Happy Halloween

The start of Halloween...

And the end of Halloween...

I have to say, I'm sad to see October go.



Halloween Decorations Are Up!

We've actually had our Halloween decorations up since late September, but I just got around to photographing them.  We'll start with our front door...

First impressions are everything right? Well I was hoping to make a strong one and thanks to some leafy garland around the door, a rich harvest wreath, and lots of pumpkins, this was achieved.

The console table helps keep the Halloween feeling going strong because it's the first piece of decorating you see as you enter our home.  Our bat cake stand is put to good use holding some pumpkins and there is Halloween candy to sweeten you up :)  Plus an adorable shot of my babies in their costumes from last year to add to the cuteness.

Clay and I stuck on some bats & spiders that Narls and Emerson made last year (and few from the year before that!). The kids loved seeing how much their feet and hands have grown since last year.

And we finish the Halloween decorating with some subtle touches in the family room- some gourds and leaves (which can be left up through Thanksgiving) and a couple ghosts and a pumpkin.  Halloween is my very favorite holiday so I tend to decorate the most this time of year. What do you think?

Spooky Ghosts

My kiddos and I had a fun afternoon of decorating for Halloween. 

With a few sheets of felt, clear wire and some crumbled up newspaper we created ghosts to hang from the tree in our front yard. 

So cute! And entirely too easy and the best part? FREE! We had all the materials already on hand. I love afternoons like this :)

Good Riddance

We've had a lot of dragonflies in our yard lately. I wasn't sure if I should be nervous around them because they do contain the words dragon and flies in their name so like I would any new friend (or insect) I encounter, I googled them.

Turns out they are indeed a friend because they eat mosquitos.  Carry on with all that eating dear dragonfly, carry on.

But this dragonfly raised a good point. You know it's time to cut down the dying flowers when a dragonfly can land on a weathered shell of one.  So that's what we did this past weekend- cut down the flowers.  And I have to say, IT FELT GOOD. 

Until next year I guess.

Read here, here and here for more on the pain in my ass hydrangeas. Oh alright, since I'm fair, here too.

Happy Anniversary

Narls just entered preschool; his first day was last week. Em's still getting up and going to daycare like she always does, but I still put a special first-day-of-school outfit on her too. As we were leaving, I thought it'd be a sweet tradition to get snap their picture on our porch the morning of each of their first day of schools...

So here is 2010's.

That got me reminiscing about all of the great memories we've made on our front porch during our first year in our home.

Memories of Clay & Ami date nights.

Chubby babies in undies waiting for me to get the mail.

And afternoons of new shoes.

And now a memory of us, celebrating our first anniversary in our beautiful home.

Hard to believe THIS was only one year ago.

A Year's Worth of Finished Projects

We've been working hard at our casa this past week, getting our garage ready for winter and also completing our last project of our first year owning our home. If you'd like to see other projects we've finished in the eleven months and two weeks that we've owned our house, then click here to see Narls' bedroom, here to see Emerson's nursery, here to see the kitchen & dining room and here to see the main bathroom.

 

Sadly I don't have any before pictures of the garage, but the whole back wall was filled with boxed that we still hadn't unpacked from when we moved into our house almost exactly one year ago (the boxes you see in the picture are unopen beer from Clay's beer-of-the-month club). We unpacked the remaining moving boxes- using the three pile method consisting of Put Away, Throw Away and Give Away -and moved the majority of the kids' playthings and bikes into the shed for the winter.

We've had this old beer fridge in our garage since we moved in and we've never used it. So we put an ad in Craigslist saying it was free if someone wanted to come get it and it was gone within the hour.

Our next plan of action is to move the deep freezer down into the basement and we'd have the entire garage to house both cars all winter (which is nice since we just traded in our minivan for a Ford Edge).

Next summer we hope to get the garage walls dry-walled; right now I'm just thankful to have the last of the boxes unpacked and put away.

I Wish You Could *Smell* This Post

...because it smells like sunshine and summertime.  For as much as I've been complaining about these hydrangeas and telling anyone who would listen about how I'm going to dig them up the first chance I get, there hasn't been one day this summer that a blossom hasn't sat on our dining room table. They really are beautiful.

