Yard Work

I've been tootling around in the yard a lot lately. I removed all the black widow hidey-hole cacti on the side of the house yesterday.
I recently found myself with $20, so off I went to Home Depot. Here's what I came up with today:

I set the last of my stones, then dug a shallow trench around them all. Next I poured decomposed granite in the trench. It has a nice golden sparkle to it. What's left of the mulch from last year is sun-bleached and sparse. A new layer of black mulch (in the skinny part of the yard) really jazzed it up a notch. Click here to see what it looked like last week.

The small space between the path and the corner river rocks was just screaming to be a flower bed. The front yard faces East and gets hours upon hours of direct sunlight. Plant requirements: low-lying, minimal-water, 6+ hours of sun. It was slim pickins. I bought stonecrop (perennial) and moss roses (annual.)

I used the rest of the mulch on the larger part of the yard- sort of made a flowerbed at the front around my rock rose sproutlings. I probably need three more bags to complete the yard. I'll need to get some edging to border the path so the granite doesn't wash away, and I need a few more river rocks to stop the erosion problem. All in all, it's really starting to come together.

Happy House-iversary!

We became home owners about a year ago! Woo Hoo!
My posts have been fewer and further between, but I guess that comes with the territory. There's less to report the longer you live somewhere.

I think today I'll just do some (overdue) updates:

Master Bathroom
They finally finished the shower. I bought new bath mats to celebrate: muted turquoisey colors- super soft. Someday I'll paint in there- it amazes me how much paint can change a room.

Eventually I want to get some shallow cabinets to set into the wall behind the door (given that there's not any plumbing/wiring issues in there.) I'd like to do a floor to ceiling built-in cabinet, and an additional "medicine cabinet" on the short part over the counter. Nothing fancy, no mirrors, just a simple wood cabinet. I'll probably paint it whatever color we do on the walls. It's a small room and I don't want it to feel crowded. The bathroom door really gets in the way- as does the closet door, which is in the hall just out of view- plus our bedroom door opens into the same area. We want to replace the bath and closet doors with pocket doors- the kind that slide into the wall. But we'll only do that if we end up staying here a long time, seeing as building the walls out to allow for door clearance will come with a hefty price tag.

Kitchen

In the months of negotiating our shower repair, they offered us a new faucet for the kitchen. We decided on this extra tall curvy one- the spray head pulls out of the spout so my 8 year old can conveniently fill the dog bowl... Went with a similar style in the built in soap pump- even though we don't use it.

Master Bedroom
We haven't purchased bedroom furniture yet. All our foldables are stored in laundry baskets. This works rather well, but tends to look unsightly when I'm showing off my house. This week I'd had enough of the clutter in there...

 I did some rearranging- now it feels more like a bedroom than an attic. I finally hung our painting, put away the excess music equipment, and did the best I could with the odds and ends.

Exterior
Here's what the yard looked like a year ago.

We were having an issue with the rain- it puddles up big time where the front steps meet the walkway- made it difficult to get into the house during a storm. 

 My solution was to lay a stone path from the porch to the higher part of the walk, next to where I park. I got the stones for free from the mountains where my mother lives. Laying them was excruciating! I think I need some pea gravel to lay between them.

The puddle that forms on the sidewalk is often very muddy, due to the erosion of my yard. Elsewhere in the neighborhood there are river rocks to help divert water, so I set about laying some near our walkway. Appears to be helping, though we could use a few more.

Our entire yard could really use another round of mulch and some flowers to spruce it up, but other than that it looks pretty good. Animals seem to like it...

Here's some itty, bitty, little sparrow hatchlings. I snapped the pic in a rare momma-less moment. I was terrified she'd swoop in and destroy me any second. This is the little stick tree in the back by our driveway. There's also a sparrow family living under the one of the front eaves of the house. I found one of their babies in our yard last month, squawking for his mommy.

This is a HUGE cocoon in my rose bush.  Our front porch has been covered in chrysalises all month. We've also noticed the return of the hummingbirds.

As for unwelcome guests, we've got a rather large population of these guys:

Black Widows*.

Just thinking about it gives me the willies- but I was gardening last month and felt something on my arm. I looked over, and up near my shoulder there was a big black widow. She was promptly flung from my body and pulverized with a rock, but it started a fear in me I've never known. Thankfully, she did not bite me. I immediately set to researching them and have since found their creepy little nests in numerous locations around the exterior of the Winkler. They will all be sought out and destroyed. 

*No, this is not a photo I took. Anyone who takes the time to get out the camera rather than KILL KILL KILL is a lunatic. Though healthy adults rarely die due to the bite (usually just a lengthy illness,) for little kids and old folks it can be fatal. And there's a chance you might not even feel the bite. Scary!

