My oh my..

...another weekend come and gone in a flash. The windows were finished this weekend...well mostly finished. DH is taking the day off today and the guy is still there and needs only to do some stucco patching and caulking etc. My favorite part now is the new garden widow in the kitchen. You can see above how it was just a run o the mill window. Below shows the transformation. I love it! I feel like I had an addition put on the kitchen because it's so big!

The neighbors keep coming by and complimenting us, which feels good. Now we simply must decide on a freakin' paint color!! Lots and lots to do still, inside and out. I don't know how it will all get done before the weather changes.

Speaking of which, when I woke this morning I had a realization that its a bit darker then it's been at that time in the morning. And I noticed the sun setting well before 9pm again. I smell fall approaching! I do love fall...I love the breeze and the smell of the air, and the crisp mornings and ren faire and such. But I really have work to do! And to top it all off the family struggles continue. This has been some year. I must really focus now...I need to get on top of all this stuff.

Have a good week everyone!

Best Laid Plans

Our best laid plans for the outside paint color on our house have gone awry, I'm afraid. I was so pleased that we'd arrived at the conclusion of sagey-green with white trim...something we could actually both agree on! (he likes grey, I like red, or chocolate brown or yellowy-beige). Anyhoo, we were in the market yesterday when we heard a chipper "hullo, neighbor" and thus we met Michelle. Neighbor of two doors down, wife to Jason (who happens to be the guitarist for the Dance-Hall Crashers) and mother to two lovely tow-head girls. She was quite nice but in the course of our conversation we learned that she too was planning on house-painting, and that she too had sagey-green in mind. I suppose it wouldn't matter so much if the house in between us wasn't already green with white trim (a spearaminty-green). Three houses in a row painted green with white trim might just be too much. /sigh.

So now we are trying to think of other options that we'll find mutually pleasing. The current winner is a rich tan with white trim. We both like it...it would look good. The only problem is, it would totally match our living room! Would that be wierd, to have the outside of the house and the living area matching? Heh. Almost like an optical illusion! We must choose soon...because the windows are in (most of them). And they draw attention to the fact that our house is a dirty peach with peeling mauve trim (UGH, wtf was grandma thinking??).

The picture at the top of this post is the before of the front window. Here is the after. I must say I'm pretty pleased.

I'm taking a week off in August for camping, and then working on the house. Perhaps we'll accomplish the painting that week? In the meantime there's plenty to do inside.

My other garden

Upon arriving at my mother's house Saturday, she said "go look at your garden". Oh yeah! The other garden! I'd forgotten in the haze that has been the last few months. The week before my dad's funeral, I looked upon my mothers back yard with despair. The deck is rotting, and at that time the flower beds were full of weeds and cigarette butts (yes my brother has been sharply scolded). I had to make it look decent for the reception for my dad, so I went and spent 40 bucks on annuals, a couple perennials, and some compost and then worked my little hiney off cleaning out the boxes, amending the soil and planting the plants. I also sprinkled a HUGE can of wildflower seed that my mother had stashed. She'd been too busy with dad to get to the yard this year. Wildflower seed is about all the gardening she ever does, she prefers desert landscape.

When all was said and done the back deck looked decent and pretty and I'd forgotten about it since. But mom has been watering it regularly and I neglected to consider what 2 months of desert sunshine would do. It's glorious! I simply must include a bed that can have summer wildflowers when we redo our front yard.

In other news most of the windows are in. I'll have some juicy before and after pics for you later this week. Until then please enjoy:

Busy Busy Busy

My, oh my what a week its been so far! Work is b.r.u.t.a.l. But then I again I mostly like it when it is. Lots to do means that I'm not bored, and I *hate* being bored at work. But this particular work is very high pressue, plus I have all kinds of family related work right now. Yikes! It will be like this likely for about a month, then things should settle down a bit.


We are camping this weekend, in the Avenue of the Giants. I feel like I should be looking forward to it more. I'm tired and I just want to be at home. But I know once I get there I'll be glad to be away from everything. It's a nice place, we're going with nice people, and hopefully I'll have some nice pictures when I get back.


In house related news....we are very close to getting new windows! Thanks to Uncle Sam and Gramps we have the money socked away to re-window our entire house. We are nervous about it though, it's a very big investment! DH's friend is a window guy and we've seen his portfolio and it looks really good. He's taking a half day today to meet with the guy and I have to email him a list of questions/wants etc. before he leaves work so I'd best get to it.


Oh...one last thing though, we spoke to our neighbor about the fence...woohoo! I feel so much better about the situation. An old Mexican couple lives there, and they speak no english. But their grand-son owns the house and we finally got to talk to him last night. He's very very nice (and very cute! *cough*) and he's completely on the same page as us. He's not quite ready to do the new fence yet, because his others fences are in much worse shape and he wants to do them first. But we agreed that we'll chicken wire our side, and prop it up with a post. And then we offered to give him what's left of our chicken wire so he could do his side. He's actually going to build a small chicken wire fence within his yard to keep his dogs away from our fence altogether. Then when time comes to build a fence, we'll split the materials and he'll build it. He's in construction and says it will be no problem. Plus he said if we want he'll give us a deal on expanding our driveway when we're ready for that.


Oh...there I go jabbering again...I guess it's okay since this *is* a blog afterall. Hi-ho hi-ho, it's off to work I go!!!