Happy Birthday Maureen!

It's my mother in-laws birthday today. We're celebrating tomorrow with Ben Thanh. Here she is posing on a rock. :P

Holy Crap

I turn 30 in 21 days. Yowzer.

She Goes By Many Names...

Beth...

Ma...

Mom...

GMa...

But today you can call her Birthday Girl! :)

Happy Birthday Ma - Love you!

Ch-Ch-Changes

There are 28 days left until my family arrives for a visit. The last time they were here was early December of last year. Ian and I thought of the different changes we've made to the house. It's definitely added up over time..

I don't think we planned on making as many changes as we did. But we still have a laundry list of items left to do this year:

• Fix the new hole in the kitchen ceiling
• Get a mattress and bedding for the new bed that should be coming soon
• Receive delivery of the missing patio chair and put it together
• Take a giant Magic Eraser to the entire house

I need to feel better quickly because this weekend is a bunch of work outside. Lots of yard work to do. Prepping the lawn for the winter. Taking care of the new stuff. Organize the garage a bit and.. oh yeah... cut up a ton of boxes!

Coop Scoop: Sniffle

*sniffle* Stupid milestones...... Go get em Coop!

Landscaping Day 19: What 99% Looks Like

We got word today that our landscapers should be wrapped up by tomorrow. They laid out a selection of mulch for us to choose from. They will do that and tie up any loose ends. 

The dark side of the picture to the left is a line of boxwoods. On the right up against the fence is some hydrangeas. In the back corner there are dogwoods and hostas. Near the wrought iron is a few grasses. 

View of the side yard. Boxwoods up against the house. This section is very wet from yesterday because water drains through here. We are going to put in a rain barrel next to the faucet this weekend.

View of the outer side yard. Grass was put in and they added Astilbe Visions in Red near the trees. The Astilbe looks to be the wrong color - it should be red but the plumes seems to fuschia pink. The landscaper is going to check on it.

Front yard is done as well. They put grasses in the river rock and Chicago Apache Daylillies around the tree. (Our little tree looks so puny compared to the new trees!)

Another view of the house. Now it's just a lot of watering and cleaning. This weekend we're going to sweep off the patio and clean the dirt away from the windows and screens. The waterfall started to have an algae issue because it hadn't been run in a couple days. I think I'll look into a treatment for it in case it gets worse. For now we can just squirt off the rocks and it should be fine.

Fall Props

This will not come as a surprise... but the Fall season makes me ridiculously happy. The football, leaves changing, cold weather, scarves and jackets, pumpkins, hay bales... just thinking about it makes me SO excited. Ian gets excited except for one part... "Birthday Alley" or "Birthday Gauntlet" as he sometimes refers to it. Duncan in late August, Cooper, GMa, and Maureen in September, Drew and I in October.

What's up on our agenda for this season? Patio furniture comes mid to late September... same with the Lodge Bed. Clearly a lot of birthdays. I turn 30 in October so my family is coming up to the Great White  Colorful North. Ian and I are taking a long weekend here. We might take a day trip up to Goderich on Lake Huron in the next few weeks - apparently they label themselves as "Canada's prettiest town"... all I know is that Maureen and Duncan rave about their donuts or some such thing. The town was hit by an F3 tornado last year causing around $100 million in damage and they are still cleaning up. The least we can do is go buy some donuts. :P

Anyway, I'm forcing it to be Fall now even though some would say it is still summer. Fall wreath is on the front door, mums are in the planters.. I even bought a tiny pumpkin for the table in the dinette. :] Happy Fall!

D'Awwwww...

I hope our future kids love music this much!

Landscaping Day 18: TREES!

There were very heavy thunderstorms in Kitchener today. We were certain nothing would get done today. Boy, were we wrong and VERY happy.

Trees and grass went in! Shademaster Locust to the right and Princeton Gold Maple in the middle.

View of the side yard. Two of the maples were put in each of the jogs.

\

And a big pile of plants waiting to go in. It should be sunny all day tomorrow so I think a lot will get done.

I'm so happy the sod and the trees went in when it raining... I know they got a very good soaking to start with. Yay!

Landscaping Day 17: Jogs!

Here is a video update of our landscaping. There are minor tasks left for the fence and stone guys. The next step is plants and then sod! :] (Excuse the audio on the video.. it was kinda windy! :P)