Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around our house! The tree is set up and decorated, the lit garland on the railing and above the kitchen cabinets are up and the stocking are hung on the stair way railing. (we lack a fire place).

We put up a lot more lights than we did last year, but made one mistake, we waited to long to hang th lights on the house. Only the lower lever lights could be hung because it didn't seem like a good idea to be climbing on the snow covered roof. Seems like we made the same mistake of waiting to long to hang the lights last year...you would think we would've learned after the 1st time!

The house looks quite festive though and we're looking forward to having the family over in a few weeks.

Merry Christmas!

Fall

Summer is long gone and Fall is in full swing, which means it's time to "winterize" the yard. Earlier this summer a bug called a sod webworm decided to take up residence in our lawn. This bug is stubborn, it lives in the thatch (dead grass) of the lawn, lays eggs which hatch into moths and start the cycle all over again. This worm was turning our once lush yard into a desert.

So, we finally rented a de-thatching machine this weekend.

After running the machine through a small section of the yard we realized we should've mowed first. So, I got out the mower and Ben followed close behind with the de-thatcher. We only had 2 hours to use the thing after all. We spent nearly an hour zig zagging our way through the yard.

Finally, we were finished and went to admire our hard work. Only to realize our yard didn't look much better than when we began. It just had shorter grass and mulched up leaves...hmmmm...

We were so discouraged by our lack of progess that we loaded up the de-thatcher and returned it to the rental store.

Perhaps we should've left this task to the hands of a lawn pro...

Dishwasher Recall

Recently we found out that our dishwasher was being recalled. So, after some deliberation we decided it was best to just replace it, as we'd get a substantial rebate from the manufacturer. So, we did some price shopping and after a series of sales, rebates and coupons we got our dishwasher for about 85% off the original price!

I'm loving our new dishwasher as the old one never did a very good job. You basically had to get off every last spec of food from the dishes, otherwise they wouldn't come out clean. This new dishwasher is so much better, the dishes come out clean, and I don't have to pre-scrub them either!!

Now we just need to get our fridge recalled... :)

Neighbor to the Rescue!

I was mowing the lawn when suddenly the mower tipped a bit to one side. I figured I had hit a yard pot hole and kept going. Well, I didn't go far because one of the front wheels had fallen off!

Thankfully our neighbor saved us from having to sport a 1/2 mowed lawn for a week and loaned us their mower.

After I brought the mower back I noticed that our neighbor had his cherry picker out and was trimming his trees. He even offered to come and trim our trees!

With some careful maneuvering the neighbor planted the cherry picker in the backyard and removed the dead branches from the trees.

Ben and I were thrilled! We had been hoping for nearly a year that Mother nature would take care of those branches, but it never worked that way.

Thank you amazing neighbor for trimming our tree and lending us your mower!!

Pesky Wabbit!

"You pesky wabbit!"

Elmer Fudds infamous quote pretty much sums things up. Rabbits have been feasting on my pretty lilies. One day they have gorgeous blooms on them, the next they're dinner for a rabbit.

I started with 10 Lily bulbs. 2 bloomed, the rest got munched on. One lily bloom had these

amazing pale pink and brown spots on it. I went outside the next morning to take a picture of it, and it was gone! The entire stalk and bloom had been munched down to a sad little stub.

I've begun to fight back though. I mixed up a wretched smelling concoction of red pepper flakes, chili powder and garlic. Sprayed it on all my lilies and am hoping that'll teach those rabbits a lesson!

Pre-rabbit dinner lily...

Post Rabbit munching! GRRRRR!!!!

It was only a matter of time...

...until we broke a pipe to our underground sprinkling system! Yes, that's right, every home owners worst nightmare. The thought of digging up feet and feet of their luscious lawn to find that one little leak.

Our own version of Old Faithful (on a smaller scale of course) was not a welcome sight.

Thankfully our broken pipe occurred in a flower bed, so no grass was harmed during the repair.

A few clamps, screws and new pipe did the trick.

Backyard Makeover

Our backyard was in need of a make over. It lacked in a lot of things, especially plants.

So, we took almost all the over grown bushes from the front yard and transplanted them to the back yard. Now we have a nice natural fence between us and our "back yard neighbors." .

This is only the beginning to the make over... I think it's time to go plant shopping!

This is the backyard before we moved the bushes from the front yard.

This is what the backyard looks like now. Hopefully next year the taller bushes will have grown larger and will fill in some of the gaps.