Getting Ready for Warm Weather

The weather here has been simply amazing!  Warm days, chill nights, and we even had a thunderstorm last night!

Miss Fana approves of both the extra bird feeder outside the window and of the warm weather.

 With this warm weather has come a bee that found it's way into my bonnet.  My house must be perfect now!  (well not really perfect but clean and tidy).  There nothing to chase away the winter blues than to rearrange furniture and tidy things up a bit.  So, my little family has been working both inside and outside to get things ready for the hosting (because we host quite a bit during the summer) that is soon to come!

The fire ring we put in outside is very nice!

As far as the outside goes, we've put in the feeders (squirrel/bird/and a humming bird one new this year) and filled them.  We also have started to move the patio furniture out.  I've got my sitting spot for pictures early in the morning :)  Below are the first fruits of my morning picture taking :D

My first squirrel friend.

My first bird friend.

A word of advise, if you are having problems with squirrels in your bird feeders, try hanging the bird feeder up on one of those smooth hook poles.  I watched, in dismay, as the one I had was too high for Mr. Squirrel and his climbing attempts led to him sliding down the pole multiple times.  (I feel bad because he was trying to get into the squirrel swing).

My husband standing in front of the pruned stick pile.

The biggest thing of work we've been doing (well the boys have been doing) is trimming trees.  See, our back yard was lined with junk/dead trees that kept pretty much all light out.  What little "grass" there is out there is mostly mold and moss.  In preparation for my garden though, these sweet boys have been thinning and cutting down some of these trees (with the landlord's permission of course!)  Turns out that fire pit is going to get used a lot!

The spring wreath I made to replace the fall one.

I finally made a new wreath for my door.  I think it turned out amazing!  If anyone is interested, maybe I'll do a wreath tutorial some time :)  I think they are a lot of fun to make and the one above cost $10.00 when I had finished buying all the supplies (versus the $50 I've seen nice big ones go for).

The painting I bought as a kid at a garage sale.

Inside, we've started room by room with the spring cleaning.  This started with my bedroom (which is in the very front of the house creepily enough).  I finally got around to hanging wall art up on the walls.  In the process of this, I realized how blank they still look so I guess I'm going to have to get more prints up in there.

A view from the bedroom door.

 

The plant stand in the corner of the room.

The view from in front of the plant stand.  I'm hoping to put a real nightstand there.

As you can see, I moved my plant stand (that poor fellow moves all the time..and to think I garbage picked him!) into the room so I could have plants in there.  I also rotated my bed so our feet are facing the window instead of one of our sides.  I think I like the new layout and flipping the mattress made it feel springy again (since the arrangement is still so new it feels slightly like a hotel room).  All in all, I think we'll be really happy with these changes.

The door way and beginning of the living room.

The next room we've perfected has been the living room.  We put my magazine holder by the couch (previously another of my "floater" furniture pieces) and I think it really fits there nicely.

The end of one of the couches.

The end of the other couch.

Kyokin and Harclave each have to have opposite ends of the couch.














The Sailor Moon posters were birthday presents from
my Sailor Moon themed birthday party!

The table in front of and the tv.

Not too much has changed in the living room overall.  It was really more of a straightening and moving some stuff down stairs (I am not looking forward to getting to there with the cleaning).  The animals seem to like the new layouts quite a bit though.  I also finally remembered that I was given Easter decorations a few years back!  This is the first year since I was given them that they have made their way out and about the house!

The plants are doing well (I'm planning on updating about them on Friday so they have the chance to grow a bit more!).  I can see the beginnings of flowers peeking up in the lilies.  I also discovered that the front garden bed has a bit of a mystery plant peeking up.  I feel like my weekend was very productive!  I hope everyone else had a good (and warm) weekend :)  I'll see you folks again soon with my plant baby updates (and some pictures of coasters too!).

Weather, Weather, and more Weather

Well, I believe the zucchinis have produced their final fruits.  The other thing I learned this week in gardening is that honeydew plants are cousins of cucumbers.  So that cucumber disease that I couldn't find a treatment for online spread to my honeydew :(  I've gotten a handful of melons, but I don't think I'll be getting many more.  The tomatoes are growing well as well as the bell peppers and jalapenos finally started taking off.

The weather around here has been crazy!



