September 24-26, 2010

This week was absolutely tiring, but worth every minute! Mike and I had been prepping every night after work for our housewarming party on the 24th. We wanted to make everything ourselves (well, sans the cheese plate and keg) and treat our friends and family to a night in Hull, with a nod to this week's newest arrival and my favorite season, fall! 

Our list of homemade goodies included:

1) Salsa and fresh tortilla chips straight out of the deep fryer

2) Hummus + veggies

3) Butternut squash soup

4) Hamburgers/portobello burgers

5) Apple crisp 

Of course, I was too busy bouncing around the house to remember to take photos of anything that night, d'oh! If anyone reading this has photos from that night, please let me know! 

Thank you to everyone who came out! We hope you enjoyed yourselves and will come back to visit us soon.

We had some friends and family stay with us for the entire weekend, and it was a great time! We enjoyed a lovely sunset together Saturday evening. We've already decided that next weekend will be all about relaxing.  I can hardly wait :) 

Those two little specs by the water = Allison and Mike's brother, Dave

 

September 18-19, 2010

This is the last weekend before our housewarming party, and we had one last major yardwork project to complete: moving all of the rocks that we had collected from the backyard and dump them into the front flower beds. UGH. Not the way I wanted to spend me weekend, but I also never want to touch one of those stupid rocks ever again! However, it does make me happy to know that we were able to reuse all of the rock instead of paying for someone to remove it. It also makes me happy to know that the "deweeding flowerbed project" is finally completed (at least, I hope it is.) Here's a quick rundown of what we've done to try and kill the monster weeds in the flower beds:

1) Start of project - Chop weeds flush to ground (removing 5+ feet tall vegetation)
2) Two weeks later - Chop weeds flush to ground (removing 2.5 feet tall vegetation)
3) A couple of weeks later - Dig up root system to weeds (back to 1-2 feet tall vegetation) and remove 8-10 inches of soil from flowerbeds (soil goes into the backyard to fill firepit hole)
4) This week - Fill both flowerbeds in with approx. 1500 lbs of rock from the backyard, divided

So anyway, we did it. The rock is moved.  Neither of us took photos of it because, well, it would have been pictures of us holding rocks and you can probably imagine that on your own.  

We also tried to remove the thorn bush that is starting to regrow at the front corner of our house (the same one that we removed in July.)  First, Mike tried a shovel. Then a pick axe. Then swearing at it. I tried shaking my fist at it. We finally gave up and have concluded that we will probably have to tie this thing up to a truck and pull it out.  However, there's a good chance that the thorn bush is cozied up with our house's foundation, and pulling it out might take our house with it.  Looks like I'm stuck with trimming it back for now.

I'll end this entry with one of the only photos we took this weekend. We had a lovely Sunday morning on the beach with the dogs.  The weather has been funky lately with fall approaching, and we aren't sure how many more warm days we have left.  We were happy that this one landed on the weekend for us to enjoy.

Nantasket Beach morning walk, 9.19.10

September 11-12, 2010

We are having a housewarming party in a few weeks, so a lot of our time was spent planning our menu, buying supplies, and prioritizing our household to-do list before the 24th. But of course, a decent amount of yardwork is a part of that list. Will it ever end?

First things first, we finished two of our ongoing projects: putting the wooden fence back in place and filling out "firepit." The fence was a lot easier task than Mike and I had imagined; in fact, it was even easier than taking the fence apart and took a little under an hour to complete.

The fence on it's way back up and me tearing ugly wire off the stairs.

We shoveled out the rest of the dirt from the front flower beds out into the firepit and leveled it - we will be putting down some seed during the week when we are expecting rain.  It is so weird/wonderful to not see an ugly gaping hole in the middle of our yard now!

Tada! Newly-filled hole with the firepit from our neighbors.

That's it for this week! Fingers crossed that we'll have new grass photos in a couple of weeks!

September 3-6, 2010

So, we had plans to go to Connecticut this weekend to help Dave finish remodeling his basement. And you know what happens when we make plans to go somewhere? Hurricanes call the media and get everyone all hyped up about how big and ferocious they are, and cause everyone to cancel their weekend plans. And then that hurricane ends up being a big wuss. On one hand we have the thought of, "Yay hurricane! Thanks for not blowing our house down!" But on the other hand, we have "... but couldn't you have at LEAST blew the crappy siding off of our house so insurance would pay for something new and pretty?" Can't win them all.

So we suddenly had three whole days to work on the house with no real plan. So we made one. And everyone knows all good plans start with food:

Mike prepping the beef bourguinon

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to see if anything cool washed up on the beach from the storm.  No hidden treasure was found, but we did enjoy the waves!

After our morning at the beach, we finished removing the ugly chain link fence in the back yard.  We are SO excited so see that fence rolled up and stacked into a neat little pile, waiting for the metal removal people to come pick it up!  We were also able to repair our wooden fence by replacing some missing boards.  

After we temporarily removed our wooden fence, we could see the lovely weeds/trees that had been growing between the fence for a couple of years.

Note: when you throw a can in your backyard, IT DOESN'T JUST MAGICALLY DISAPPEAR. $20 says this can is older than me.

Right now the wooden fence pieces are just leaning against the post and will tackle putting them back in the posts next weekend.

We also tackled the front yard weed catastrophe this weekend.  For the second time.  And that's not cool.  So we pulled them out by the roots (I'm sure you can imagine that I went a little OCD on this part) and Mike and I dug up all the soil and took it out of the flower beds, which started yet ANOTHER project: the "fill up that lame-excuse-for-a-firepit-hole-in-the-yard" project. We are excited to see the hole slowly disappear; however, Ted is pretty sad that he no longer has a hole full weird things to smell.

Ted protecting his favorite smelling spot

Ted's arch nemesis: The Super Wagon.

However, Mike and I made our first trip ever to Building 19, which is like an Ocean State Job Lot on crack.  Amongst the piles of prison shoes we found a large area rug for the dogs to create a pretty sweet "dog play area" down in the basement. We cut our old foam queen size mattress into thirds and covered up one of them with a blanket to make a gigantic dog bed. We also sandwiched their crate between two stacks of Rubbermaid containers so that it would stay dim (dachshund's favorite lighting.)   I think they will like this better than that old hole.

Yes, prison shoes.

Dog palace!

That pretty much wraps up our weekend - looking forward to finishing our fence project next week!