We are big fans of Holmes on Homes and Mike Holmes himself. The state of our house helped make us a fan. There are many times that Bryan and I have complained ‘What in the hell were the previous owners thinking!!’ I kept complaining I needed a Mike says ‘Make it right!’ cross stitch for the house and our friend Amy volunteered to make it happen.

It hangs with pride next to the pictures of our house that the county had taken in previous years.

So I discovered a process where you can make your own raised beds with bags of concrete. You lay them out in whatever pattern you wish, water them or let them get rained on till they set. Rip off the paper, lay the next row. They form to the row beneath, creating stability. I don’t know specifically how high I would go with them, but I plan on going about three high. We are putting in a bed in front of another raised bed because whoever put it in just didn’t seem to care what it looked like. Half of the bed has the barest attempt to match the other side and then they seemingly tossed plans to the wind. Mainly I just want to distract from the ugliness of the facade behind it. Who cares how crappy the wall behind the bed looks while you are busy shoveling strawberries in your mouth, not me!

We are also putting in two raised beds for a veggie garden next year. I thought about larger or more beds, but honestly that just leads down the path to crazytown. I am not a diligent enough gardener to give myself too much room to play in. One bed will be all greens and salad makings, the other will be.. well all the rest of stuff you put in a garden: Potatoes, onions, carrots, that sort.

It’s been a slow process, and we are only half done. But it is the winter project. Cause you know, we just needed a little something to keep us busy while we finished the kid’s room remodel, and raised said kid, and all the other crazy stuff you do.

Good times

Spending money I shouldn’t have.. But we replaced the lilliputian fridgelette that we have been dealing with since buying the house. It was fine for the year and a half that we were broke as broke. But now that I can actually afford fresh veggies it’s been a failing game of Tetris for a while now.. well I hit the breaking point and dragged Bryan out to just ‘look at what our options were’. Two hours and 25.6 cubic freaking feet later.. (woo haw)
My checking account is lighter than it was but by not what you would have expected for what we got.

The universe must have must heard my screams of hatred. I hated that fridge so much I can’t even tell you.

hate.

hate.hate.hate.

And now it goes to live in the basement like it should.

Some before and afters:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

I think the next time Bryan and I pooh pooh the amount of work we’ve done, we just need to shut the hell up. A great big shoutout to my Mom and little sister for helping out so much this last week. We couldn’t have done it without you.

I was really frustrated, we put a lot of time and money into our yard. Unfortunately we didn’t lay down any barriers so even though tons of time and money had gone into things, I was in a position to have to do it all again which was horribly frustrating. Weeds and morning glory are dreadful foes. But my mom and little sister had come out to visit, are actually still here. But they got it up their butt to help me get things in order.

We have an entire half of the yard that was covered in bricks and a huge hole where the pond had been.
My mom almost by her lonesome moved all the bricks by herself.

We had all the beds in the front redone with actual plastic laid so that we hopefully don’t have to do this all over again anytime soon.

The amount of work this entailed.. It’s amazing.

During the baby’s nap I got a bunch of bark and rock down in the garden today. I can’t believe how nice it is starting to look. It’s like grownups live here.


Only two more beds to do in front.. *sob*

I also managed to get the base in for the raised bed that I am putting in. Now I just have to wait till I have a little more spare cash for additional cement blocks for the second row, and for the soil. I have lots of wants, yet very little cash.

Not too much of an update, but I just couldn’t believe how pretty everything is. I wish we’d been about to get everything trimmed back already. Damn slow moving tax refund.

The work continues on getting the beds cleared. The upper beds were easy-ish for me to get cleaned out, but now that we are working the lower beds near the house I have started to take the ‘throw some money at it’ approach. I love this approach, sadly my wallet does not.

But it’s starting to look great, hopefully next week I get the bark and start laying it down.

There are a lot of flowers in the yard, it’s nice when the gardener does the clearing cause she actually recognizes the stuff that is already here, breaks it up, spreads it around. It makes me feel really plant-ignorant but I guess no ones starts out as an expert gardener.

Things are starting to bloom in the yard, the magnolia tree is this riot of color. It’s just beautiful.

I am still a little shocked sometimes that this is all ours.

We agreed when we got the house that we would host the annual orphans and friends Thanksgiving, with the addendum ‘if we have a working bathroom’ ha ha ha. Well the ha ha ha became a little less ‘ha ha’ and a little more ‘oh shit.. really?? seriously?? It’s not done yet??’ Well I ‘broke in’ our working upstairs wonderful beautiful brand new toilet this morning and hopefully tonight the sink will go in. One way or another Thanksgiving is happening, though there may be some unfinished bits.

This weekend my friend watched the baby while I cleaned the house in preparation for the descending hungry hordes. I am amazed out house actually looks really great, it looks like a responsible grown up person lives here.


Of course if anyone went into the basement, they could potentially be crushed under the toppling of badly stacked boxes of crap.

Today I work from home because we are having the chimney cleaned and some repairs done to it and the fireplaces themselves. Time to get back to work since lunch is about over. Though I am being distracted by A Chorus Line. I’ve had the songs stuck in my head since watching the documentary about it, Every Little Step, which was absolutely fantastic. I had to pull out my old VHS tape, I blew off the dust and stuck it VCR. I’m surprised the darn thing still plays and I didn’t wear it out in my teens. I get to relive my teenage crush on Terrence Mann and listen for my favorite line of ‘Why is it only my ass that ever gets invited places?’