Trim is done!

We are so excited that our trim and soffet is done! It really makes the house look so much better and newer.

Here is what our house looked like when we moved in:

Here is what it looks like right now:

The back door's overhang really stood out to me. I guess I never really realized how bad I thought the wooden one looked before. Now if you can just picture a new porch and grass.. that's in our future! Kanyon wants to take out that concrete walkway, too. It has a big gap in the middle of the walkway and then leads to nowhere.. as in the middle of the fence with the gate about ten feet to the left of it. After we can grow some grass, we want to put some walking stones out. I have to admit, the lack of grass is frustrating but it will come one day I guess.

Thursday, we are heading to Lubbock to run a few errands after I get off work - one of them being a new storm door! I mentioned to Kanyon that the brass/gold colored one we had really stuck out from the brown iron accents we have the other day and apparently he agrees so much that we need to get a new one on Thursday! I'm not one to argue if he wants to do it, either...

Changes!

Well, the siding company that we hired to replace the wooden soffet and trim on our house with siding came to start the job on Wednesday morning and they have been working hard!

Kanyon and I are already so happy with how its looking. It updates the house tremendously along with making it last longer.

The trim before:

Obviously no curb appeal. And not exactly permanent..

In progress pictures:

Also, they took down those old columns that didn't match the house and I already

love the effect that made!

Before:

See them on the left? I know.. not great picture.

Now:

It definitely helps. And again some of the progress made on the windows and some of the trim.

I also spent some time outside in the flowerbed when I got home from work. Kanyon was working a track meet at the school (two blocks away) and so Zeb and I got to work cleaning up our mess of a flowerbed out front. 

 Such a pretty boy.

Remember I said I was going to go and get garden soil? I did. And I used it. And I feel that much more confident in my future gardening..

What it looked like when I got home..

Yikes.

After pulling up the weeds, pulling out the dead plants and raking up all the dead leaves and mixing in gardening soil..

I can't wait to see what the house will look like when I get home on Sunday! I don't know if they'll finish today or if they'll work Saturday but another day of work will be done.

And just when you thought I was done telling you about the work on our house..

Kanyon has been working hard on his leather shop out back! His dad, his uncle, and him have been on the roof all week putting on a metal roof! It already makes a big difference.

He saved enough metal to build trim and a door on that hole in the wall on the left and make it another storage room. Next up.. working on the window and replacing the door. 

I am heading off to Austin tonight to have a girl's weekend for Kaitlin Lee and her bridesmaids! I wish I could fly but its still cheaper to drive. So I'll get there late tonight. But it should be a really fun weekend!

Baby Steps

I've got gardening on my mind this week, I guess, and so does everyone around me!

Here are the pages in the Country Living magazine I was talking about.

 I love the look of this plant! I think something like this would be really pretty along the side 

of the house that runs along the driveway.

 I've developed another problem with gardening magazines.. before I had no idea what I liked.

Now I want all of it!

That Cherry Laurel and the Flower Carpet Rose are really pretty.

This page is gorgeous. Maybe I could convince Kanyon to let me grow some growing 

flowers like these on his leather shop in the back yard?!

My friend Kelly came to Lamesa for work from Abilene today and I got to have lunch with her! It was so great to sit down with her. We've been friends since I transferred to ACU in 2007 and ended up doing Young Life together in college. She is a very talented girl and has a great blog with design ideas and tutorials. She is an interior designer with a company in Abilene and I was telling her today I was very impressed with one of their recent projects - the FBC in Sweetwater. Go check it out.

Anyway, we were talking about my inability to move forward with my back yard because I didn't know where to start and she let me have a gardening magazine she had in her car. It's a kind of guide/ordering service full of plants and flowers and everything about them. It's really helpful! I've already earmarked a lot of pages.

Kasha, who has several more years of homemaking under her belt than me (haha), is in her own landscaping predicament this year because she loves to do it .. but can't. They are building a new house this year (yay!) so any plants she buys and plants will just be ripped out by the end of this year when they move their current house after selling it. So.. I told her that she can let all of her landscaping desires out on my house instead! So I'm hoping that we will be making some trips to pick out flowers soon.

I did decide last night, though, that I am going to take my first baby step today. I'm going to go buy some gardening soil and start planning where I want to plant things. I guess that's an important step...

Wednesday..

