No More Monkey Grass

We have officially rid our yard of the crazy, uncontrollable monkey grass! Take a look:

Before:

After:



Before:



Better picture of the rock:

Tomorrow will involve trimming the front hedges and spreading the rest of the mulch.

Yard work is not fun. Fo' sho'.

River Rock

We received our big shipment yesterday! Two tons of mulch, three tons of river rock and 55 bales of pinestraw…it sounds like a lot, but it actually isn’t.

Last night, Shane and I spread the river rock in the area in front of the driveway:
Before:

After:







The pictures are dark, but you get the point. I will try to get some better shots in the daylight. Also, the rock looks a little orange, but I think that is the cast off from the porch light.

I am very pleased with the turnout – what do ya’ll think? This area gets very little sun, so grass isn’t an option, and the rock provides great erosion control. You will notice that the rock stops right before the azalea bushes on the left (which Shane and I butchered trimmed on Sunday, in the rain), which we had intended to also be rock. But after seeing it, I think that we could get some bigger cobblestones or some kind of landscaping border, cordon off the rock, build up the azalea beds a little, and use black mulch over there. Not sure…just tossing around some ideas. Bottom line is that we don’t want to have to spread any more rock around – that really sucked (for Shane).

Our goal is to not spend our entire Memorial Day weekend landscaping, so we are going to try to do a little bit each night this week. I believe that Tuesday night will consist of ripping out the crazy monkey grass in the front beds and spreading the mulch. We won’t have enough mulch to cover the entire area, so I’ll have to order even more. Who thought that a TON of something was a lot? This girl did…but apparently I was wrong.

Ready for the Weekend

I am so ready for the weekend…for the first time in over a month, we are not planning to work on the deck all weekend, we aren’t sick, and we don’t have any plans…other than to relax and hang out. Ahhhh! We are planning to get started on the yard on Sunday…but more of a prep job for these new elements:

That’s right! I ordered river rock for in front of the driveway, pinestraw for the backyard, and mulch for the front beds! I’m unusually excited about yard work. We'll see if this excitement continues after the cocktails that I plan on consuming tonight...

Have a great weekend everyone!

Mid-Month Goal Check-In

Let’s see how I’m faring on day 14 of this month…and by the way, I do recognize that this isn’t exactly mid-month, but close enough.

1. Finish reading Breaking Dawn – Currently on page 487…almost done.


2. Organize office files – Not done.


3. Paint front door – If it will stop raining long enough, I plan to paint the front door black on Sunday.


4. Paint kitchen trim – I’m dreading this…but I’ll try for Saturday.


5. Paint kitchen and bathroom ceilings – I’ll do this when I paint the kitchen trim.


6. Paint master bath and shower room – More than likely, this is going to roll to June.


7. Get bamboo shade for kitchen – need to go to Wal-Mart, because they are the cheapest there, but the closest one to my house is absolutely frightening…and SO FAR down the East/West connector that I have to bring a snack and fill up twice.


8. Sign up for 401K – So, I’ll just be honest that this goal basically equates to “Give away money out of your paycheck so that you can live on meager paychecks when your 70.” Not too anxious to knock this one out, but I did receive my PIN in the mail the other day.


9. Figure out Breck medical bills – Yeah, again…’Give away money to a place whose debt collectors rarely call, and that my stupid insurance should have covered at 100% anyway.’ Enter the Michael Moore ‘Sicko’ movie…


10. Make 1 new piece of jewelry – Yep, I’m going to do this. I’m thinking of something like this:
    
    Love that yellow!

Also, I’ve ‘ordered’ some stuff for the yard that will be delivered on Monday…EXCITING! And the type of stuff that I ordered can’t just sit around, so that means that landscaping the entire yard is on the calendar and within our sight!

Holes & Camelbaks

Our house’s holes have been repaired…thank god! Justin came by last week and repaired three holes: the huge gaping one on the side, one under the shingles in the back and one under the shingles in the front. I have no idea how a rodent or pest would be able to know that there was an entry point under the shingles, but I’m definitely glad that it’s fixed. Neither of us has been in the attic to see what’s going on up there, but on a good note – we don’t smell anything, which means that nothing is dead up there. Awesome.

