Cake

I've made a couple cakes lately. The first is a simple one for a graduation:


The newest one is one I did for a bridal shower. The colors were red and white.
It's a "cherry blossom" cake.


I didn't have enough time to get the fondant just perfect but I think it still turned out ok.

Sod

We finally got some sod in this past weekend! It's a special super breed of grass that re-grows itself, doesn't need a ton of water and I think it has an awesome dark green color!

While we still have stuff to do on the outside of our house, I figured this would be a good time to show you some before and after photos.







And just in case you didn't see how bad it was before here are a couple close ups
Front door:

Overgrown bushes


Back Yard Before:




Here is the "grass" that was in the back yard when we moved in:
>

There were TONS of little trees growing EVERYWHERE. This is how many little trees we cut out. This does NOT include all the front bushes.


We cut out the little trees and trimmed the big ones. There were two huge pine trees in the back yard killing each other and everything under it so we cut one of those out. We cut out smaller pine trees from beside the front deck and one in the back yard. We tore out all the bushes in the front yard.
This is obviously before sod and the bricks need straightened but here is what we did in their place:


We killed the entire back yard and tore out the plants/landscaping they had going on there. There was some rocks with plants up against the back of the house that was crawling with HUGE spiders and centipedes. Since the yard was so overgrown we also have a snake problem.

Um, IDK what else we've done. Essentially we tore everything out and cleaned it up.

We still have to put a new roof on, fix the old shed, put the flagstone path back in going into the back yard and put up some type of fencing where we tore out the front part. There's probably more to do too....

Workin in the garden

I worked in the garden on Saturday and got most of it done.
At some point during the week we had put my pepper plants out on the lot and the wind got to them and they died :( So I don't have those in just yet.
I also need to finish fencing the second half of the garden.

Here's how it's looking and what I have planted:






Click on the pics to see them bigger.

Flowering Tree

Look at our pretty tree! I've wanted a flowering tree for a while now - turns out you just have to buy a new house! :)

They just make me happy

Weekend

We spent the weekend at my parents. We worked cattle, got stuff together for my garden and tarred the basement walls.

Here is where their new house is at now:




It's getting pretty exciting!

Garden

Hi. It's me. Do you remember me? I apologize for leaving you hanging. Winter sure has seemed to drag on and we got pretty boring. I've been pretty unmotivated to do anything lately also.

We have managed to get a few things done and one of those would be that we got my garden plot dug up. I'm so excited!






I told Adam to make it larger instead of smaller because heck, why not. We have the space. I'm going to plant all sorts of things I didn't have room for before. Here is my list:

LOTS of tomatoes for salsa. Big boy and Roma.
Peppers. Bell, Jalapeno and Banana.
Onions. Yellow and Red.
Broccoli. We shall see about this. I might fail.
Cucumbers. Pickles! (I got a couple kinds. IDK what they're called though)
Zuccini.
Potatoes. Red ones.
Dill.
Couple watermelon plants.
Couple pumpkin plants.

I really hope this is something I can keep up with and be proud of. I expect a few fails but I'll keep trying! It's going to be a busy busy busy summer.

Houston, we have a problem.

ANTS!



Holy crap.

This is poison I put out. It must be sweet because they found it right away. After not very long, the entire colony was out there. Their colony is in the attic. There is a tiny whole by the ceiling that they came and went from.



You could see them all coming and going from the hole to the poison taking it back to the colony. Hopefully it works and they are gone!

I don't think this is the end of the bug problems we are going to have. With the house being empty all spring and summer and the amount of spiders that were in the back yard it isn't going to be pretty.....

Closet

The office closet which was officially our last big project upstairs is completed and organized!



Big update from:

Baseboards

We have baseboards! At least in the two bedrooms that needed them. Adam stained them and installed them after the carpet was installed. They're pretty plain but that is ok with me. Now we just need the living room to get baseboards and the upstairs might officially be finished!

I also thinned the seedlings last night. Once they got their third leaf I figured they would be ok. Lets hope they are!

Plant update

My broccoli officially have their third leaf!



The rest of my plants are getting pretty big too!

Day 8

They're getting tall!



A little too tall I think but I moved them closer to the light so hopefully that will help.

Day 6 & 7 and Carpet

Day 6


Day 7


Not much change.

My wonderful, fabulous, fantastically talented husband also made me a better stand to hold the lighting.


I moved them upstairs because as cold it's been it's too cold in the basement for them I think. So, as you also may notice that there is something else new in this picture......What could it be? Hmmmm

Carpet!
Yes, after putting in new flooring when we moved in, we have already torn it out.


Don't buy engineered hardwood flooring. We didn't like it from the beginning. It was cheap looking/feeling, it made a sticking noise when we walked on it and then a piece already started to peel. Engineered hardwood is like a plywood with a veneer of oak or whatever on top and the veneer was already peeling off. So since it was on clearance when we got it and we didn't like it anyway, we didn't want to deal with the warranty and we just decided to tear it up, we'd use it in the basement and put in carpet.

We had a slight problem with the carpet. We special ordered it on sale from Menards and had a tracking email that said it was on time. But by the end of the day it hadn't said that it'd actually been delivered so Adam called and it was back ordered. So we had to go in and pick out a carpet they had in stock. I'm still pretty happy with this one too though. Not a big deal!

Veggie Seedlings

I actually have enough room this year to plant a big garden and I will be doing just that! I'm so excited! But if you buy all those plants already started by someone else at the store or greenhouse, the cost can add up quickly. I need at least 30 tomato plants to make salsa and multiple plants of multiple types of peppers. Because of this, I have started tomatoes, peppers and broccoli from seed.

I got some pods to help start the seeds. They look like this:

and then you put water on them and they expand


I started the broccoli on Wed. and by Saturday they had sprouted. By day 4 this is what they look like.


Day 5:


I started them upstairs where it is warmer and once they were about 1/2 inch tall I moved them downstairs where there isn't natural light for them to try to grow toward and put a florescent light above them.


This isn't the ideal situation just yet because as you can see the plants on the sides of the tray are already trying to grow toward the light.


I have three treys full of seeds.


I planted broccoli, better boy tomatoes, roma tomatoes, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers and bell peppers. Just an fyi in case you didn't know like I didn't - roma tomatoes and the peppers have a ton of seeds in each packet. I had enough pods so I went ahead and planted as many seeds as I could otherwise they would have just gone to waste. I can give the extras to friends and family.

I'll keep you updated as they grow!

Basement Stairwell and Closet

One of the remaining major projects on the house was our basement stairwell and office closet. There had been a leak from the roof that had been left unattended so it caused a lot of mold and rotted wood. When we first moved in, we tore out the drywall in the closet to see how bad the situation really was and this is what it looked like:



It was even worse at the bottom because the water could pool there.

The stairwell had lots of mold on the ceiling and on the back wall.



It also had a 80's hunting paneling on the right side.

A week or so ago Adam decided to tackle this project. He tore out all the drywall in the stairwell and the rotted wood. In the process he also saw that the supports in the crawlspace (there is only a basement under 1/2 of the house) had rotted out a little and were barely hanging on so he reinforced these.

Here's the project during demo:


Here is where we stand now!


It doesn't necessarily look a ton different but it was something that definitely needed to be done.

The closet is fixed, drywalled and primed. I'll bring you more on that later once we get the shelving in and can call it finished.

To brighten your day

THIS is FUNNY

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