So almost all of the computers at work have stopped reading memory cards (the memory cards I use in my camera.. along with my computer at home that has been trying to commit suicide for months now but I keep reviving it. Well not for long.. soon we will be buying a new laptop and I will euthanize it myself if it wants me to.. But anyway, needless to say - if I can't upload my pictures to my computer(s), I can't upload them to my blog. Tad bit annoying for me and for you.

Well I do have one more option - my iPhone. Thank goodness for it!

Zeb got a bath the other night and was so cold, he resigned himself to snuggle on Kanyon.. I say resigned because he usually does not like snuggling. I guess its a boy thing. But he was shameless that night and Kanyon and I thought it was hilarious.

I do have a much better quality version of this pic on my real camera but.. see above paragraph.

I've been staring at this SD card trying to figure out SOME way to get the pictures from it to my computer. But telepathy does not work and I'll have to wait till the card reader I just ordered comes in the mail next week.

Last weekend was spent lounging around after a brutal weekend last. I say brutal only in the sense that we got no sleep. But we let ourselves sleep in until 9:15 on Saturday, which was kind of a disappointment. I used to be able to sleep until 11:00 in college on Saturdays and thought it was so weird when people said their bodies wouldn't let them sleep in past 9:00 or something. I guess ... I ... am ... an adult.

Kanyon and I did some stuff around the house and then we headed different directions. Him to playing golf with his brother and some friends and me to Lubbock to do some shopping for some shorts. I've been on the hunt for some denim shorts since last summer that we more mid-length and not super tight.. but not baggy and mom-ish. Hard combination to find. But I had success this weekend! I was very happy. Unfortunately, though, I forgot to run a couple of more important errands and am now trying to figure out how I can justify another trip to Lubbock on a weeknight since I'll be out of town this weekend.. Gas prices don't allow much room for justification these days!

I didn't get any work done on the backyard like I said I would... sigh. To be completely honest, I don't even know where to start and every time I try to start, I second guess myself and stop. Its a vicious cycle, I tell you. And I'm left with a blank backyard still.

BUT I have found some inspiration this week from my Country Living magazine. I'll scan some of the pages I earmarked tomorrow to show you what I'm wanting to do. This is from their website:

I love the several different colors present in this group. About the only thing that has completely survived from our attempt at installing flowers last year is the monkey grass, our shrubs in the front, and only some of the Dusty Miller. It's looking pretty scarce.

ALSO sometime this week or the beginning of next, a company that installs siding is coming to replace all of our ugly mauve wood trim with cream colored siding! I'm so excited to see the dramatic change it will make. So hopefully some big changes will be coming soon!

My Spring Break...

Today, I get to leave work at noon for our "Spring Break"... Woohoo! Early afternoon is my favorite time of day and I am usually stuck inside at work. I think I'm going to head over to the garden nursery here in Lamesa and think about what I want to do with the yard..

I have a couple things I wanted to show you that we did for the house last week. One was a failure, one a success!

Failure: Spray-painting chairs in the backyard..

I did them on a Friday after I got home from work at about 6:00. That was a mistake. I was tired and impatient and just wanted to get them done.. So I didn't thoroughly sand them down enough, spray-painted them too quickly, and then ran out of spray paint. So I thought maybe it would look cool and eclectic with purple arm rails? Wrong.

The next day Kanyon showed me how thoroughly it needed to be sanded and the new blue paint is ruined. Here's to hoping I get the inspiration to finish this project..

Success: Finally finding stools that we needed for our kitchen bar!

 

Finding a combination of the color we wanted, the size we wanted, and the price we wanted was near impossible. This set was literally the ONLY group that met all of the desired characteristics after searching for seriously over an hour. We had to find a rare size of stool (18 inch) because our bar is low. Kanyon's parent's bought us some beautiful stools just like these but with leather cushions on top for Christmas but their top hit right underneath the bar so they were too tall.

I finally found these and ordered them and I was so relieved to finally have some. We have had this great bar for over a year but no chairs to sit at it with. Now we can!!

Last night, Kanyon's and I's really good friend Bryan and his girlfriend Rachel came and hung out and stayed with us! It was SO great seeing Bryan and finally meeting his girlfriend. We had spaghetti and peanut butter pie (so yummy) and played some Kinect games like Javelin and Discus and Dance Central. It was such a fun night and again - so great to finally see them. Bryan moved to Ft Worth to take a job on Young Life staff there and we haven't been able to make it out there to see him. I didn't get any pictures of the night but I'm pretty sure Bryan got some embarrassing videos of Rachel dancing for the Kinect, ha!