On a side note, Shane and I bought these new Camelbak water containers this weekend and I absolutely love it. It has a straw in it which makes it so much easier to drink my 64 ounces, but you have to bite down on the straw and then suck…it’s like a little game that makes drinking water fun.

I’m planning to update on my goals tomorrow…a mid-month check-in. It’s going to be exciting and you won’t want to miss it. :)

Sicko

Must-watch movie alert! I'll preface this by saying that I am NOT a Michael Moore fan, and a staunch Republican to boot, but after Shane's recommendation to watch this movie...I'm definitely a fan of Michael Moore's 'Sicko' documentary. In a nutshell, this documentary is about the American vs. foreign health care systems and it is a huge eye-opener. Why are people denied coverage? Doesn't my HMO have my best interest in mind? I don't know that I'll completely change my political views, but maybe Hilary wasn't as big of an idiot as I thought...


I know that this movie is currently running on The Movie Channel, but if you don't have this channel - go rent it. Now.

Cable: Don’t Call a Professional…

Because you can do it yourself! This story is a little old, but I was just looking through some pics and realized that I never shared the story of how Shane and I, mostly Shane, rerouted the cable in our living room.

The problem started out as a cable wire taped to walls and fished over to the other side of the room. The solution began with calling Charter Cable to come out and move the cable line under the house so that it ‘poked’ out in the right spot. They basically just grabbed a really long piece of cable, ran it around the house (in the backyard) and popped it through an existing cable hole through the brick. It had special tools to fish that through…foreshadowing.

The cable line that was buried a good 1 centimeter in the backyard was quickly dug up, excuse me, dusted off, by Beau and Brother and chewed until we had no cable in the living room. No cable on a NASCAR Sunday is not a good thing in my house…Shane has to watch the race in the bedroom – unacceptable.

So, Shane decides that instead of calling Charter and paying another $85 for them to do crap work, he would get under the house and figure out how to re-route the cable. (Our house is a crawlspace and all of our cable wires are run underneath the house using a splitter and holes drilled in the floors…very complex setup.) He pulls the remaining piece of cable from the living room through the pre-existing hole and goes into the crawlspace and disconnects that piece from the splitter. Then, he puts on a new cable, runs the wire through one of our crawlspace vents (yes, it looks like a vent that would be in your floor – but it is on the side of our house) and up through that pre-existing hole again. What happens? Well, the dogs find that and chew it. They were about a hairs length away from the pound at this point.

And the conclusion of this story, finally, is that we run another cable the same way (through the vent), and put stuff in front of it so that the dogs can’t get it. We knew we were building a deck so why bother trying to figure out a new way to do this? I’ll tell the rest of this in pics...

Drilling a hole from the outside to the inside of the house, because we needed a bigger hole to get through and didn’t have the proper ‘fishing tools.’

Using the non-proper fishing tool (which is the wand from our blinds, duct taped to the cable and pulled through) to fish the wire in.

Our completed product, with a big gaping space both inside and outside (we welcome all critters!), but overall a very conveniently and cheap cable line move.

Don’t try this at home. Which I’m sure you wouldn’t, but seriously – don’t.

Deck: Still In Progress

Yep, rolling into a month of deck construction. It has taken a LOT longer than I anticipated, which I believe that I have mentioned before, but I can really see why. It takes a lot of measuring, and leveling, and squaring, and on and on and on...too much math for me. I can't even add.

Items complete:

• Deck boards (the actual structure)
• Handrails
• Balisters on 3/4 of the deck
• Stairs

Still to be completed:

• Stair handrails and balisters
• Gates
• Plastic sheeting under the deck
• Side door handrails and balisters
• Mailbox

I'll hopefully have pics soon! Stay tuned!

Snake-less

So our snake wrangler, Justin, who comes to our house every other day to check on our snake problem, has officially announced our home snake-free, but he has noticed an increase in ‘rodent activity.’ His plan is to patch all of the holes (I say ‘all the holes,’ but there are only like three) by the end of the week and start catching ‘things’ after that. He will continue to come back every other day because Shane, nor I, will be touching any rat traps, or excavating dead mice, or even going in the attic for that matter. We now both have an attic phobia.