Well, other than a few minor bumps in the road, it's been a great year (house-wise.) Our Warranty just ended- but thankfully I filed the last of our claims last month. Looks like we're on our own now, but I'm up for the challenge. Long live the Winkler!

What I've done so far...

Special thanks to my most fabulous friend for bringing us Sonic, helping me paint, and letting me use her camera.

Here's my cacti on the front porch:

The baby's kitchen fits perfectly in the nook outside the laundry room.


I painted my sun to match the kitchen wall. Then I hung it over the pantry.

Blue kitchen walls and island- new chandelier hung by my hubby.

My lovely couch, with one of the fabulous blankets my aunt gave me.

Bookcase and loveseat. Check out our awesome new ceiling fan! Still need to hang the painting...

Family pictures in the staircase- new light fixture here, too.

More family pictures at the top of the stairs.

Started painting the girls' bedroom, with the help of a friend. Ceiling fan salvaged from my aunt's attic.

That's it so far. Lots of unpacking and rearranging left- also a little more painting. The apartment is still a disaster. I hope to be done out there soon, but it's difficult to get anything done with the kids there, especially with the apartment being empty. At least the Winkler is feeling more and more like Home.

Living Room Paint

Got to make this post quick- I'm supposed to be throwing some things in the truck and letting the dog out to pee. It's 2:35 am, I've not done much packing, and I am a good hour or so from the house- blah!

Last night, as I pulled into the driveway, my husband found a stray beagle/basset dog outside. We brought her in the yard. A few minutes later, we found a black lab puppy. Neither had tags and we assumed from their friendliness that they belonged together.


Later, the people who live behind us came home. The beaglish dog is theirs. The other is a stray. We let it eat Chinese food (our first meal in the Winkler) with us and gave it some water. This morning I came out to find it had a dug under the fence and gone on it's merry way. For those of you wondering, we won't be bringing our pets over until we get the furniture in- and we need to go buy a rabbit hutch. The bunny's just had free reign to the bathroom for the past 8 months and has outgrown her cage.

My little one, covered from head to toe in sweet and sour sauce. She likes to dip her lo mein- which she eats without utensils...

My daughters, keeping themselves entertained.


Painting the living room:

My husband's new fancy-pants tv. (It's not hooked up yet.)

Fridge story, short version: Saleslady forgot we were supposed to have one, gave us a promisory note that it would arrive the day after we closed. It was supposed to be a basic black refrigerator. It did not arrive. Was rescheduled to come the next morning- it did not. Called our builder and our saleslady. Extremely accomidating team pulled the super upgraded fridge from the just-built house next door and installed it my house this afternoon. Hooray!

empty, painted nook, waiting for it's fridge

Appliance guys had to remove our front door to get it in. It's enormous!

I went shopping grocery shopping after this.


Current verion of the front room:
egg-crate covered with throw blankets, empty card board boxes


Girls watching a movie in their room.

First Night In Our Own Place

Last night the title people dropped off our keys at the model home office in our neighborhood. I had gone back to the apartment for a load of goods- met my husband at the Winkler.

Had to make it official:
He carried me over the threshold.

(Apologies- my camera is still acting up, so the pictures are from a camera phone, and they were taken by my seven year old.)

Our To-Do List started with Stain Gard-ing the carpet and sealing the grout. We ran out of product for both projects, so today I bought more. Last night I also started on the painting.

My shirt has a turtle on it- and it says "Speed Kills," AND it glows in the dark! heeheehee (I bought it when I was 19.)

If I could start a new club, it would be the I Hate Painter's Tape Club. I only painted the 5 little angular walls that make up the refrigerator nook and pantry walls. I did the stop lines for the ceiling by hand and thought they looked darn good- until I got the idea that placing painters tape across the ceiling line would make my lines perfectly straight... I put the tape around the pantry door frame as well. BLARG! Once it was dry, and I removed the tape. To my horror, little tiny bits of paint had oozed under the tape, so my formerly pretty straight hand-done lines, now had many, many, many paint blobbies- all around the ceiling edge and actually on the caulking around the pantry door!

At this point I had already cleaned up my painting supplies and moved on to other chores- so I had to get the paint back out and the drop cloth and go back and do the lines again, making them go even higher than I had intended. poo.

At least it was just on the tiny walls. Now I've learned not to second guess my handiwork, so tonight's round of painting should run much smoother.

So, for now, the fridge nook and pantry corner are painted Gentle Fawn- the color of a warm cup of cocoa.

The fridge was delivered to our builder late today, so he'll install it early tomorrow. I plan on painting the dining room walls tonight. I went to Home Depot today and got a gallon of Behr's flat enamel paint in Neptune Blue570F-6. It's in the middle, one row up from the bottom. You can enlarge the image by clicking on it.


Well, it's back to packing!