Have a great weekend!! I am going to catch up on some sleep and hopefully do some cleaning and some relaxing.. :)

Family Weekend

Well, remember when I told you that I had lots of stories and pictures to show you from last weekend?
Turns out I only now have one picture.

What happened was... my iPhone was stolen last weekend at the Houston Rodeo. So I had to go get another one that weekend in Houston. I took lots of pictures on it in the next couple days while in Houston and in Round Rock of our families. When we got home, I plugged my phone in to sync my iPhone with all my saved contacts, etc. But when I did this, it erased all of the previous information, including pictures, and replaced them with all the pictures that were on my previous iPhone. So good news - I have all of my contacts and pictures back. Bad news- I lost all of the hilarious videos and cute pictures of our new nephew I took this weekend.

I had a video of Kyla and Jada racing each other on the Xbox game to show you. But thank goodness, several of us were there with iPhones to record it. See Daniel's version here. Please. You'll die laughing watching them hurdle invisible hurdles.

So anyway - we still had a really great time with both sides of our families!

Thursday after I got off work we drove to Houston (without stopping - yikes) and got there at about 2 am. Friday, I got to see my friend Rachel for a really quick visit and then my parents and Kanyon and I left to go to the Livestock Show and Rodeo in Houston. We had a lot of fun shopping at the booths, seeing Welch friends, playing carnival games, drooling over the Ford models (cars.. not girls) and then headed over to the Rodeo. We saw Lady Antebellum perform that night and they did such a good job. They are one of the few bands I've seen that sound just as good live as they do on their CD. Yes, at some point during all that my iPhone disappeared but even with that, I still really enjoyed the concert. No wonder they won so many Grammys! (Grammies? Grammy's?...)

Saturday, I went to breakfast with Rachel for about 2 and a half hours. It was sooo nice to have her to myself and not have to rush. She left to go skiing this week. Because she still has a Spring Break. Must be nice.. I'm still bitter about my boss not giving me a month off for Christmas and a Spring Break. Come on, I'm not even asking for a summer break!

Rachel and I at Windy Gap (Young Life camp).

That afternoon, I had to go buy a new iPhone (bummer) and then did a little shopping with Mom. I needed to look for some shoes for a wedding and of course that always leads to more shopping! But that night, we came home and Mom and Dad made a very yummy dinner - steak, twice baked potatoes, veggies, olives, bread, crab cakes, wine... we were all aching by the time we finished. Kalum and Ashley came over that night. Kalum is the youth minister at my parent's church and him and Ashley have become like family. We made smores by the firepit and then got in the hot tub. Yes.. it was that great.

Sunday, we woke up and went to church at the church I grew up at. Kanyon's parents and brother were there for the weekend too and Kalith preached that day! Some of Kanyon's extended family goes to my parent's church in Houston so now I'm related to some of the people I grew up going to church with! We had lunch at Kanyon's aunt's house, a couple blocks away from my parents, and then came home to have Baskin Robbin's and open presents for Mom's birthday. That night we went to Pappasitos for dinner and said goodbye before heading off to Round Rock that night! And here's the one picture I have from last weekend because it was taken with my camera. Go figure its not that great..

Sunday night, we got to Jada's house late and the nieces and nephews let us sleep in until 9! Thats never happened before :) I was awoken by Leif (4 yrs old) standing over us. He didn't know I was awake yet so I just squinted my eyes and watched him for a few minutes trying so hard to wake us up by coughing or something he wouldn't get in trouble for since he was probably told not to wake us up! Ha. I finally relieved him by opening my eyes.

It was such a fun couple of days with the kids and family. We took the kids swimming that day. I love going swimming with kids because you can act like a kid again and enjoy swimming. When you're with adults, its not cool to do hand stand contests or throw each other around or even put your head under water.. but with kids, its all in the name of playing with them! Ha, I love it. Emry and Addalie and I had a blast playing in the fountains. That night, Nick and the boys made fried shrimp and catfish with all the fixings and we all stuffed ourselves. It was SO good. 

Tuesday morning, we took some family pictures for Kalith and Vaughn's Mother and Father's Day gifts. They turned out really good and Daniel is going to order them on a wrap-around canvas. Then after that, we headed to Hoppin' Hippo for a little family birthday party for Addalie (turning 2) and Ava (turning 4). After cake and ice cream at home, the boys went golfing and we headed home to Welch!