When Justin was over yesterday, he set bait stations in the backyard, which has proved to be a pain because we now can’t just let the dogs roam out there (but I’ll TOTALLY take that over having rats). I assume that there is rat poison in the bait station and that just doesn’t seem to be a good situation. I would be embarrassed of having ‘rat stations’ in my backyard, but I don’t even think that my next door neighbors would notice…they are, well…they suck. Shane and I attempted to give them the heads up on the snake in the attic last week...the guy came out of his side door (we weren’t sure if he spoke English) and Shane and I said ‘Hey!’ You know the ‘Hey!’ that ends in a high pitch tone indicating that you would like to say something else after that? Well he responds ‘Hey’ and goes inside and slams the door behind him. Whatever dude, Sammy is packing his spend the night bag and coming over.

May Goals

So, since my goal completion rate for April was a measly 37.5%, I’m going to continue to list my monthly goals in an effort to get better. I’m shooting for at least an 80% completion rate…yikes. Here they are:

May Goals

1. Finish reading Breaking Dawn
2. Organize office files
3. Paint front door
4. Paint kitchen trim
5. Paint kitchen and bathroom ceilings
6. Paint master bath and shower room
7. Get bamboo shade for kitchen
8. Sign up for 401K
9. Figure out Breck medical bills
10. Make 1 new piece of jewelry
    

You will notice that some items have been scaled back. I have the tendency of shooting for the moon on things like this, so hopefully this is more realistic and complete-able…that’s not a word.

April Goals: What Did We Accomplish?

Let's take a look at how well I did on last month's goals...

1. Finish reading Eclipse and Breaking Dawn – I finished Eclipse and am half way through Breaking Dawn. I’ve got to be honest that the ‘new addition’ that came along in the book almost lost me…I mean, really? Really?


2. Organize office files – Didn’t happen. Moving this to May’s goals.


3. Build new deck – Well, the weekend project is officially going on three weeks. It should be done this weekend, so I’m going to say ‘Mission Accomplished’ on this one.


4. Paint hallway bath and mirror – Done! I’ll share pics next week.


5. Paint kitchen trim – Nope. Moving this to May’s goals, as well.


6. Develop front and back yard landscaping plan – Done! Take a look at them here.


7. Blog 5 days per week – Ha! I blogged a total of 14 times in April…coming to a total of 2.14 times per week. I’ll be better in May.


8. Get bamboo shade for kitchen – Couldn't find one...moving to May.


9. Sign up for 401K – Attempted. I tried to sign up and didn’t have my PIN, so they are mailing a new one to me…I knew I shouldn’t have waited until April 29 to move on this one!


10. Figure out Breck medical bills – I’ve already put this off for 15 months…what’s one more?!?


11. Make 3 new pieces of jewelry – I have some ideas…but no finished pieces.


12. Send security certificate to HOI – Done! Saved a whopping $42 a year on my homeowners insurance. Woot Woot!

So, 4.5 out of 12 isn't bad...actually, yeah, it is. I'm going to kick butt and take names in May...I can feel it!

And this is for Shane, just because. Because it's TOTALLY true. Love ya, mean it!

Snakes On A Plane

Not really…snakes in my attic. That’s right. No joke. I swear. I. KNOW.

Shane got up in the attic Thursday afternoon to put a suitcase away and there was a nice little snake coiled up on the tailgate chairs that lie right inside the attic. Shane freaked, as would I, jumped down, slammed the attic door closed and got in his car and left. Ha Ha! He then called me:

Stacy: Hello?
Shane: Hey babe.
Stacy: Hey.
Shane: How is your day?
Stacy: Pretty good…I’d give it a 7.
Shane: Oh, good.
Stacy: How is your day going so far?
Shane: Well, mine is probably going to be a 2 before it’s done.
Stacy: Why’s that?
Shane: Well, because we have a snake in the attic.
Stacy: WHAT?!?!? Are you freaking kidding me? Oh my god….where at? How did you find it?
(He then tells the story)
Stacy: Oh my god…we’re selling the house. I mean, what are we going to do???
Shane: Well, I found a company that will come out and get it.
Stacy: Have you called them yet? You need to hang up right now with me and call them…
Shane: Okay.

