Mimosas in summer

While I'm not easily excited over mimosas the drink, I am excited about the mimosa trees that I was able to plant!  My parents have a couple larger mimosas in their yard back in Maryland and convinced me to bring back a few to plant in my yard.  Chloe and I drove back from our vacation a little over a month ago with a box of three trees in the front seat.  I planted all three once I got home, but I had a heck of a time doing it.  There was no rain for the entire week that we were down in Maryland, which meant that the dirt was extremely dry and hard to dig up.  I did the best I could, tossed some mulch around the three itty bitty trees, watered them, and hoped for the best.

Planting anything in Ohio in the middle of summer is usually a bad idea.  I seemed to have gotten lucky though, because all three of my little trees are growing!  They were all just a couple inches tall when I planted them (I kept asking my step-dad over and over "Are you sure those are trees?  Those look like weeds").  I haven't been able to get pictures of them yet, but let's just say that one tree is doing much better than the others.  All of them are still green and showing signs of life, but the tree planted closer to the dip in the back of the yard is doing the best and is almost 12 inches tall now.  If only my little aloe plant was doing as well......

This is what my little trees will look like in another few years once they've grown some more and the flowers bloom (they grow an average of 2 to 4 feet per year):

I hope they all make it.  These would be so pretty in my oh-so-boring backyard.

The next yard work item to tackle is knocking down the mulberry tree again.  Last year when I moved in, there was one branch that was about a foot away from touching my neighbors' house.  By mid-October, it was about an inch away.  Thankfully, my step-dad came for a visit and brought the chainsaw, so we spent a few hours cutting down branches until just a two-foot tall stump was left.  Simple, right?  Yes....until I noticed that there were leaves sticking through the little fence on that side of the house a few weeks ago.....I knew mulberry trees grew fast but OH MY GOSH this thing is frightening!  I think I may need to hire someone to come dig up the stump (once I get someone to take the chainsaw to it again) because it is uncomfortably close to the house in my opinion (and my realtor's opinion too).  There are a ton of branches, sprouting from the ground AND the stump, and it gets in the way when mowing the lawn.  I do sometimes wish that there was a class on lawn and plant care when buying a home!

BLOG FAIL!!!!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH my gosh!  Where did we go?  Did anyone even notice?!

Probably not.  But for a quick summary......I've been busy, mostly with work.  The personal life has taken a nose dive (yet again) while the professional life has gotten better (yet again).  This always happens.  One area is doing really well while the other isn't quite so lucky.  But I'm content with where I am right now.

Chloe and I have been busy bees around the house.  My step-dad came for a visit last weekend, so we were able to get a lot accomplished.  This time I promise pictures will follow!  I just haven't gotten them off of my phone yet.  But things about the house have been moved, repaired, decided upon, etc.  The best news of all though?  I finally got a real bed!  No more air mattress, thanks to someone's little nails poking a hole in it I believe, and no more sleeping in the guest room.  Nope, there's a real queen-sized mattress in my room and it's glorious!

I'll be back with a real post with pictures about everything we've done around the house later tonight or tomorrow.  Expect to see a long post where I vent about my yard too, because it's coming like a tornado.

First Spring

I've learned that when the sun is out and the weather is barely above 50 degrees, go outside and mow your lawn!  If not, you get dandelions everywhere......

 

And the grass ends up being nearly as tall as the dog.  Not too surprisingly, the dandelion problem has gotten worse since I haven't gotten around to getting a lawn mower just yet.  I do need to point out that the grass seed actually grew!!!  Despite the freezing temperatures, little green spots started to pop up!

After a week or two of putting it off, I finally caved and borrowed a co-worker's lawn mower.  The front yard was absolutely pitiful.  My grandma is supposed to be bringing me an older mower that she had fixed up, but I really couldn't wait until next week or the week after.  It was BAD.  Unfortunately for me, my neighbors were never home when I had the chance to ask them if I could borrow their mower, so I managed to get a mower into the back of my car all by myself (cue crappy music).

 You can barely tell here, but it was awful

 I really need to work on the whole mowing thing.  Not too shabby for the very first time EVER mowing though!

 My poor driveway....no one told me hose the lawn mover down IN THE YARD!!!