I had some super cute pictures of Sena and Daniel's baby boy, Asher. He is three months old and identical to his beautiful sister! But they were erased so I'm stealing one from Sena's blog..

Oh my goodness, he is so adorable.

Well, I think I've talked your ear (or eye?) off long enough. I am very excited about tonight because our friend Bryan Levrets is coming to visit!! He is bringing his girlfriend who we have not met yet and I'm so happy.

Bryan and Kanyon on our wedding day.

Home!

Kanyon and I are back home now.. as of 2:00 am last night! ..... Its been a long day at work for me.

I tell you this because I'm too tired to write about our awesome very long weekend with our families just yet. And also because my iPhone was stolen this weekend and I'm too busy putting all of my info on my new one..

But I will be back tomorrow with lots of photos and stories!

Lots to say quickly!

Well my job here at the church has left my head spinning the last couple of days and haven't had a chance to blog even on my lunch break! So here I am at 5:15 after the workday still in my office because I'm wanting to blog before I leave for a short vacation.

.... A vacation that will not come soon enough!

First of all, I want to say a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mom!

This is us on our 1st annual mom-and-daughter trip last September. 

I can't wait for September to come around again for our next one!

Mom, I love you so very much and I'm so dang excited to see you and Dad and Cole at 3:00 am tomorrow night.. er.. Friday morning! This weekend is going to be so needed.

My mom is in Abilene right now for an unexpected reason. She called me on Tuesday morning and said Cole, my brother, had been in the ER all night. My stomach dropped. He was okay though, nothing permanently hurt.

 My brother and I on vacation last year.

He was riding his mountain bike on a sidewalk late Mon night and caught a pipe that he didn't see and it sent him flying with his face to break the fall... He broke his jaw and gashed the left side of his face from chin to eye. But it could have been so much worse, so praise God! The gash didn't reach his eye and do damage to it and his jaw won't need to be wired shut to heal, which is common. He came away very lucky blessed.

I have several pictures of his bloody and swollen face but I figured not everyone would enjoy them.. lol.

Second, I wanted to snap a few random pictures of my kitchen because I haven't really shown it completed..

The difference between my DSLR camera showing our chandelier and my point-and-shoot

is drastic! Wish I had taken my earlier pictures of our chandelier with this camera. I LOVE the

effect our chandelier makes on the color of the room.

 Finally decided what I wanted on the buffet and how I wanted it! (Ignore the Christmas quote.. I'm

still looking for chalkboard cleaner... okay maybe I just keep forgetting to get it..)

Also changed up this a bit since I moved the cookbooks to the buffet.

I love these wine bottle labels..

We got the table centerpiece in Fredericksburg last June and I'm just now deciding where to put it..

Working full time has put me in a slow decorating mode!

Well as I said earlier, Kanyon and I are leaving for Houston tomorrow after I get off work! We'll leave at 5:00 pm and get there at like ... 2:30 am. Yikes. Kanyon's decision, not mine.. but if I'm honest, it would have been really hard to stop halfway in Round Rock, which was the original plan, and not want to stay and hang out with Kanyon's sisters for more than a few minutes when we weren't sleeping.

So we will get to Houston late during the night and wake up Friday morning and spend the day at the Houston Live Stock Show. As some of yall know, Kanyon grew up showing animals here and I grew up going every year to see the cute animals.. So we haven't broken the tradition since we graduated high school. Except now I know lots of kids to support when they are showing their animals. So we'll spend the day there watching and shopping and eating the best food before heading over to the rodeo and watching that. Lady Antebellum is performing that night!

The rest of the weekend, I have plans to see Rachel Hunt (one of my bridesmaids), who I miss terribly and never get to see! Mom and I both thought just hanging around the house, making dinner, sitting in the hot tub.. sounded great. And then we'll go to Cheesecake Factory on Sunday (my favorite!).

Either Sunday night or very early Monday morning, we will leave for Round Rock! Kanyon's sisters (except for Kyla who will meet us there) invited us all to come down and have a family get-together! We'll celebrate a couple of the baby girl's birthdays and just spend time with each other. I love Kanyon's family to no end and am so excited to see them!

I hope yall have a great rest of the week!

 

Very Thorough Weekend Post

Last Friday night, I called Kanyon to see what he was doing when I got off work. He was still in the field. "I'll probably be here till dark so I can work as much as possible." Friday night? Me alone at the house probably watching CSI? No thanks.