He hangs up and calls Tru-Tech (in case anyone else experiences this horrible, horrible nightmare) and they send out a tech to remove the snake. In the meantime, back at work, I’m completely distracted, can barely even remember what I’m working on, and start to google…dun dun dun. I found this, this and this.

Really, really long story short – the guy, who is super smart and VERY sweet, gets in the attic and doesn’t find anything. When I say doesn’t find anything – I mean doesn’t actually find the snake that Shane saw sitting in there hours before that, BUT he does find evidence of ‘several’ other snakes inhabiting the attic as well as evidence of ‘rodents.’ Basically, he suspected that the snake was a rat snake…a snake that eats rats…he would have no other business in my attic other than to…well, eat rats. I have never, ever, ever, ever seen ANY evidence of a rat in my house. We have chipmunks, sure, but Chip and Dale do not carry the stigma or general flesh-eating and plague-causing diseases that rats carry, so they’re cool.

But this is our fault. When we had the house inspected a year ago, our inspector told us that there was a hole in the side of the house that allowed access to the attic. Apparently some power hookups had been moved and the holes had never been fixed. Well, I’m not going to spend money to fix holes when I need granite countertops! Duh.
Justin, the snake handler, sets some traps and tells us not to worry and that he’ll be back the next day. Right. I slept maybe 2 hours that night…I can swear at one point there was a snake dangling from the ceiling, coiled in my hair, hiding at the foot of my bed and laying across my face. I. Swear.

Well, when Justin comes back the next day to check the traps…nothing. As he is climbing out of the attic, he rests his hand on one of the tailgate chairs and feels the snake in the bag. He yells for me to get a bucket or a trash bag – but what do I do? I run around my kitchen like I had never been there before. I was looking for a bucket, knowing that I don’t have one, and then I couldn’t remember where I kept my trash bags. In times of stress, I always stay in control. Finally, I pull myself together and get him a bag. With that said, I’d like to formally introduce Sammy the Snake! He lives (lived) in the attic at Honeysuckle Drive, loves warm places and ratty snacks, originally hails from a nearby field but decided to pursue other options when he heard about the gaping hole in the side of local home where he could live a life of carefree whimsy and eat without even having to hunt.

Note: Sammy has been relocated back to his field. None of his friends have been found but we will never give up our search…or our hope.

Snake Handling...

On my way home to wrangle snakes...snakes and home in the same sentence...I'll update later.

April Goal #6

April’s #6 goal can officially be striked off the list. Well, not completely gone because it needs to be accounted for, but let’s put a small check out beside it.

Below are the front, back and side yard landscaping plans for Honeysuckle. I know…horticultural design, and drawing in general, are my calling in life – but unfortunately, my talents are needed elsewhere.

Let’s first examine the front yard (click to make larger):

Not much is changing due to budget overages on the deck (who knew we would need so many new tools?). So this will involve mulching around the two big trees, ripping out the random onions (yeah, they’re everywhere) and monkey grass from the beds by the sidewalk and laying mulch around the bushes that are currently planted there. I also threw in some potted plants for color on the steps. The right side of the house will be pine straw, but it could be mulch depending on how much we can have delivered. The mulch will be black (to compliment the black shutters and newly painted black front door.)

The side yard is a difficult area. There are two huge oak trees that shade the entire area, making grass non-existent and non-growable. We do, however, have a very lovely moss garden. I want to put black mulch around the trees, again digging up all of the monkey grass. There is also a random azalea planted down the slope next to the street that will be coming out. The biggest change will be the area that once housed the infamous handicap ramp. Another oak shades this area, so we have decided to lay rock here. I can’t decide if I want to put permanent potters at the foot of the driveway or build an elevated bed for flowers…not sure.

The backyard is where it’s at…in terms of work - it CERTAINLY isn’t ‘where it’s at’ for the party. This plan includes laying pine straw around the entire perimeter of the yard, planting Leland Cypresses around the back of the yard to create privacy, and shrubs around the fence line that faces the road as well as around the deck. We’ll also be either seeding for grass in the middle or laying Fescue sod, depending on the price.

