Finally!

I am happy to announce my backyard is finally finished! When I bought this house 3 years ago there were things I wanted to accomplish on the backyard that never quite got finished...they were just too big of projects for me to take on by myself. Now that I've got a good ole hubby around to help with these things, I'm starting to see projects get started and finished with his help!

Will and I started a couple of months ago by building a new gate on the side of the house for the dog run...then spent a couple of days and took a couple of truckloads of junk to the dump (mostly branches from the previous owner stashing them there) from cleaning up the side of the house. We then worked on clearing up the backyard of the branches I've piled up from cutting down a couple of Chinese Elm trees, as well as from my apple tree that split last year. We were able to rip out a couple more small Chinese Elms and a couple of HUGE flowering bushes as well as digging and ripping up a couple of stumps and grinding another couple under the ground enough to lay sod over them. Will has been such a hard worker and I am so glad we were partners in making the backyard look beautiful. Will spent a few hard working days putting in a sprinkler system all on his own and I couldn't be happier that I won't have to move a sprinkler around and will be able to water the lawn in the wee hours of the morning, when it's most effective! Here a a bunch of pictures showing the transformation over the last 2 months...
Beware, there are going to be a TON of pictures to go through, it was a long process!



















Now all that's left to do is accessorize my patio and make that brighter to match our bright green grass! We have tons more projects lined up for us to do to make the house look better...paint the outside of the house and put up new siding and rain gutters along the tops of the house/roof. I need to finish the front yard...I tore up all my rose bushes and now need to find new bushes and flowers to plant there, as well as nurse my lawn in the front back to health, it's not looking so good right now! One day, huh?

Academy of Country Music Awards

I just got done watching the awards show tonight and just wanted to blog about it! :) I look forward to these shows and always cross my fingers for Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood to win anything! They are my favorites and deserve not only the nominations they get, but the awards they win! Keith didn't win anything major tonight, he took home the award along with Brad Paisley for vocal event of the year for "Start a Band"...but he performed and sounded so good and I'm totally diggin his new hairstyle! ;)

Carrie also sounded GREAT when she performed, although the dress she wore kind of had me distracted...it was kind of an odd dress, huge and strange, but since she's Carrie and I think she's gorgeous in anything, she can pull it off.

She took home the 2 top honors tonight...Female Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year! She is always so cute when she accepts her awards, she genuinely seems grateful for the chance to be a part of the country music community. I think she is awesome, so I couldn't be happier to see her take home these awards!

Will is such a good sport and lets me watch these awards shows without complaining...and doesn't make fun of me when I jump up and down when people win awards I think should. I was also happy to see Taylor Swift get the album of the year award...even though I like Carrie's album better, Taylor's album did so well and sold a record amount...Taylor is going places in country! The show was great tonight, I can't wait for the next one!

Sleeping Beauty

Little Elsie Bug

So on Sunday when we got to my mom's house, my sister in law, Mary, and my niece, Elsie greeted us and Mary told me she had a story for me, but to not be offended. They've been reading a lot of books with Elsie lately, but she especially loves to read her Sleeping Beauty book, which is basically just pictures taken from the movie and put into a shortened book version...anyway, she has all the characters named in the book. Aurora is Mary (mommy) and the prince charming is Bryce (daddy)...a couple of the fairies and the kings are both of the grandparents...well for some reason Elsie has picked out the evil witch Maleficent as me! Mary went to get the book and sat down to read it with her...sure enough as soon as she got to a page with Maleficent's picture, Elsie said, "There's Darla, Hi Darla!". Now, she doesn't seem scared of this witch, so maybe it's not as bad as I'm taking it? Ha Ha! Maybe I'll take it as a compliment that she's putting me as a character in her book at all! :)