Mom, look. Look.

Looooook what we did ... Mo om, LOOK, Look now!

Our front yard is now re-planted.  With flowers & a tree ... grass still to come.  The tree is really little for now, but will grow.  All of the rocks came right from our own yard - buried, scattered around the perimeter of the house ... and we still have plenty left!

Oh, we are proud of our work here.

And the hanging basket flowers are thriving (and still bird-free!) ...

We've actually done quite a bit more over the past week ... we've had A LOT of irons in the fire, projects partially complete, a mess-house if you will.  Well, they are sweetly and truly coming to a wondrous end (but don't worry, there are PLENTY more to come - but maybe in the future, we'll start one at a time!) 

... SO STAY TUNED!!

Everyone should do this once.

Go on a hot air balloon ride.
Do it.
It's amazing. (That's an understatement.)

Pat got me a hot air balloon ride for Christmas this year.  We've scheduled it twice so far this year - but because of the rain (it ruined everything, really), we had to reschedule twice.  It was finally planned for June 25, and we went on June 25.  I can't say enough awesome things about this adventure.  It was just plain crazy awesome.  One of the coolest things we've ever done.  Everyone needs to take a hot air balloon ride. (At least once ... but I almost guarantee that you're going to want to go again!)

I'll let the pictures do the talkin', but here are some tidbits about our ride:

• just after sunrise - took off about 8am
• it was cloudy and hazy, but cleared up quickly once we were up in the air
• about an hour in the sky
• went up about 1200 ft. at our highest
• traveled about 12 miles
• took off from a small airport; landed in a baseball diamond at a park
• had a fantastic, super friendly crew from Bella Balloons (http://www.flybellaballoons.com/)

Our balloon!

We took off from down there ... see the SUV w/trailer - that's our chaser (pick-up ride!)

Our shadow!

We landed just past these baseball diamond.

Now, onto house stuff.  The balloon ride was Saturday, and we didn't do much the rest of the day ... except make a trip to Home Depot to view stuff for our front yard.  We ended up buying flowers, dirt, a tree, grass seed, and mulch (among other littler things).

 

Here's what else we've gotten done:

Replanted the hanging baskets.  Flowers now grow from center and move outwards to the edges of the baskets, which should mean no more room for birds, I think.

Rita scraped the front piece of lattice so that I could paint it before planting.  (She wanted to, I swear.  She saw us outside and has been so couped up and it's driving her nuts; but there's not much she can do, so she asked to scrap while we work on other stuff.  Who am I to deny?)  I sprayed it down and we painted tonight!  We also planted, but we're not finished mulching and laying the rock border ... so more pictures on that later this week!  We're this close to having a front yard that looks good - the first outside improvement!

It's amazing how much better the WHOLE house looks from something as simple as repainting lattice ...
it just pops!

Replaced the front porch lights!!!  These lights look a bit modern now that they are actually hanging up; but I think that once I replace the lattice with railing, and paint the porch, etc. - they might be more suitable.  Also we got a new mailbox!! And removed the ugmo street number sign.  There were sticky street numbers under that - dumb.  They didn't even bother peeling them off before hanging something over it - why do more work than necessary!? 

Side note - we hope that we hooked up the electrical correctly; it was old wiring to new wiring, and the people before us hooked up a black splice to the old white wire and a white splice to the old black wire and connected the lights that way.  We're not sure if they knew something that we didn't about the wiring, but we're banking on 'we're smarter than them since everything else they've done in this house has been utterly stupid and ass-backwards' and we connected the wires the traditional way.  So far, no fires.

It will forever be known as ...

the vacation when Pat lost his wedding ring.  In the Atlantic Ocean.  And then bought goggles an hour later to look for it.

He didn't find it, in case you're wondering.