This is from a storm near my mother in laws house.  We kidnapped her puppies so our little  guy would have playmates for a week.  It ended up being alot of fun for us and the dogs :)  But when we went and picked up the pups, she was going on day 2 of no power.  That being said, adding extra puppies to my schedule (it's already been pretty packed) made internet and pictures all but impossible.  For the pictures it didn't really matter though.  It's been drizzling rain here.  No cool lightening or thunder where we live, just rain.  I'm sure the garden loves it though! 

That being said, I have been working on reading Captivating and taking notes.  It's such a good book!  Other than that, I've been working on LARP rulebook pieces.  I finished a pair of socks.  The yarn is really awesome.  It's a Hobby Lobby home brand, but it's a wool mix (I tend to be allergic to wool occasionally) that I can wear!  They are so nice and soft and warm.  I'm going to have to pick up more yarn so I make me some more!  My current knitting project is a pair of Norwegian mittens.  My hubby picked me up a book called Norwegian Handknits that's full of awesome designs.  The only sad part is that it looks like my first pair of mittens will be too small for me.  Well, it's a good Christmas gift in the making then, right? 

I just got a group of my good friends together and we're making a knitting circle.  I'm really excited about this and we're going to meet for the first time next Wed.  I hope everything goes well because this will  be fun if it does :).  One of my friends is going to pick up Letters to Juliet (I think that's what it's called) for us to watch while we craft!

Now, I did want to take a minute and mention this.  I've recently discovered Scentsy and the woman who's introduced me to it is super nice.  I'd like to take this chance to direct you to her and encourage you to look around.  her website is here.  She does a scent of the month club to let you sample things and is over all just really nice.  I'll let you all know how we like our products (we loved our samples) when they come in!

Well, I know it doesn't seem like much, but besides running around this has been what I've been up to.  Today we're getting NomNoms (awesome cupcakes by us) to take to my husband's step brother and I'm sure we'll visit with them all for a little while before coming home.  Next weekend we go to the Ren Faire so I'll take lots of pretty pictures to share ^.^  Have a blessed and safe week everyone!

Overdue Update ((July 2, 2011 storm update!)

Sorry for the long overdue nature of this update.  My hubby took time off for the 4th giving him essentially a five day weekend.  Of course, he ended up sick for the entire time and I ended up sick towards the end of it.  So finding time and motivation has been a little difficult :( . 



July 2, 2011 a big storm moved through!  They had predicted rain for us, but nothing like this!

Hail falling in front of our house.

A picture of the melting hail. 

 The wind was blowing rain and hail so hard at points that we couldn't see out our front door!  The hail was on average golf ball size.  Of course, not thinking fast enough or of pictures, I didn't grab my camera until the worst of the storm was over.  Half way through the storm we went out and tried to do save work on the garden.  All of our potato and zucchini plants were flattened to the ground.  Thankfully we had just put cages around our tomatoes and the honeydew so those were a bit more protected. 

Here are some pictures of the damage from the storm:

Our onions were pummeled and many lost shoots to the storm like this one did.

The types of holes the hail left in the cucumber leaves.

You can see some of the holes in the zucchini leaves.  The zucchinis had to be tied up to support them.

There were downed branches everywhere when we drove around.  Here's one at a local gas station.

There were whole sections of town without power (thankfully we missed that part) but some people are still cleaning up the mess this storm made!  There were no tornadoes in our area, but sirens did go off for other counties near us I believe.

The sky took on a weird butter/green color after the storm.

After the storm the sky was a weird butter/green mix color and everything was cast in this creepy light.  My husband loved it because he said it felt like special effects.  As night fell, another part of the storm moved over us (but didn't hit us) so we got quite the lightening show for once!

Lightening from that night.

Other than illness our long weekend was good.  We spent a lot of time together.  We did light fireworks off in the backyard (because what would the 4th be if you didn't?)  My husband bought some mammoth smoke bombs for the larp (because they are really long smoke bombs) and decided to test them.  He is a fireworks pro and has done this man times, but as he lit it and threw it, the smoke bomb (let me repeat smoke bomb) exploded and set his clothes on fire.  Thankfully he was not hurt he just lost a shirt and a pair of shorts.  (they were new, but at least he is okay, right?)  The rest of the evening went smoothly.

With us being sick and not much to do, I did get to finish my quilt!  Now I've started my husbands.  I'll be posting more details on that at my crafting blog http://somethingcraftythiswaycomes.blogspot.com/

Here are some pretty fireworks to leave you all with!  Until I feel better and take pictures of the garden to update with, be safe and have fun :)

Fountain Fireworks