Weekend Wrap-Up

Well...it's Monday again. Why does this day always come so fast? Maybe it's because we seem to always have great, fun, busy but productive weekend? Yep, that seems like a good reason so I'm just gonna go with it. Anyways, how was your weekend?

If you have been reading my blog or even looked at it recently, then I bet you could guess what we did this weekend...

LANDSCAPING...again!

Friday night we had our every two weeks dinner and grocery shopping date. We ate at The American Table in Warsaw and then shopped at Aldi's, Big R, Lowe's, Kohl's and Wal-Mart. We were busy and had agenda!

Saturday we were up fairly early and hit the road running. We went back to Wal-mart to pick up bikes that we had been eyeing AND I got a couple more perennials to plant. I think I have a sickness, really. Recently it has become near impossible for me to walk through or even near a garden center without purchasing some plant! After this quick shopping trip (and a lunch date) we loaded the bikes in the back of the CRV and headed home with landscaping on our brain!

Our big project and goal this weekend was the add a flower bed by our front walk (which you will see later in this post) but we also had topsoil and mulch to add to existing beds. Oh, and we bought a new plant hanger thingy so I could hang my newest hanging basket too. Here are some random photos:

This little bed by our mailbox has taken off, it's so pretty!

The newest hanging basket, which is by our back walkway now.

Our newest perennials-I LOVE the coneflowers! Oh, and in the middle of this bed was a big holly bush that we were able to remove on Saturday. It was ugly, so we are glad it is gone. We plan to add something there...just not sure what yet!

See those green plants that look kind of like sea creatures or chi pets? I got those at Lowe's on clearance for $1 AND they are perennials. SO excited about that!

And the front bed...I didn't take a before picture, but just imagine it with grass. Digging up all that grass was a job!

The front bed looking down the walk from our front porch..

And looking at it from the side.

I love what flowers add to our house. This whole landscaping thing started out as an idea to add some curb appeal, but now I am really enjoying it. I can't wait to plant more this coming weekend!

After hours of landscaping we headed to El Mez for dinner...we had planned on grilling but since it was raining we obviously had to go out to eat...right? Ha, that's our excuse anyways! After dinner we went for a very first bike ride on the new wheels. Louie did not go with us because he did not like being in the bike basket:

I'm hoping that we can train him to enjoy it, but who knows if that will happen. We did put him in the basket on Sunday for a little bit too to try and get him used to it. In the meantime, we will be leaving him at home while we ride!

On Sunday we went to church and then grilled lunch at home and ate outside. The weather was so nice on Sunday! After a lazy afternoon and a nap or two we headed out for another bike ride! We snapped some pictures:

North Manchester covered bridge...

See how blue the sky was?!

Riding down our street...

...and using a park bench to take a self timer picture!

All in all, it was a GREAT weekend. I love the landscaping we added and the fact that we can do bike riding around our town now. I will say that my legs are a little sore today though...probably a combination of shoveling, weed pulling and bike riding. And honestly? I kind of like it...being sore isn't always bad!

Oh, 25 days until FLORIDA!

Happy Monday!

Let's take a walk...

...through our garden!! :)

I am so proud of the improvements we have made to the exterior of our home this Spring. You may be tired of hearing about it or seeing pictures...and if that's the case, you should skip this post! Anyways, I LOVE flowers. What girl doesn't? Almost every night Stephen gets home from work before me and he usually has the flowers watered when I get home...and almost every night I tell him that I need to go outside to "look at the flowers" and he laughs. Its a usual evening thing in our house recently. I just like to look at the pretty blooms!

Well, one evening this week I took TONS of pictures so you could all enjoy looking at them with me. Let's get started:

This is the view when looking out of our dining room bay window. We added the hummingbird feeder last weekend and I have yet to see any hummingbirds. Do we need to do anything else other than add food to the feeder?

Our little basil plant in the kitchen...I don't really like basil, but I do like the way the plant looks!

Front steps and mailbox...steps are wet from watering the flowers.

Picked up this beautiful perennial last weekend at Lowe's for 50% off, its called banana cream and is a pale yellow in person. So pretty!

Love these lillies which are also a perennial!

Dramatic purple pansies on our patio table out back...

Pretty petunias hanging by our mud room windows. This plant has taken off since purchasing it, I love it when that happens!

Sweet Pea's that are kind of taking over an area of our side/back yard. I like these, but I think they will be going soon...anyone have any tips/ideas on controlling them rather than digging them up and throwing them away?

I LOVE these lemon drop perennial flowers...got these at Lowe's for 50% too!

Beautiful!

Coming soon-a cone flower!

Tomatoes are growing and turning red every day!

More hanging petunias that have taken off since purchasing. Ignore the light on the post, it's broken...actually, the whole this is broken because there is no wire running to it. Problem is that I like it in the yard...and it's in a very sunny area. Would it be possible to remove the electric light and place a solar one there instead? I really need to research re-doing this!