Here's the details:

Marissa has an annual work event; this year it was held at the Boca Raton Resort & Club in Florida.  Spouses are invited.  Pat came.  We took an extra day of vacation, so we'd have 1.5 days after my meeting to hang out and relax.  So, on our vacation day - Thursday it was - we went to the beach.  Nice day.  Big waves.  Fun in the sun. Warm water.  I had some sweet wave moves; Pat tried to copy my awesome water moves.  It was a blast.  We got out (playing in big waves becomes exhausting as you get older).  Dried off.  Lay on beach chairs with towels.  My ring went bling in the Miami sun.  Pat's ring did not (and not just because his has no diamonds).  Oops. 

At that point, what do you do ... I mean seriously, look for it?  We did look around in the sand, thinking (hoping) maybe it just fell off while he was drying off ... and I looked a bit down by the tide ... but who are we kidding?   The Atlantic Ocean is the 2nd biggest body of water on this planet, and Pat's ring is another treasure amid the pirate ships and sea life; forever lost to it.

We left and went to the beach bar, where we had a beer (Pat had 2).  Then he said, lets go back and look so that at least we can say we looked for it.  I was not interested.  It had been an hour plus.  If we were going to find it (not happening), it would not be an hour later.  But, we went back.  Pat asked the lifeguard for goggles.  He put them on and dove back out into the ocean (yes, really).  He walked up and down the beach.

See above for final result.

So ... anywho ... we had a great time regardless.  It was warm and sunny and just nice out.  We saw some enormous yachts and great views. 
And got nothing done around the house.

Pat was getting mad about me taking so many pictures ...

18th green ... tee are back to the middle right of the picture ... sweet hole.

Meet Claire ... pretty girl.

We played lawn chess ... I won.

She's crazy. (But in a good way!)

Guess what we arrived home to on Tuesday night?  Rita, our neighbor, hacking away at more of our yard.  I told her she was crazy - so I figure if I'll say it to your face, I can put it on paper the internet, right?

We had this crazy over-growth by our driveway.  It originally didn't extend all the way into the driveway, but with all the rain (I know, I'll stop talking about it someday), the plants/weeds/whatever just continued to take over our driveway.  It was our next big task.

Well, she said that she was out doing some work in her yard, and just came over to see how we were going to tackle this area (she said WE!).  And, well, then she just started cutting and before she knew it, she was half way done.  Along with a "Really, I don't mind, this is therapy to me; you just go inside and eat dinner - you just got home from work."  So, that's what I did.  Pat on the otherhand, went out to help her with the second half.  I should mention that I wasn't feeling well, and had only gotten a couple hours of sleep the night before - I was actually planning on attacking the bushes that night?

We didn't realize how much room we had over there!  We're going to extend our driveway just a bit so that both of us can park up there without having to move cars around every day!  It's awesome!  Also - found a bunch more rocks and bricks, so I might not need to buy many.  And, almost enough paver stones to make a path from the driveway to the side door - more mulla in our pockets!!

And, now just as it was fair to explain how awesome Rita is, and how she kicked our butts at yard work (see previous post) ... I also have to tell you that she's been wanting to clean up this lawn for about 15 years now ... so she's got her agenda too.  She said that at least a few times a year she has to come out and clip this driveway area because it impeeds into her yard so much and she doesn't want it taking over.  Plus, we think she's just excited to not live next to people who do nothing with or for their houses and yards.  We want this place to look amazing.  And we're getting there one step at a time!

Here's what the driveway area looks like ... still a ton of work to do, but way better than before!
BEFORE:

AFTER:

The city picks up yard debris every other week ... so we didn't do as much on our yard this weekend (so it doesn't sit for 2 weeks), and we'll pick it back up next weekend.  But, we did pay it forward and help plant in our neighbor's front yard ... Rita was going to help her, but broke her ankle, and so we helped Rita help her.  It's pretty awesome to live in a sweet neighborhood. 

AND, I did hedge those bushes around the back corner of our house, and it helps that area look way nicer.
BEFORE:

AFTER:

AND, I painted our front porch wicker chairs and table ... with the paint sprayer ... it was awesome, in case you're wondering.

Paint sprayer is awesome ... oh, did I already say that?
It went SO fast ... this was half way when we had to add more paint to the tub!