We hope to get a lot of the backyard cleanup done this weekend…any volunteers? Any advice for shrubs? Let me know!

Happy Earth Day!

Since we are doing so much work outside, I figured that I would acknowledge Earth Day! Yay for dirt and flowers and outside stuff...(not much of an outdoorsey girl, so bear with me.) I also don't really have any updates, so this blog post is a mere attempt to meet my quota. Wonk wonk.

BTW - my plants from Ikea are still alive and kickin'! See?

AND, I had to move my podiatry appointment again to tomorrow afternoon. I'll let you know what they have to say about my disgusting bunion.

Deck In Progress

"The Ramp"...before:

And then "The Ramp" was gone:

Demolition of the deck:

No more deck:

Building the new deck:

We aren't quite finished, so we'll be working on it again this weekend. I say 'we,' but I really mean Matt and Shane. :)

Big thanks to Matt, the master deck builder, for helping us out with this, and my dad, Greta, Tanner and my brothers for helping out yesterday! We'll all be enjoying a celebratory beer on this deck next weekend...Stay tuned.

Off to NYC....

Leaving today to head to NYC…not a big fan of the city, so I’m not really excited, but I AM excited that our new deck is being built this weekend!!! Shane and his friend, Matt, will be starting on Friday and hope to have everything complete by Sunday. I cannot wait to pull in the driveway on Friday night and not see a handicap ramp, painted wood, or unsafe construction (our current deck just sits on bricks on the ground…it isn’t that sturdy).

On another note, NYC weather isn’t looking that hot, literally:

I was determined not to bring a jacket, but it looks like I’m going to be miserable if not…sigh.

I hope that everyone has a great rest of the week! I’ll try to blog while I’m there, but let’s face it…I have a hard time blogging at home – much less while I’m traveling.

Pain in the Bunion

All of the power was out in the Dunwoody area on Monday, except for my building (of course!). So, when I showed up to my podiatrist appointment, there was no power, thus appointment cancelled. I admit, I was initially pissed. ‘Couldn’t they at least call me?’ Well, the phones were out…’Didn’t anybody have a cell phone?’ Yeah, but they couldn’t get on the computers to get your number…Oh, yeah. So, I decided to go shoe shopping for some new flats. I figured that I could use that time to try to do something good for my feet. Check out my new shoes (red shown below, but mine are black):

I will be in NYC Wednesday through Friday at the New York International Auto Show – and there is LOTS of walking involved…so hopefully these shoes will keep me a little more comfortable. I’ll keep you posted!

The Weekend Update

Hope that everyone had a great weekend! Shane and I did…

Friday: Got to catch up with some friends at the always yummy, El Ranchero. We then went for drinks at another Woodstock bar where, apparently, 50-year-old men go to try to cheat on their wives. We met some pretty skuzzy and extremely inappropriate dudes there…but they bought our drinks and then we promptly left. Ha!

Saturday: My allergies got the best of me. I woke up at 4 a.m. and could not stop sneezing so I took two Benadryl’s and went back to sleep. Well, Shane had to wake me up at 11 a.m. and I felt groggy until at least 4 p.m. Needless to say, we got a lot of TV and movie watching in. Later that afternoon we went over to a friend’s house to let their dog out and brought Beau and Brother to visit. You would think that my dogs are never allowed out of their crate because they are extremely spastic when they get to leave the house. They just ran laps around Dave and Jennie’s house while Abbey, their dog, just trotted around a little confused. When we got home we took them for a walk with their new collars…

I know that these collars look really scary and mean, but they are a necessity when walking B&B. Last week, Brother took off running so hard that he snapped the leash, leaving me in a cloud of dust behind him. Not good. So now they wear these and are lead on a 4’ leash. Research states that these leashes are an excellent communication tool for your dog as they learn to understand that you are the pack leader. Establish dominance – that’s how Cesar does it….

