You Capture - Fresh

I'm pretty sure a lot of people are going to post similar pictures this week, but what's prettier than all the fresh new growth in the yard?

The red bud tree next to our house.

I'm not sure what this is, but it's a pretty bush in the back yard.

The pear tree out front.

A close up of the pear tree.

All of my photos this week are SOOC (straight out of camera. . .heh, I'm learning acronyms) I've been messing with some of the manual settings to try and enhance photos instead. I think they all came out pretty well, minus the last one which is a tad dark.

A Visit and Yard Work

We had more guests this weekend! Rachel and Jared's dad drove up and spent the weekend with us. I think that's one of the many things I like about having a house; we have rooms for guests stay with us. It was always hard for Jared's family to come see us in the past because they would always have to pay for a hotel, now it's not a problem!

After our guests left on Sunday afternoon Jared and I spent the rest of the day working on pulling out the last of the dead stuff in the yard. We also spread out the extra four bags of mulch that we purchased last fall. Sadly the mulch didn't go very far, I think we're going to have to buy a lot more next weekend to finish the rest.

Here is the final product of the tulips with the mulch:

We turned this:

Into this:

I snapped a ton of great photos of the yard this weekend too, but I'm going to save them for this week's You Capture. So stay tuned!

You Capture - Comfort

I think it's funny that the first thing that came to my mind when I thought "Comfort" was food. . . so I snapped a photo of my favorite meal of the week. I wish I would have taken the shot before I started pigging out, but the thought for my comfort food came to me after I started eating. . .stomach first, brain later apparently.

Chicken Parmesan over Spaghetti with fresh steamed green beans (all made by my wonderful husband.)

I also think a big comfort to me is sitting down to a nice meal with my husband (especially when he cooks!)
This is the view from my side of the table.

And of course, what would be my weekly "You Capture" without a picture of the cat. I laughed when I saw her sitting on the pile of blankets (that I just washed). I purposely put them on top of the dresser so she wouldn't sit on them. . . she always knows how to find a comfy spot.


You Capture is hosted by Keli this week, check out more comfy pictures HERE

A Busy Saturday

Saturday was spent cleaning and doing house projects. Jared finished the under cabinet lighting, installing the outside lights, and he also did a small personal project of installing LED color changing lights behind the big t.v. in the family room. While he was doing all that I did laundry and cleaned the whole house.

I'm not sure yet if I like the under cabinet lighting. Jared bought "soft white" LED strips and it's sort of a yellow light which makes the paint under the cabinets look really green (instead of a taupe with a hint of green in it) which I don't like. It's not that bad, and I figure if we really don't like it maybe we could put up a tile back splash to cover the paint instead. . . another project! Ha!

The outside lights are a little smaller then the old ones, but I think they look great.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

The directions for the new lights said we should put car wax on them once or twice a year to help hold the finish. I've never heard of that before. Perhaps the old owner of the house never did that and that's why the finish on the old lights chipped and rusted? Who knows.

The other big thing that we did on Saturday was buy our new bedroom set! I'm so excited to get rid of the t.v. tray that I've been using for a bedside table. Now I just have to find linens and pick a paint color for the walls. Looks like our bedroom is going to be the next room we're working on. It's funny because this morning I was watching old movies from Christmas thinking how different the family room looks since we got the end tables and painted. The room finally looks finished.

I hope everybody has a wonderful Easter!

Busted

I wasn't going to blog again today, but I totally caught the cat doing something funny so I have to write about it.

For some reason the cat loves our guest room. During the winter we don't use the room so we shut the door and close the vents in the room to save on heating costs, so she can't get in there. I also don't like her in there because she always sleeps on the blanket that I put at the end of the bed (in case guests have allergies). Plus, she's just dirty! She gets cat hair everywhere and I just want one room where I don't have to fight the never ending battle with the hair.

Last weekend I did a TON of laundry and washed all the blankets and spring linens. I piled the spring comforters and the blanket on top of the dresser in the guest room thinking that she wouldn't find it. Well with the weather being warmer we opened up the door and window in that room. I walked past the guest room after finishing my last blog and found this:

What a stinker. Now I'm going to have to wash that blanket again. . .bla. I still couldn't help but smile and laugh.

Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful

It's beautiful beautiful beautiful outside today. Yes, it's so beautiful that I felt the need to type beautiful three times. . .heh. 75 degrees, sunny, and oh so breezy it makes me feel like I'm at the beach. I might not have so many cravings to take vacations to the beach if we had more days like today.

I've had the past two days off for "spring break" at my office. Since the weather has been so nice I've been working in the yard the past two days. According to my local expert gardener (mom) it's still a little early to pull all the dead stuff out of the garden, but the weather was so beautiful I couldn't resist. I hope Chicago weather doesn't pull a fast one on me and it snows again.

So things started off like this:

And then looked like this after my hard work:


Remember that first picture I took of the tulips by the mail box? Here is what they look like today:
Finally, I just thought this was a cool picture. We have some bushes in the terracing on the side of the house that have these beautiful yellow flowers on them. I like the shadows from the sun in this picture.
So I still have a bunch more yard work to do. We have this plot with ornamental grass in it that I need to trim out, and I need to put fresh mulch down in the areas where I cleared all the dead stuff out of. As long as the weather stays like this, I'm looking forward to it!

Another Puppy

Remember last summer when we found "The Almost Puppy"? Well Jared and I were out taking Molly for her night time walk this evening when yet another puppy followed us home! Actually this wasn't a puppy, it looked to be a Carn Terrier/Yorkie mix. (So he was small like a puppy, but I think he was an adult dog.) This dog was SUPER spazzy. He kept trying to smell Molly's butt and she wasn't having any of it. It came to a point where Jared had to carry her home the rest of the walk because she kept stopping and dodging his advances (I don't think he was neutered).

It took us almost 20 minutes trying to catch him, he was so skiddish. He did have tags so we first called the home number on his collar and nobody answered, so then we called the police and they sent an officer out to pick him up. This dog we definitely didn't want to keep, he was nuts. He wouldn't even sit still enough to eat a treat I tried to give him. . . I've never seen a dog turn down a treat before. So hopefully the police will get him back to his owners tonight and I hope they aren't worrying too much. I seriously think he would have gotten hit by a car had we not caught him, he was a running fool.