The Rain is Bringing My Hydrangeas Down

Apparently our hydrangeas hate rain.  We've had a couple heavy rainstorms come through and it has completely floored these flowers.  I know nothing about plants and landscaping so I googled to see if maybe they're going to die now and I guess this is a common issue because their blooms are so big and heavy.  Doesn't sound they're going to be able to lift themselves back up either so we have to build this support system thingy (similar to a fence) underneath them. Fabulous.

Growing Like Weeds

The hydrangeas are growing like weeds (which coincidently, so is my daughter) and their blooms are absolutely lovely.

Pool Pity

Despite my last pool update, we have most definitely NOT been swimming our hearts out over here. It's been determined that there is a leak in the lining of the pool which lowers the water level to below the skimmer on a daily basis.  We called a man who can fix it, but he requires that the pool's chemicals be balanced for swimming.  Because of our leak, we're constantly adding water from our well to fill it (you need your pool's water level to be above the skimmer at all times for the filter system to work correctly) and thus we add more chemicals and we can't get them balanced because one chemical has to "sit" for 24 hours and in that time period all the water has leaked out.  YOU ARE KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW RIGHT?

And then last night one of the hose clamps snapped apart, again, for the third time, sending water shooting from the now unhinged hose and you guessed it, Clay and I are ready to deconstruct the pool and call it good. 

Happy Fourth of July

We had an awesome Fourth of July here at home.  We watched fireworks with our friends Saturday night and Sunday we relaxed, grilled some steaks, played in the backyard, lit sparklers and roasted marshmallows.

Pool Party!

Ok so maybe my title is a little presumptuous because our pool isn't quite ready for swimmers but HOLY GEES IT ALMOST IS.  Excuse my excitement; it's been hot here and mama's ready to swim.

This is what we started with at the beginning of the week:

And here is where we are now:

Yup it's cold, but it's clear and blue. We are in the process vacuuming up the last of the debris from the pool floor and we should be swimming (ok, floating in my case) by week's end.

Team Flowers

We had our first um, issue?, with a neighbor since buying our house last September.  A neighbor whom we've have yet to meet came over to tell us that the stray leafy thing you see growing out from the hydrangeas is indeed a weed and should most definitely be cut down.  Really lady?  Rude.  I told her I was considering cutting all these hydrangeas up anyway and she turned three shades of green; I'd say she's Team Flowers with Clay.

It's A Jungle Out There

The hydrangeas and lilies are starting to bloom and I'm going to be completely honest here, they're also starting to overwhelm me.  I wish they were neat and tidy and ... square.  And smaller.  The hydrangea bushes are literally taller than Emerson. Are they supposed to be this tall? Clay and I are in a heated debate at the moment over these flowers; I'd like to dig them all up and just have grass. Heck, I'd even settle for just the rocks. But Clay enjoys these wild plants and wants to keep them.  I told him he's a plant away from being that guy in the neighborhood yelling at those "crazy kids" to "keep off the grass".

Hammock Love

We may not have any patio furniture or even a picnic table yet, but we got a hammock! And we love it.

My Yard Boys

While I do get tired of actually doing the yard work, I never get tired of watching my boys do it.

Pool Time

Well we got one pool open: the small easy kid pool.  I have no idea when we'll get the big hard main pool open because we have that whole we've never owned a pool and have no idea what we're doing thing standing in our way.  

Clever Adress Display

How awesome is this idea from Do It Yourself?  Having your address displayed on your front porch pillows is so charming and sweet and I'm completely loving it.

Happiness is a Driveway?

I knew when we bought our house that there were many things I'd love about it: all the space, the pool, the yard, the garage. The driveway? Meh, never really gave that area much thought until yesterday.  My family spent a considerable amount of time in our driveway creating true works of art.  Wanna see?

Yard Work

I've never done so much yard work in all of my life. It never stops. Every weekend we're mowing the yard and we even bought some more flowers to add to our walkway near the porch.  I'm looking up the current rates for a yard boy as I type because mama needs to spend her weekend's napping, not gardening.