And last but not least, Louie! Because really, what's a post without a picture of this cute pup?

A boring one I tell ya! :)

Happy Friday, y'all! Have a great weekend!

Weekend-Wrap Ups-2 weekends!

Well it seems that life and it's schedule has prevented me from posting some weekend wrap ups in a timely manner...again. Let's hope that this does not become a trend like it always seems to...moving on now...

This wrap-up includes pictures and details from the past 2 weekends, starting with the day we returned from vacation in Florida. We arrived at home around 9pm Saturday evening and even thought it was dark outside I could see our tulips had bloomed. Who do you think was excited!? Raising and waiving hand energetically: this girl! Tulips are my favorite flowers and I had been really looking forward to their bloomage (totally just made that word up) in our yard. They are beautiful AND I have taken basically a hundred pictures of them already!

Sunday we had some errands to run, which included grocery shopping. We had basically no food in our house once we got back form vacation. Apparently we did a really good job of eating everything to prevent it from going bad the week before! :) We snapped some pictures before we left and were just enjoying the spring blooms and nice weather in Indiana!

The above bush is near our back walkway into the house and it smells amazing. Seriously, love it!

These sandals were a Florida purchase at Kohl's and I love the pink flowers, so girlie and fun!

Above: our Red Bud tree. I always wanted a Red Bud when I lived in Florida and even looked into purchasing one. When we realized one of the trees on our lot was a Red Bud, I was pretty excited!

Below: Even Louie likes the Tulips!

After we went grocery shopping and did things like that it was time to get dirty in the yard. We cut our grass for the first time of 2012 on March 25, 2012. We also did a little weeding and some sign fixin' too. It was such a nice day outside!

Our reward for the hard work in the yard? Pulling the grill out of the garage for the spring/summer season and grilling steaks for dinner! I am so thankful that Stephen likes to grill and is good at it. Dinner was delicious!

The grill master!

Now onto last weekend...

Friday afternoon Stephen finished fixing our sign that had been beaten up this Winter and we took some pictures with the sign and the tulips. Louie was not in a picture mood though...oh well. Friday night we went grocery shopping (our normal Friday night date...we live an exciting life people!) and got dinner out at a Mexican place. I think we were both so happy that it was Friday since last week at work had seemed long and overly busy...just exhausting. You can bet I slept in on Saturday!

Stephen wanted to cut the grass on Saturday morning, but it was kind of chilly outside and the grass never dried enough to cut it. I did get outside to take some more pictures of our Tulips though!

I LOVE the above fire ones!

Saturday we left the house after lunch and headed to Indianapolis to shop at GardenRidge and have dinner with some good friends of ours. I warned Stephen that he might not like GardenRidge, but he actually said it wasn't bad and that he would go back. WOO! We were shopping specifically for pots for the front steps and a patio table, which we got both. We also got some other things that were not on the list...but that always happens, right? Well, it always happens to us at least!

Some pictures before we left:

LOVE

boy oh boy...

Sunday we taught Sunday School at church and went to late service. In the afternoon we spent time outside cutting the grass and putting up our new patio table that we purchased on Saturday. It was much warmer outside on Sunday, so that was nice. Actually, it was kind of hot at times! We had to get some water outside for Louie because he was panting non-stop. He likes laying on the bricks in the shade...I think they are cool for him!

Our new table and umbrella:

Can't wait to grill and eat dinner outside with Stephen & Louie!

We ended Sunday with a trip to RedBox and Dairy Queen. Did you know that DQ now has frozen hot chocolates? Well, they do and they are SO good. We got a large blizzard and a frozen hot chocolate to eat throughout the week, but they messed up and gave us 2 large blizzards AND the frozen hot chocolate so we really had a lot of ice cream. In fact, it's still in our freezer! Oh and the movies we picked (I picked) were Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Dolphin Tale. We both really like Dolphin Tale-so cute! Twilight was okay...I will say the movies are getting better and better. It's a great improvement from the first one for sure!

Oh and in other news...I had an exciting Monday morning. By exciting I really mean, not so much exciting at all and lots of stress. I hit a deer on my way to work at around 7am. I drive through the country to and from work so hitting a deer is always a risk and I have seen them many times on my commute. I did not see this one until he was collided with the front of my CRV. I felt so bad for the deer! Unfortunately he died and my car basically did:

I am driving a rental car (per our car insurance-thank goodness!) and waiting for the body shop to tow the CRV in for repairs. While I would have much rather not had to deal with this on Monday morning...I am thankful that I was in the CRV and not my old Civic because it would have been much worse. I am also thankful that I was not injured at all. God is good! I was upset about the car for a little while because well, I loved the CRV and its still pretty new to us but I have to remember that it's just a car. There are other things in life much more important!

Hopefully repairs will start tomorrow and I can be back in the CRV soon! I hope it's soon because the rental car really stinks!