So I decided I would head out there with my sorely unused DSLR camera and practice some picture taking and help him out if I could.

Reason enough right there to get a puppy - you'll always feel like you're the most exciting person in the world when they're running to greet you!

Kanyon was feeling a little behind on this particular field. He'd wanted to have the stalks cut, the water running, and wheat or oats sewn by now. But alas, life happens.

So first things first. He was working on hanging pipe on his irrigation system.

See the pipe running along the top of the system? Usually water runs through that pipe and runs down into the small hoses hanging down with the doo-hickies on the bottom. Sorry, the only name I can think of is "spiggots" but I know that's not what they're called.. The doo-hickies spray the water onto the field.

Well hanging pipe is a way to pro-long the life of your irrigation system. The pipe at the top can become cracked and eroded over time, causing leaks and sometimes breaking (which is what happened to another one of our irrigation systems - thats really not good.. and pricey to fix). So by hanging a PVC pipe below (see above) and detouring the water to run into that pipe instead and hanging the hoses and doo-hickies from it, you avoid the erosion and you have a new pipe. The former pipe serves as a frame for the new one.

I asked Kanyon if this is considered a cheap redneck alternative to actually buying a new system, but he said no and everyone does it. I know you were thinking it too!

So the next step after he hung the PVC was drilling holes into it so you can connect the new hoses to the holes, allowing the water to run through the hoses to the doo-hickies. Sorry, maybe the name will come to me before the end of this post..

I tried helping him at this point after the drilling and putting these rubber things in to attach to the hoses but came to realize just why my hands are soft and clean all the time and his are rough and dirty and scarred. Because he works them hard. My hands weren't strong enough to even squeeze the rubber things into the holes! He did it in five seconds and I gave up after struggling with one for at least a minute. So I just carried the box they were in so he didn't have to lean over and pick them up off the ground. He assured me I was helping a lot. He likes to give me a sense of purpose..

By the way, the roughness of his hands doesn't turn me off a bit. They are one of my favorite of his physical qualities.

Of course, every job needs a supervisor:

Can you see him mane growing in?!? He's lookin fierce.

Along with supervising, Zeb hunted who-knows-what. We would see him just walking or running and all of a sudden stop and listen at attention..

And then take off and disappear for a few minutes. We'd occasionally see him as he bounded over a row of cotton stalks. Then Kanyon would whistle and he'd come running back.

"Almost got it this time."

After the sun went down, we headed to Brownfield for dinner. It was a great night, honestly. One of my favorite dates since we've been married!

Saturday was an awesome day! 

 First I went to Britnee Mahan's wedding shower here in Welch. She and Kanyon grew up together and was one of his closest friends and I've come to love her and her family. She's getting married in April. I love showers here.. a lot of the women in Welch come out for it if they're not hosting it anyway and the food is always so good.

Then, Kasha and I had a great shopping day in Lubbock! She got some great clothes and I got a few things for the house I've been wanting. One of which is a couple of outdoor pillows because I am going to spray paint and spruce up some chairs in our backyard. It was so much fun getting to just hang out with Kasha with no agenda but to look around.

Then to top it all off, these three met me in Lubbock for a double date!

If you don't know, this is Kanyon's little brother Landon and his girlfriend Bailey.

We went to Abuelo's for dinner that night and ended up being there for a couple hours because of the combination of the long wait and then veeeerry slow service because we sat in a booth in the bar section. Apparently, people who aren't drinking alcohol are at the bottom of the priority list at the bar.. Who knew? But it was great getting to have that much time to catch up with them. Bailey is in her senior year in high school and is super busy and Landon is in his freshman year at TTU, so we don't get to spend as much time with them as we'd like. We went and saw "I Am Number Four" after, and I loved it. I wasn't really sure what to expect but we all enjoyed it. 

Sunday, I was supposed to go head out to Lubbock for Kaitlin Lee's wedding shower. I am one of her bridesmaids and really wanted to be there! But unfortunately the weather called for 70 mph wind that made my car repeated try to throw itself off the road and the sky looked like this...

I couldn't see past about 20 ft in front of me so after taking 25 minutes to go 8 miles.. I decided to give up because I didn't want to try and fight that weather for another 45 minutes. I was sad to miss it! But she has another one this weekend so I will go then.

I rounded off the great weekend with a great time at bible study with the jr high girls. Pretty impressively long post just for one weekend, huh?!