Sunflowers

Our Sunflowers are now in bloom and we are so very happy!! We are still waiting for the Mammoth Sunflowers to bloom, but I could not wait to take pictures as I have been looking forward to this since I planted the seeds in May!! In the second to last picture you will see the Mammoth ones in the background. As soon as they bloom I will take more pictures to post. YIPPEE!!!

We have completed the sheetrocking in the bathroom, except for one small wall in the shower...due to some bathtub complications...but everything else is done. And for those of you paying attention, yes this means we missed our 8/23 deadline with the plumber. Matt Mott is wise and has not yet told me the new date. Basically, I will just be happy if we have the bathroom portion done by the time we leave for England and the closet part mostly done. Since we are building the drawers ourselves, that might get put off until winter when we have more time and desire to work inside the house instead of outside :-)

Waffle Day!!

So I don't know if anyone else knew about Waffle Day but I hope you all had your waffles in honor! Some of you will actually be having your Belgian Waffles in Belgium (woo hoo Chelsea). Anyway, we (Wendy, Courto and myself - Kelsey doesn't like waffles?!?!) had our belgian waffles with strawberries/blueberries and ice cream in a waffle cone, so we have sufficiently celebrated Waffle Day!! And it was "waffle-tastic!!" And for those of you who missed out, it will be back next year on the same date....8/24!!!

And FYI, I actually learned about Waffle Day from my Eating Well magazine subscription...it sends me fun recipes and other interesting food tidbits :-)

First Anniversary

So Sunday was our first anniversary and it was positively wonderful. We really didn't do much of anything, which is why it was so wonderful!!! We relaxed on the deck, looked through our new guide to Ireland, and watched tv. It was very nice. Matt Mott bought me calla lillies because I was unable to press my bouquet last year. He thought I might be able to press these instead. It was a very good idea on his part, however, I took out the camera and got some really cool shots that I think will "preserve" the idea much better!!!

I want to thank all of you for your wishes, cards and gifts. It was all very thoughtful...even the 1st "Paper" Anniversary toilet paper....and thank you for NOT toilet papering the house!!!

We still have not put together our album yet, but I am putting a link in this post to the slide show that Jenifer Lyn Photography was kind enough to put together. Please check it out, if you don't already subscribe to her blog. She did an amazing job with it, which is not at all surprising!!! Thank you again, Jenny!!

http://jeniferlynphotography.com/Pages/dawn_Matt1/index.html

Landscaping

So Matt and I took a break from the bathroom on Sunday to do some yard work. Nothing out of the ordinary....mow the lawn, weed whack, trim the hedges....etc, etc. I decided that now would be a perfect time to photograph the front of the house since it actually looks decent!! For those of you who are not familiar with what we have done....there used to be bark mulch around the hedges, which we removed last fall and replaced with stone. We took out the hedges that went along the left side of the driveway (no picture of that...maybe later) We replaced the icky mailbox on the house with a nice wooden mailbox from You Know Where....and yes that is the same one we used for our cards at the reception (minus the decorations of course). We replaced the yucky house number with that very snazzy one and OH YEAH....THE FLOWER BOX....and yes those are LIVING flowers!!! That look AMAZINGLY well if you ask me!!!! I am so excited that I am succeeding at this flower thing!! (Look at the pretty flowers Chelsea!!!) Oh yeah...and our neighbors painted their house brown...for anyone who cares :-)

What we have on the ever growing to do list is to replace the roof, re-do the walkway and paint the shutters. We are debating removing the hedges and replacing them with something less tedious to maintain, but I really like the way they look with my sparkly lights at Christmas time so I am a bit torn!!! At any rate, none of this is going to be done until the dreaded bathroom is completed.....

Which, for those of you closely following the dramatic story of the bathroom renovation.....ha ha ha....we are just about done sheetrocking and taping the main areas. We have storage areas that we will be sheetrocking and taping but that is going to wait for now since we just really want to get this finished!! After we "mud" and sand I will take more pictures to post...I am sure you will hold your breath in anticipation!!!!

The Backyard

Today was such a beautiful day out that I spent the majority of it on the deck catching some rays with Wendy, while poor Matt Mott worked. And as I was laying there I was looking around at the yard and remembered that Chelsea had mentioned wanting to see pictures of the fence that we put up last year and all the other new things....so during one of my beverage breaks I took out the camera. Above you will see the backyard with the new fence and the new shed. Next is Jerry, our garden gnome. He sits amidst my sunflowers that are getting so big and I really can't wait for them to start blossoming!!! You can kind of see them in the next picture, which is of our deck furniture. Behind the chaise loungers, which are pretty close to being broken in now :-) you can see the arbor (from the wedding) and part of the sunflowers (on the very left side). In this picture you can also see our outdoor table and chair set. The last picture is of the deck area and shows the fence we had put up on the driveway side. Both sections of that open so we can fit our cars in the backyard to wash them....although we both just take them to a car wash still. I guess old habits die hard.

We have done some very minor cosmetic things on the front of the house but I need to trim the hedges before I will post any pictures of that. And I should probably try to revive my flower box plants since they are pretty dehydrated from the heat and humidity this week. That will be my next post most likely.

And I am certain I don't need to put the plug out there....but as you all know, the shed, arbor and deck furniture are all from that lovely place in Cheshire...Sheds N Stuff :-)

Closet Progress

The above pictures are of the future walk in closet. The first picture is inside the closet part looking back at the wall that will be removed and will be open to the bedroom. Along the left side of the photo is the bathroom. Along the right side of the photo will be built in drawers. The second picture is standing in the same place, only I turned to my left. This is additional closet space, most likely where the hanging clothes will be. The wall opposite me is going to have an access door to a crawl space for additional storage. The last picture is where the plexiglass window is going to be, only from the closet side since you couldn't really see it that well in the bathroom picture I posted yesterday.

Hopefully we will make much more progress this coming weekend...although August is turning out to be quite the busy month so we shall see....