The new addition...

We haven't had any pets for a year or more now, not that we've had major pets anyway. So after reading a book about fish last night, I thought it might be fun to have another go. This time we got a Beta fish, so here's hoping he lasts! We fell in love with one that was white/gray bodied and had red and blue tips on his fins, but come to find out he was a $15 fish. Momma's too cheap for that, so we found this nice blue guy for $4. Plus we had to buy food and water treatment, so $4 it was!

Meet bubbles...

Maybe next week we'll go back and find him some decorations for his bowl, a little plant and a statue or something. (Yep, mom was really trying to get out of the store under $15)

Oh, and we've had the talk; fish eat fish food, not tacos. Wish us luck!

Carnival, Auction & Yard work....

Carnival and Auction day finally arrived! Everything went pretty well, lots of ideas for next year, and most importantly, we raised a lot of money for the school.

Saturday morning, the van packed to the gills...

The tables outside with all the teacher's baskets...

The inside table with the private party items...

Gift certificates...

Fun things from the Principal; no homework for a week, first in line at lunch, lunch with the Principal...

The boys arrived with Grandma and I was able to head off and play a few games with them.
Putt-putt golf...

Roll the dice, that number spot moves, first one to the end wins...

Tattoo station...

Sack race...

Lawn dart toss...

Horseshoes...

After this, they went off with Grandma for a bit more fun and waited for dad to come so they could eat. Here's one last shot with Aunt V. while I was waiting for my Fuddrucker's burger.

Sunday brought us more yard work to do. The guys worked on getting the lawn tilled so that we can keep moving forward. There are some large roots in the yard, so they were cutting, pulling and getting a few of them out.

Tilled until the wheels fell off. Oops! This is common on this thing because they give you two extra bolts.

Finished for now. You can see some sticks pointing up, those are the roots we are going to cut off and press back down. Trying to de-root the yard would make us all go insane.

Sprinklers, mixing in the good soil and sod are the next three steps.

Side projects will also include removing the rose bushes from under the windows, getting 5 wine barrels and planting some nice flowering bushes, like azalea's, in their place.
Also plan on planting some pots for along the walkway.
But we have to get the drip system in place before all this can happen.

This week, even with two extra kids, I'm planning on a whole lot of nothing. Maybe pulling out some old projects that have been back shelved, but that is about it!

Auction is taking over...

The auction has taken over our house! It's not awful, only for a couple of days. Every class at Cody's school is to submit a basket, theme of their choice. These things are just awesome!
Lots of game/outdoor play time ones, 2 complete summer reading list boxes, chocolate lover's box, pasta lover's, gardening, dog lover's and the list goes on!

Overflow that has spilled into the living room...

The floor of the office...

My desk, most of these are gift certificates that I've collected.

The baskets are supposed to come to me complete, wrapped and with an inventory list. Only 2 of the one's I picked up needed to be wrapped, and one needed to be split in 2 because it was so big.

This is one of my favorites, although I'm partial because it's from Cody's class. We have a mom that works for Starbucks and extended her employee discount to us. So they collected money and had enough to make 2 baskets, one for Coffee lovers and one for Tea lovers. I think I just really love that double insulated cup with the straw. Thinking I might have to invest in one of those for my iced tea!

I'm really excited to see the last 4/5 we are missing and to get to the auction on Saturday. Hoping we raise some much needed money for the school!

Update: Rocks and dirt...

The sun came out, or at least the rains stopped, so I took advantage and got to work.

Extra rock that will be used later in the bed along the front of the house. We also have a few heavy spots that we can pull from if we need to.

So happy to check a bit ticket item off the front yard list! Only thing left to do with it is wash it down, pretty dirty if you look right on it, but will have to wait a couple of days for the ground to recover from the rain we have had in the last few days.

I think our next project needs to be a nice soaker tub in the master bath. Nothing fancy with jets or anything, just deep enough to sit and submerge in the hot water.

Rocks and dirt, oh my!

