? Well, after we got the dog run fence up, I decided I really wanted to start working on the backyard and getting it into shape. It's a MESS right now. About 6 months or so after we moved in we poured a huge 14x20 patio slab in the back. A year and a half later, there's still nothing on it except the bar-b-que grill. We've been wanting to get a nice gazebo to put out there and we finally got one yesterday! We're working on putting it together today. At the same time, we're working on FINALLY cleaning up the splattered concrete from pouring the patio slab off the siding and doing some re-caulking on the siding where it's all dried out and touch up paint. John did the caulking and I scrapped splattered concrete so far. Now we're taking a break to let the caulk dry so we can do the painting. Then we can finish putting the gazebo together. I am soooooo excited! Here's a "work in progress" photo of the patio:

And here is the fence we put up for the dog run:

Look at how great my plants are growing now since the dogs aren't able to trample all over them during the day!

And the still not completed shed we built in the most unsightly corner of the yard...

I'll post again once I have som "finished" photos!

Dog run

John finally finished the dog run this past Friday. I’ve only been waiting for it for like EVER! We can now fence up the dogs in just a portion of the yard. I am beyond ecstatic about this because since the dogs have had free run of the entire backyard for so long, it looks absolutely ATROCIOUS! There’s holes everywhere, dead grass where they chase each other around the boat and the shed and the paths they use to run back and forth from one side of the house to the other. It is BAD. So now, they have their own little area of the yard they can do whatever they want in (as long as that does NOT include digging up the phone/cable wires or eating the drain pipes off the side of the house) and I can finally start sprucing up the back yard so that I can actually ENJOY it. Today was the first day for them to spend the entire day in their new little dog run. I’m quite curious to see what I find when I get home. We made the fence a picket type fence, 4 ½ feet tall. So they can see the rest of the yard through the fence and are probably wondering why on earth they can’t get to it when they used to have a huge yard to run in and now they only have about a ¼ of it. The day John finished it, he put the dogs in there for just a bit to “test” them. What did Major do? Laid down right at the gate and shoved his nose through the 3” spacing between pickets and stretched his feet out from under the gate. It was a funny sight. Cocoa, of course, just sat there with a blank stare as though she was thoroughly confused about what was going on with this new fence. At least they figured out where the new water spigot was.

I just have all these crazy scenarios running through my head about what I will find with I get home. Hopefully the one that plays out is the one where the dogs were perfect angels all day and only played with their toys and did not eat anything they shouldn’t and they’re both still in the dog run. (Major is quite the jumper, you know) Only an hour left until I find out!

How lucky!

As everyone I'm sure knows, I am a huge fan of HGTV. I don't get to watch it too often because John apparently hates watching HGTV. He was working late tonight, so I took the opportunity to get in some of my favorite shows. One of those shows being House Hunters International. Guess where they were house hunting! Punta Cana, Domican Republic! How lucky is that, since we're going there on vacation in just a few months now! Everything they showed just made me even MORE excited (as if that was even possible!) to go on our vacation! It was so nice looking. And the lady buying the house kept talking about how much she loved it there and the people were so nice and she never wanted to leave. Sigh...

Let there be light!!

I can now say I have the kitchen lighting I have been dreaming about since we moved into our house two whole years ago!! With the husband feeling bad about darting off to France and Africa for two weeks, I was finally able to coerce him into some of his "honey-do" items before he goes. It only took one weekend to get the kitchen lighting of my dreams. Two new recessed cans over the sink and bar area, a new main light fixture, and under cabinet lighting around the main counter area. And to top it off, it only took about $250 to complete it all! I was very very very very VERY happy with the results! I can see my sink!! No more dark corner!!

Ta-Da!!

(Pardon the tool mess...we're still in clean up stage)

Home Improvements

As some of you know, John and I started last year on a laundry list of home improvements we wanted to do at our house. Yes, even with a brand new house, we had a ton we wanted to change! Our first big feat was adding the patio slab in the back. 14’ x 20’. It’s a monster of a slab. We did that about 6months after we moved in. Then we wanted to rip up all the carpet downstairs and put down wood laminate flooring. So last February we went out and bought all the flooring. Then in June (yes, 4 months AFTER we bought it) we finally got around to putting the new floor in, but only in the Living Room. All the while I’ve been doing random painting and sprucing in other areas. Now here we are over a year after we bought this wood flooring and it is yet to be completed. The closet under the stairs needs to be finished and we need to do the Dining Room. One other item on my wish list is to add a recessed can light over our kitchen sink and put in some under cabinet lighting. Back in November I painted the kitchen, but not the ceiling as I was waiting until the light was put in and all the sheetrock repaired from that project.

John and I sat down last night and talked about all these projects and when we could do them. Mostly because I said I would be okay with him leaving the country for two weeks if he finished some of my projects that have been hanging out for like a year and a half now! So FINALLY, starting bright and early Saturday morning, John will start working on putting in the light over the sink! Since it is on the first floor of a two story house, we don’t know how difficult it will be having to thread wires around through joists and what-not, but the tentative plan is for him to put in the light over the sink, repair the sheetrock, install the under cabinet lights (we’re just getting the plug in kind, so that should be pretty easy), then start on finishing up the flooring in the closet. So while he is working on the flooring, I can paint the kitchen ceiling and do some caulk and paint touchups on the base and trim. Then the kitchen will be complete (and hopefully the closet floor)!

My original goal was to have all of our home improvement projects finished by this summer when we went on vacation, but it’s looking like that might not happen. But one of the biggest reasons is because we started out Total Money Makeover, so we have been trying to spend less money. But we already have all the supplies to complete the kitchen light, ceiling paint, and closet flooring, so we just need to do it!

Saturday cannot come soon enough! I never thought I would be so excited for someone to rip a hole in my ceiling! J