Thursday, June 13, 2013

Graduation

I can't believe my baby boy is now a high school graduate.  I can't express how proud we are of him - he's become such a fine young man, an honorable man, a smart man, and just an all around great guy!  We are very impressed with his dedication to school.  He graduated with honors - something my hubby and I didn't do.  He will be heading off to college in a few months and I can honestly say, as of now, I am very excited to see him go.  Not because I want him out of the house, but because this is what the last 18 years were supposed to be about: preparing him to become a self-sufficient man. 

Going away to college, while still a bit under mom and dad but in a remote way, is a great way to begin to figure out how to make it on your own.  Of course I will miss him, and his laugh.  But I am excited to see him grow into his own. 

For now, I will cherish the few months of him being home. 

Congratulations my son!

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Look What We Did

We've been busy cleaning up the front and back yard.  After snowy winters I love the warmer weather and planting flowers.  This year we  cleaned up the vegetable garden and put in a few vegetable starts.  I hope they take.  I'm pretty sure we waited long enough so as not to have them freeze.  We missed out planting last year so we are excited to see how it goes this year.  We even found a guy on Craigslist who was selling his cow poop, I mean organic compost, so we got a truck load and mixed that into the dirt.   Here's hoping to a bumper crop.

During the winter my hubby and I decided to make some changes to the front yard.  We cleared out a section off the front walkway and laid pavers and put in a small patio.  We found a perfect bistro set at the home improvement store for a great price and we have instant conversation site.

            Here is what the area looked like before:

                And the transformation:
    
The final product:





We are loving this spot!  On the weekend we come out in the morning and enjoy our coffee while reading the paper.  In the evening we wind down from the day and just enjoy being together and the quiet of the late afternoon.  Notice, only two chairs.  Just for me and my hubby.

We also cleaned out an area in our backyard that had roses, but they were not good bloomers and always infested with bugs.  So instead, we put in planters and flowers.  I am very happy with the results here.



You can see my hubby's summer project - painting the house. He's done so much prep work with sanding and priming and today he is starting the actual painting.  It took us going through 20 color swatches (on the back wall) to finally decide on the color (which happened to be one of the original finalist -but we I had to work through all the options so as not to have any second guessing on color).  I'm sure our neighbors behind us thought we were trying to figure out how to make a checkerboard on our house. 

Anyone else have big summer plans?