Backyard Plans

This weekend we began to make steps toward putting the backyard plan into action.

We won a professionally landscaped design for our yard at the Hands of Hope Auction in March. In April we received our plan. At the end of May we're putting into action.

Here's the before:















Here's our plan of action:

- Pull out two purple plants on the left hand side along the fence. (The plan calls for saving these, but these particular two are much too large, so we're pulling these and will move the smaller ones.)

- Clearing out one or both rows of monkey grass.

- Collecting the slate rocks along the old pathways.

- Pulling up the beams and railroad ties. (The smaller beams are screwed and nailed to each other, which makes it more complicated than it originally looked.)

- Clearing out the grass, weeds, etc from the future garden space and put down some weed cloth.

- Plan out garden space.

This is our plan for now. Further down the road we move plants, purchase and plant new one and clean out the beds.

The short term goal is to get the garden ready for fall plantings.

Pretty

A few months ago we cleared out a flower bed in the backyard to plant peas. We still had some open space so we spread some wild flower seeds. Unfortunately they've kind of overtaken the peas.

However, the flowers kind of make up for it. Beautiful, free flowers in my kitchen outweigh the handful of peas we would have had.

Zoom through the Zoo

Last Thursday, Bryan ran the Zoom through the Zoo.







He won. An ostrich egg.

Saturday Lolling About photos

Bosco and I had a lazy weekend. We laid around, lolled about, and took pictures of my favorite subject.

Wild flowers

We cleared out a bed in the backyward this winter. Since we weren't sure what to do with it (it was pre-landscaping plan) we sprinkled some wild flower seeds. We literally didn't do anything to it. No water, no dirt, nothing.








Bosco is not very impressed.

Mother's Day with the Baddorfs

We had Bryan's family over for dinner Mother's Day. After dinner everyone planed Mexican Train Dominos. Okay, so I didn't play, I did take a few pictures though.

Summer 2012 Goals

I have to have a summer project. Its just who I am. I can't explain it. Last year I focused on shirmp and pasta salad recipes, trying a new one each week. In the fall I focused on trying different soup recipes. This past winter has been super busy, so surviving was the only goal. Now that we're into May and things have settled down its time to focus on a couple of goals:

- Backyard! We won a professional landscaped plan from a silent auction. The plan has been made and its time to put it into action. I started this weekend by measuring out the garden area. I planted steaks in the corners to give us a visual idea of the space it will take up and what we need to do to prep it. While I realize its unrealistic to put the entire plan into action by the end of the summer (for financial and weather related reasons), I would really love if we could get the garden area completed in time to plant some fall vegetables.

- Meal planning. Since 2012 I've tried to meal plan better. Each weekend I plan out a week of meals and shop for any ingredients we may need. Its made weekday cooking much easier. Taking out the guessing and shopping, makes for a slightly less stressful evening. Over the winter I acquired a ton of new cookbooks from my grandmother's house. Let's face it, I have a cookbook problem. So this summer I plan on focusing the week's meals from one book. Hopefully this will let me spend quality time getting familiar with each book and also to clean out what just doesn't work for us.

- Homemade ice cream. Last year I sadly didn't make any homemade ice cream. For shame! This year I hope to make a batch or two every month.

- Homegrown tomatoes. Its going to happen this year. So far the plants are doing really well and I have a couple of little cherry tomatoes. If just one ripens it will be a success.

Its not much, but totally do-able. What are your plans for the summer?

Mother's Day 2012

For mother's day this year I got the idea to take a picture with all four of my "kids". I don't know why, but I just couldn't shake it. So we got liquored up drank lots of beer while watching the Grizzlies lose game 7 and attempted the impossible.



I didn't expect it to be a good one. But we're all there, although you can't see Dribble.









Next year we will work on getting a decent picture of the five of us.

New flash!

News flash! There are no unpacked boxes in our dining room for the first time since March or February.

Granted, there are still boxes in our dining room, but these have been gone through and are just waiting to be put in their respective homes.

Progress people. Its happening.

Rearranging... again

So two weeks ago we got a bunch of furniture from Mimi's. We've arranged and rearranged again. Here's what it currently looks like.

Nashville Trip

Last week Bryan worked the Nashville marathon expo. I tagged along and we spent three nights with Allyn and Josh. Fun insued...





Ice cream at Jeni's.



Yazoo Brewery tour







Dinner and beer at The Pharmacy