Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Drumroll Please......

The time has finally come for before and after pictures to prove that while I have not had time to force even one creative thought into my brain, I have been a busy, busy girl.

First off, for the last two months I have been trying to tame my overgrowth of a yard, and I must say, for someone who has no more experience with growing things than watering houseplants and constantly stuffing food into a little monkey-boy, I'm pretty proud. I even put in a garden, all by myself. Yeah, my mother used to force us to garden, but she was the brains behind the operation then.

So I proceeded to the garden spot with my straight-line string, a hoe, a tape measure and some seed. I was busy measuring it all out and making sure all my rows were absolutely and perfectly straight when my grandparents decided to show up and thought I looked ridiculous. My grandmother's suggestion?

Just hoe a roe and put the seed in.

Apparently stuff grows better in crooked rows. I couldn't bring myself to plant crooked rows, but the rows in which I didn't count absolutely every single tiny little carrot seed came up much better than the rows in which they were meticulously counted and evenly spaced. Who knew?

Oh, and remember that crappy (literally) little pond I had in the backyard? Well, we did a little sprucing and here's the transformation.

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Drumroll.....

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Here are some more flower garden shots....I thought I'd better snap them so at least I could prove I can grow stuff like a good little housewife.

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And of course, the pirate house....

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With that done, last week I tackled the bathroom. We had finished the tile, after ripping out CARPET out of the bathroom quite a few months ago (see Holes in the Bathroom) but in a week's time we tore off that terrible wallpaper, replaced the countertop, installed new fixtures, spray painted some of the old fixtures and redid the tub area. We had planned on just doing kind of a concrete overlay on the countertop to make it look like concrete, but we found this remnant countertop for $25, a fourth of the cost of the materials to do the concrete look.

Remember that most-hideous wallpaper and the wonderful holes in the floor?

Hole in the bathroom floor

Well that's all gone now.

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Some friends came over and helped me de-wallpaper, which took hours upon hours with sponges and surprisingly, a spatula. Nothing like a good ol' spatula for taking off wallpaper.

Here are a few more pics for your viewing pleasure.

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See, I have been very busy.




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Sunday, June 14, 2009

What Would the World Look Like Without Us....

My anal retentive self has struck this week, which is why I have again been AWOL from my wonderful blogging life. There have been weeks where I've thought, "Man, I only posted once that week, what in the world was I doing?"

And then I've realized, "Oh yeah, I was actually hanging out with my real-life friends that week. Imagine that." Blogging is a great substitute for human interaction when all your real friends are either busy or on vacation.

But I did not have the privilege of hanging out with friends this week, well, unless you count the day a couple of friends came over to help me in my wallpaper removal endeavors in the bathroom the other day. For the most part I have been working on completing my yard beautification mission, which has completely taken over the last month of my life.

When we moved into this house in September we moved into a property that looked like a flower garden had spontaneously combusted. There were flowers and bushes everywhere, and I mean everywhere. You could just be walking along and realize oh, you stepped on a tulip, or a day lily or a whatever. I am into flowers, really I am, but I need to be able to walk in my yard without feeling claustrophobic. And the massive flower garden that wraps around the house? Well, that was being taken over by grass. So, for the last month I have been cleaning out flower beds to ultimate perfection. And I cannot stop.

I have an innate need for flowers to be where flowers should be, for grass to be where grass should be and for dirt to be where dirt should be. It's the same reason that in our closets, all the hangers need to be exactly the same and all the clothes need to be hung according to purpose and color. For instance, in Kaydn Rye's closet, all the hangers are those little white hangers, and all his shirts are hung up with the blues, the reds, the yellows and oranges, the blacks, the browns and the plaids all hung together in their respective groups.

In my closet, I have skinny white hangers and my clothes are hung with the shirts grouped into blues, purples, greens, blacks, browns and reds. Then the pants, the skirts and the dresses all hung in their respective groups.

In hubby's closet, he has big black hangers and his clothes also must be hung according to color. This was a prerequisite for marriage. Believe me, it is that important.