And Sunday: Happy Easter! Shane and I went to church with my fam and his fam and then out to lunch at California Dreaming. It was a really nice day and I’m glad that we were able to all get together…

We came home and got busy on the yard. I didn’t mention that last weekend Shane finally cut the grass (love ya!) and we started to manicure the area under this huge tree in our front yard (my mom thinks it a non-blooming apple tree).

I sprayed Roundup on all of the vines and crap that were underneath it, making a circle where we could lay mulch after everything died. So over the course of last week, everything died and it was now time to lay mulch. How much mulch? Um – 35 bags of it! For just the area under the tree…at $4 a bag – you do the math…geez! Funny part is that we still need about three more bags and Shane is going to stop and pick some up this afternoon. And the other funny part was that we had to load all of the mulch into Shane’s Honda….why is that funny? Because the trunk was almost dragging the ground from all the weight and I can only imagine what we looked like! LOL!

And today, I’m going to the podiatrist during lunch for them to have a looksey at my bunion. I know, gross. But it has become so painful over the past few days that I have to get it looked at…I’ll keep you posted – continue to wait with bated breath.

Mirror Transformation

Blogging twice in one day? That’s right…I have to meet my blogging goal during the first week of the month, at least!

So, a while back I told you about my bathroom mirror that Shane and I picked up at Kirklands. Well, we aren’t quite finished with it, but I’ve applied the primer and one coat of white paint. Take a look at the progress:

Not bad, huh? I’m seeing a lot of brush strokes right now, but I assume that as I continue to layer on the paint this will go away. Anyone have any tips?

Old Timey Pictures

There is nothing better, or prettier, or more unique than an old-timey picture. My aunt Linda sent me some a few weeks ago…Check these out:

My Nini Pat:

My Uncle Charles:

Me and Shane:

So cool, huh? I found this website on someone else’s blog…but cannot remember who! Sorry! And just a warning, the website is written in Japanese. Literally. Except for the ‘Browse’ button…so just find your pic, it will convert it, right click and save. Voila!

April Goals

Every spring, I tend to get really distracted. I have thoughts and dreams of doing spring cleaning and planting flowers and saving the world – and then never do because either A – my allergies are killing me and I don’t feel like doing anything or B – I just want to go sit outside and enjoy the nice weather.

With that being said, I’m establishing goals for this month and putting them here for the world to see. Hopefully this will keep me accountable:

1. Finish reading Eclipse and Breaking Dawn


2. Organize office files


3. Build new deck – scheduled for weekend of April 17


4. Paint hallway bath and mirror


5. Paint kitchen trim


6. Develop front and back yard landscaping plans


7. Blog 5 days per week


8. Get bamboo shade for kitchen


9. Sign up for 401K


10. Figure out Breck medical bills – got sick in January 2008 in Breckenridge…and never paid those medical bills. Ha!


11. Make 3 new pieces of jewelry


12. Send security certificate to HOI – you would think that a discount would get me in gear…apparently not.

There it is. I’m going to also put these in my new left hand column so that I can view them at least 5 times per week….because that is how many times I am blogging each week, right?

It's Fixed

Don't know about these colors....maybe I'm feeling the gray because it has been raining for like 12 days straight! I'll mess with it later...But I am loving my new third column!

I know...

I don't know what I've done to my blog...I was trying to add a column to the left and everything just went awry. I'll fix it tomorrow. This is what happens when I have to type in html code. Sigh.

Planting a Seed

Well, not really planting seeds, but does buying plants at IKEA count?

I made a trip over to IKEA on Monday (had the day off – so nice) to look for some new pillows for the couch and, of course, came out with that plus 38 other items. Two of those being some needed greenery for the house…

Check out my new Dragon Tree ($6.99 at IKEA, ba lee dat):
The best thing about this tree is that you hardly ever have to water it. That is my kind of tree – minimal water, minimal attention, minimal light, minimal air.

And these are our new, pretty little succulents ($2.99 each at IKEA):
What is a succulent? Well, yet another plant that doesn’t need water. It does need minimal light but as you can see by their new home on the kitchen windowsill – I still don’t have to do anything.

We shall see how these new leafy creatures fare in the Wilson/Carlisle household…it could get ugly with my brown thumb.