No Excuses

I went to visit some of my girlfriends in Northwest Arkansas a few weekends ago.  We had a fabulous weekend of shopping and great food. 

 When I returned, I found this crumpled receipt on our bathroom counter.  He treated himself while I was away~

In case you can't read it, he bought himself Ruffles, Doritos, pita chips, a cheap filet, french onion dip, a jar of peanuts, frozen french fries, Manwich with beef and buns, a 6-pack of Natural Light and 2 cups of yogurt.  I can't even start to tell you how gross I find this whole list (except for the Ruffles, of course). 

He ate all of it. 

I have no excuses for this.  I guess it's how we roll.

Spring 2011 Yard Updates

This past weekend we spent a lot of time working on our front flowerbeds.  This is the skanky state of affairs before we got to work~

And, here is the after.  We are certainly not landscape architects, but it is always a great feeling to step back and see the results of a long day's weekend's work! 

When we bought our house, the flowerbeds were very overgrown with a solid green wall of contractor grade shrubery.  After getting a quote from a landscaping company last spring, we decided we could just do it ourselves.  So, we started off by removing much of the original landscaping, removing the rotting aluminum edging, and tilling up the remaining area.  We added in some grasses, the crepe myrtles anchoring the ends of the house, and a lot of bedding plants.  This year we added 6 Encore azaleas, several addtional pots of Mexican feather grass, several flats of Ellepot Cora Vina (aka periwinkles), and several other additional perinnials.  We hope to add more colorful perinnials each year.  We also added 23 bags of mulch!  Yikes!  Now if we can just get our grasses and our yard to fill-in.  Our unusual winter storms in January and February took a toll on them.  Fingers are crossed!

Holy Hail Storm, Batman!

Out of nowhere Thursday night, we had a severe hailstorm.  We definitely had some damage, but considering everything else going on in the world, we'll be fine.  The sound of the hail beating on the windows was incredible echoing throughout the house.  We sustained some damage to our roof, windows, and bathroom skylight.  A few of my patio plants took a beating, and you'll notice that our magnolia tree leaves look like they were put through a food processor.  It also beat the stain off of our fence!!  Our yard looked like a plane flewover and dumped Sonic ice!  The insurance adjustor comes in the morning.  I hope it goes well!

Here are a few shots I took during the storm and the following morning~