If he couldn't keep his closet color coordinated with everything hanging on the right hangers going the right way, it wasn't going to happen, I wouldn't marry him. I informed him that he could perhaps sleep on it and let me know if he was ready to commit to proper closet etiquette, till death do us part.

He had seen my closet, so he knew what he was getting into, but for some reason he just had not previously thought about how he would be required to follow the same closet etiquette. Needless to say, he traded his freedom for a life of slavery to closet etiquette.

So anyway, same goes for the yard. There can be no weeds and no grass in the flower beds, and there can be no weeds and no flowers in the grass. There's just no working around it. I have actually taken a couple days off of work to de-grass the flower beds in the last few weeks. That's the beauty of telecommuting - I do not need to seek help for my illness and can still hold down a decent job.

Yes, I know I am suffering from some kind of schizo-obsessive disorder, but the truth is, I do not want help. If I was cured, then I would have weedy and grassy flower gardens, and that's not good for anyone. What would the neighbors think?

And really, if there were no obsessive people in the world, the people who have nightmares about weeds in their flower gardens and blue shirts mixed with brown shirts in the closet, what would the world look like?

Scary thought.

This week, after I clean out all the grass from in between my lilac bushes, then I believe I should be about done. I'll post pictures for the big reveal.

Additionally, I am also de-wallpapering the bathroom. After finishing the slate tile floor almost three months ago, I finally decided to get my butt in gear for another round of de-wallpapering. By the end of the week I'll have updated pictures of our de-hydrangea wallpapered bathroom, complete with new counter top. Wallpaper is like the wrath of G-d upon humanity. I'm sure, just like Eve eating the apple in the garden, wallpaper may seem like a good idea at the time, but believe me, it never is. If ever a little voice starts filling your head with fantasies of wallpaper, run. Run away as fast as you can. Run straight to the paint aisle and pick yourself up a nice gallon of paint.

With that thought, I will return to the world of blogging later in the week, once my mind has been eased by the riddance of wallpaper and weeds.




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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Just Listen To Your Heart Mom

Kaydn Rye's been busy this week with all kinds of quips and quotes.

Just today, after a week of running around in circles trying to accomplish 502 tasks, my housewife super powers seemed to be wanning and I felt like I coming down with a serious case of the "I've been running around in circles all week and think I caught a cold" disease.

Well, it might have had even more to do with the fact that while I was in town with some friends on Tuesday (town being 55 miles away - see I Am the Pioneering Woman) the driver's window on the Durango decided it was not going to roll back up. So, I drove the 55 mile trip home in 45 degree temperatures at 70 mph. By the time I got home I didn't have any hair left on the side of my head.

So anyway, I was feeling not so good this morning, and the always concerned Kaydn Rye said, "I think maybe you should go to the doctor, mom."

"No, I think I'll be fine. I just need you to not bother me for stuff today so I can get some rest," I said. Stuff meaning, "Mom, can I have a snack. Mom, can I have some water. Mom, can I have another snack. Mom, can you button my pants. Mom, can you carry my toys here and there and do this and do that."

He replied with, "Mom, you just need to listen to your heart, it will tell you that you need to go to the doctor."

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I felt like breaking out in song, namely a Roxette song.

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Oh, and the night of the mysterious window failure, Kaydn Rye decides he's got everything under control and says, "Don't worry about it mom. I'll take a look at it when we get home."

If only all of life's motor vehicle related problems could be solved by a four-year-old.

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This line I kind of stole from some kid in the gas station while picking up my cappuccino so I wouldn't end up asleep in a cow pasture on the side of the road during my hour drive home from town. Some kid was looking at the tabloid magazines and happened to see a Jon & Kate Plus 8 headline that read "Jon and Kate's 5 million dollar divorce."

The kid is apparently quite a fan of Jon and Kate Plus 8 cause he was pretty disturbed by the headline. He said to his friend next to him, "Jon and Kate getting divorced?? Oh man. No way." He may just go on to become a marriage and family therapist some day.




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