Tuesday we had a load of rock delivered to go in the curbed area and some good soil to mix in with what we have. Combining the load meant free delivery, yay! Unfortunately we had the names mixed up and ordered the wrong rock, boo! So the rock store suggestion was to fill these huge white bags, pictured below, with the wrong rock and they could come get it and deliver the correct rock. That seamed like a lot of work we weren't real thrilled to do.

After looking around a bit, FIL found someone that could come and scoop up the rock into his dump trailer, take it back to exchange and deliver the right stuff. YAY!
So around 8:15 this morning they got to work, loading the wrong rock and taking it back.

Upon return, he moved the dirt onto the driveway, because it's going to be a little over a week before we get to that stage and didn't want it sitting out on the street.

Then he got to work unloading the correct rock.

Someone thought this was pretty cool.

My yard, however, now looks like this...

Because of this...

But instead of shoveling and wheel-borrowing the rock from the street, it's now in piles where it needs to be.

Still leaving us work, but not as much as we had to do originally.

So once it stops raining, we'll get to work, moving the rock into place.

Tilling the yard, then fixing the sprinklers is next.
Then we get to lay down sod instead of trying to seed. After some research, it wasn't that much more, it will get delivered as part of the cost and has a better success rate. YAY!
So hopefully in about two weeks or so, we'll have a respectable looking yard.

For now, while the rain is falling, I'll get back to my other project, organizing auction stuff. After tomorrow, my office will be taken over as the teachers will start turning in their class baskets, I have a couple that I picked up today, and they are awesome. Can't wait to see what all we get!

First Sprinkler run of the year...

After another jam packed weekend, the boys finally got to play in the sprinklers for a bit. It warmed up nicely so it was approaching the 80's by Sunday afternoon. We were working in the lawn, getting the rock bed ready for rocks and FIL was measuring out the sprinkler system. The last step of the day was to test the water pressure while they were running, so on they went.





Not only did the boys have a good time, we also were able to find 2 heads that had been buried, this hopefully means that there will be a less work to do as far as re-routing the lines to get coverage over the whole yard.

So this week we are in lawn prep mode. Today Ty and I will finish clearing the rock bed and get it ready for the rocks that are being delivered on Tues.
Tues we are going to shoot one more round of Round-Up on the lawn to kill the mix of grass and weeds that are currently growing.
Then FIL will also be add a sprinkler or two and replacing all the heads.
By this weekend, that will have naturalized and we'll till the whole yard, mixing the old dead in and letting it be natural mulch/compost.
Then we seed and lay another layer of compost on and hopefully we'll get grass!

Progress, slow getting there...

With the rain staying away today, it was time to start moving some rock. The rock that we have inside the new curbs is a bit to small, so we are moving it to the flower beds. Round-Up was sprayed, weed block laid down and the rocks shoveled on top.

Before...

After...

Planning on putting in some potted flowers once we get the sprinklers figured out, we'll run a drip system off the flower bed bank.

Then we had another landscaping person stop by to get a quote on the lawn and sprinklers, so we'll see where that goes.

This weekend we'll be working on prepping the ground between the curbs so we can get the new rocks delivered and spread out. (If anyone is interested in helping, there's pizza involved.)

So progress is a happenin'.

Curbing in, much still to do...

More Birthday Crafty over at the crafty site...



Today we started the grand front yard project. We have a lot of work to do still, but it's getting planned out and things are coming together.

Official Before pictures...

Today's project was to install the curbing to define the lawn and hold in the new rock beds.
Guys at work.

Forming the curbs.

Finished curbing...

Stone the boys helped make to stick in the new rock bed.

Rock that will be going in...

Next on the list are the sprinklers. We've started testing what is there and thought we were in pretty good shape, just needing some new heads.
But after testing the flower box set, we sprung a weird leak, and the dig is on.

We are hoping that this new cap will solve the problem, but can't test for a day or so because of the new curbs.

It's a start!