Winter is approaching!

When my mom was here she bought me some bulbs to plant before it gets cold. Well I went to plant them in the front flowerbed while she was here and found multiple layers of the plastic weed barrier and many inches of rocks. SO that of course brought about a project; which needs to be complete before it freezes here (the other morning it was in the high 30's). We ordered a sieve online and it came in over the weekend so Sunday and Monday (just me), and tonight (we) worked on getting the rocks out. We are putting aside the blue/grey slate rocks to use again, but getting rid of all the other rocks and adding it to our concrete pile for now (which will get hauled away eventually). Anyway we reached the halfway mark today!! Not sure if you can tell from the pictures. The little bush in the middle, it's roots were all intertwined in rocks, so hopefully it will do better now that I gave it some dirt to nest in.

I also picked up a little ornament for our yard! :0) Gotta love 50% off sales!

It says Harvest Greetings in case you can't read that.

Taking it Easy

As you have probably noticed, we've been taking a break from the whole 'house work'. My mom came to visit last Thurs through Tuesday. It was great to see her and have our very FIRST visitor in our new home. We think she really liked it, and I know she liked the fact that the house that is getting put up across the street is bigger and better, therefor our neighborhood is getting built up (woo hoo for our property value!) Also during her visit (well the last day) she got us some patio furniture. We did have a couple of fold up camping chairs out there, which was suiting us just fine except for the fact that the whole weekend my mom was here it was raining and she kept saying "I wish you just had some plastic chairs I could wipe down and sit down to have a smoke"... well her wish came true (the last day).

They're noting fancy, but will make due for now. Our deck is so big, it helps to have something out there. And besides we got the whole set for $15 at the thrift store!!!

Today we did get back to a few house chores. Kyle lowered the blade on our reel lawn mower and mowed the yard (the front, not the sod yet). We could actually tell it got mowed. All the other times you couldn't really tell we even went over it... it helped to lower the blade. That took a total of about 10 minutes (we have a small yard, lol).

I got the kitchen walls washed, which was a PITA! I was using hot/boiling water, which worked, just scolded my hands. I was wearing gloves, but it wasn't like they were insulated. Hopefully it got all the goo off and we can putty, sand and prime in the next few days. We've picked out the paint we want for it, but haven't purchased it yet, not sure when we really want to get it done. We mainly want to get the coat of prime on to fix where the wallpaper pulled some of the drywall off.

I also did laundry today and hung the sheets out to dry! I was amazed how fast it was before they were dry, it took no time at all AND we saved electricity by not using the dryer!! YIPEE

Speaking of being green, our compost is going very well, the bottom is already turning into dirt! It's great to be able to have a place to throw weeds, random twigs from all the trees in our yard (btw we don't have a tree in our yard, but we get sticks, funny eh?), and any kitchen scraps we have (egg shells, veggies that went bad before we had a chance to eat them, coffee & tea grinds, banana peels and apple cores).

Well that's about it, off to registry land :0) Oh the joys of wedding planning! (which I've been able to start doing more of since the house work is winding down...)

The little culprit!

Alright I should probably start from the beginning of the story...

Our neighbor Cille (Francille) has a little tomato plant on her back porch on the side that is next to our house. We one day she was so excited about her one red tomato! She came back the next day and it was GONE all that was left was a little leaf that was on the top. Later in the week she noticed one of her green tomatoes gone.

Well a few days after we layed the sod I noticed something had been digging at the edge of my composter. I didn't think it was harpo because for one he's not really a digger and for two his paws have never been that dirty. So I brushed the dirt back into the hole and put the little piece of sod back in it's place. Well a few hours later it was MOVED!! This little culprit has made it's way into our yard as well!

Kyle and i put a stone there blocking the little hole this creature chewed in my composter and since then we haven't seen any activity. Until a day or so ago I noticed a little circular hole in our sod! That little sh!t is at it again!

The other day when I got home from work after parking in the garage I was walking up to the house and heard the fence rattle between Cille's house and ours... so I ran over to see if I could catch this little devil. No luck, I think he ran under Cille's deck.

Well tonight I looked out the window to check on our sprinkler to see if it was done watering or not and THERE HE WAS!!!!! He wasn't on the sod but over to the side with a HUGE acorn looking thing in his mouth, and he was digging at the ground (not on the sod or I would have shot him) (with what I dunno). Anyway this damn little squirrel has caused a heep of trouble in our backyards... who knows what he's doing to our other neighbors. And all my life I thought squirrels were so cute and I'd love to watch them eat at my grandfathers.... but low and behold squirrels are just like children... cute and adorable but little stinkers deep down!

Grey to GREEN!!

We have GRASS!!

I picked up the sod today!!! I was going to get 21 rolls but my jeep couldn't handle anymore than 18, it was getting pretty low to my tires... but it looks like 18 did just fine for now. We only had to bust up a little more to get it all in. I think we are done busting for the season...now hopefully someone will come pick up the rest of the concrete :0)

Here are the pictures I took today: [I'm going to make a little collage of the progress we have made in the next post :0)