I have a whole summer to learn how to properly mow a lawn.  I'm going to need to pick up weed killer and an edge trimmer at my next Home Depot trip, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  For now, I'm off to finish up my chocolate-covered matzo!  I'll post pictures and the recipe later.  It'll be worth coming back!

Snow snow snow snow snow!

I want to wash my hands, my face, and hair with snoooooooow!

I used to sing that song every single year in chorus back in high school.  But really, it was the snow that kept me away for the past two weeks!  My job is highly impacted by bad weather, so when that major snow and ice storm swept over the Midwest, shutting down everything from Dallas to Chicago, my days at the office were a little busier than usual.  My computer's power adapter also decided to go bad, so I was unplugged when at home for about a week too!

That also means that I haven't been able to do much around the house!  Today I sat down and wrote out a long list of all the ideas that have popped into my head so far.  I bought a small notebook and labeled each page for every room, listing every single idea I've had for each space.  I have a lot of work ahead of me!  It's all bound to change too.  But the top of the list is to finish painting all the rooms.  I think I'll personally feel a little more "moved in" when that's all said and done.  After that, I think the next step will be to finish the office.  For some reason, that room calls out to me.  I've never been done to truly use a computer desk or actually file things away, and I think that's largely because I never liked my office area.  The goal for this office is to be a space that I actually want to be in.  Keep your fingers crossed that it won't be too hard!

Doors doors doors

First, I'm super proud of myself because I figured out how to fix the garage door all by lonesome with minimal Googling!  Many thanks to the random commenter who said "Try reprogramming the controllers."  I had not idea HOW to reprogram the controllers, so I got out my little step ladder, found a tiny little button on the back of the big opener box, and TADA!  Both controllers work now.  In a few years I'll definitely replace the entire system and install sensors and a keypad, but for now, this will work just fine.

Second, I hate storm doors.  Really.  The storm door that I had when I moved in never closed all the way.  It was always open a tiny little bit.  I didn't think anything of it until the first weekend in October when it was 40 degrees out and windy.  I was woken up from a great nap with Chloe by a huge CRRRRACK!  The dog started barking and shaking and eventually piddled on herself while I ran around trying to figure out what had fallen over.  When I couldn't find anything inside, thinking a cat did something, I ran through the garage, only to find my storm door blown all the way to one side with a giant crack going down one side.  The glass was intact, but the door would only close a tiny bit.  I put a trash can in front of it then proceeded to call around in an attempt to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do.

One hour and two frozen hands later, I had managed to screw everything apart to get the sheet of glass removed.  After that, it was time to get the door off.  The screws were stripped and bent and the door jamb was in multiple pieces as well.  FANTASTIC.  But at least the offending door was removed, right?

 After being pushed closed, this was as far as it would go.....

 Nice big crack down the side, plus my awesome trash can/keeping door closed attempt

 ALMOST!

 An inside view of the damage.....

Stupid door

I'm pretty much convinced that the previous owner's husband was the Mr. Fix-it type.  Nothing wrong with that....except that he didn't seem to know what he was doing on a lot of little projects.  There were multiple holes in the door jamb, so I'm under the impression that he installed the now-broken door without fully knowing how to do it correctly.  Also, on a sidenote, he's a terrible painter.

Fast forward to mid-November.  I finally decided to get the door replaced.  Eventually I settled on the right door for me, with the glass and screen built-in to make changing them over in the warmer seasons easier on me.  Home Depot offers the $97 storm door installation, so I knew that was the way to go.  They were also able to repair the door jamb for a little bit extra.  The two guys who did the install were great, and one lives in my neighborhood, so now I have his card for when I need something else replaced or repaired.  The door works like a charm and looks great too.

Then the family came to visit.  Somehow, as people were going in and out, the spring mechanism was bent.  I found this out when I got up at 6am the day after Christmas and heard a creepy creaking sound, which turned out to be the door swinging in the wind.  GREAT!  I was able to get the replacement part and a chain to attach to the top to keep it from being opened too far.  I'll admit that I'm afraid to replace the parts myself, so I'll be calling my friendly installer to come fix it, but at least everything is ready.

The lesson learned?  Be careful with pretty new storm doors and have that chain installed BEFORE you open the door to far.

Problem solved!