Road Trip

I'm heading home to pack my bags... we're taking an impromptu trip to Tampa to see my new cousin - Joseph Edward. He's only a month old!
I'll post pictures of his chubby Irish face on Monday...

Make like a tree and leave.

Dave and I spent most of our Memorial Day weekend doing yard work.
Wait! wait! Before you BOO us... It was actually sort of fun. The weather was gorgeous and the backyard is really starting to look nice... and we had fun together so it's not as bad as it sounds. One of the most exciting things we tackled was the huge tree in the corner. It was so overgrown the branches were growing down into the yard. Yeah. It was crazy to see. Even more crazy was the way my loving husband attacked the beast. He was hanging off a limb with one arm and sawing at another limb - OY! I'm surprised he didn't saw off a finger or two in the process. We also did do some fun stuff. Friday night was date night - we went to Sorrento's for an awesome Italiano meal! Bravo! MWWUA!

Sunday night we went to my aunt's for a Barbecue... and Monday Bryan and Sarah Campbell came over with their 2 kids for dinner. I got some sparklers for $2 at Winn Dixie and that was our entertainment for the evening. (I'm not really sure how pyrotechnics relate to the men and women who serve our country - but hey whatever floats your boat.) It was fun to watch Dave run around the yard like a crazy person, waving a flaming stick in the air.

I forgot one.

Here's that pink lamp that I forgot to get a picture of... See? Isn't it cute?

The shade is really icky though... I need a new one.

The down side to all these new lamps is that my buffet has now become the "lamp graveyard." What am I going to do with all these? I think I need some new end tables to house all of them...

Brick, are you just saying you love the lamp?

I have a thing for lamps. Dare I say it? I love Lamp. I do. I love Lamp!!

Dave is constantly making fun of me... saying I want to one of "those people" who has a ton of little lamps stashed in nooks and crannies on bookshelves end tables all over the living room. I really think he'd be happy if we just put a florescent light on the ceiling. BUT he doesn't complain about my lamps when it's late at night and we reduce the light to 1 or 2 lamps for some mood lighting... so really he doesn't have a leg to stand on, does he?

Well I just found another new one on sale at Pier One that I especially love for two reasons. 1.) It was 50% off the original price which is awesome since lamps usually cost an arm and a leg... and B.) It's my signature color - that beautiful aqua that makes me think of the water in the Caribbean. Ahhh....

Besides the fabulous aqua lamp that I just got yesterday... I've picked up a few others in my recent travels... There's the dark blue pottery looking lamp that I got a Burke outlet for $20 - shade and all!

And a very cute pink lamp, (that I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of..) that I found in an antique mall for $12.

Why be generic and go to Target for a lamp? Get something funky or unique!! They are great little accessories that you can always change with a can of spray paint and a new shade - or you can just move them from room to room and change the entire look. For instance, once I brought my prized possession home yesterday, I moved the old living room lamps into the bedroom and Viola!! Now the bedroom has a face lift too!

Take a leak.

Yesterday I took a half day at work and my Dad came over to help me trouble shoot the sprinkler system. We've got "misters" on the side of the driveway that get the azaleas wet... but Dave and I have noticed that some of the sprinklers just gurgle and water runs down the driveway, instead of actually giving the plants the water they so desperately need.

So my dad and I are standing out there in the HOT afternoon sun, and we thought that we found the problem sprinkler head. Great! So we travel to Ace, get a new one, bring it back, dig up the old one, replace it, and turn the sprinkler system on to see the results.

Nothing. No water even coming out.

So now we've discovered we must have a cracked pipe somewhere in the system. Which means... you guessed it... ALOT more digging.
Damn.

A hodge podge of news...

Let's see... well there's no status on the Note Bandit. He's apparently "laying low." Hopefully he'll surface soon in the daylight so I can see his face.

The yard is actually looking decent. Well... the grass is still dead but is coming back to life in sections, and it looks like the weed and feed is finally taking effect on the weeds.

We are trying our best to get motivated to start another big project in the house, but it's just so hard because it's looking pretty good and I hate to make a huge mess! But Dave and I both know that the bathroom especially has got to be done - I just can't take that wallpaper anymore.

Today I am leaving at lunch and my dad is meeting me at the house so we can fix some sprinklers that are broken. Right now they just gurgle and water runs down the driveway. I can't imagine how they got broken.... unless someone ran over them with their enormous truck...

And we have 1 month to go until our vacation back to St. Thomas. Woo hoo!!! I can't even begin to tell you how looking forward to this we are! Work has been so crazy for both of us lately... we really need to lie on the beach and relax!! I guess it's pretty sad that 2 people in Florida have to travel to the carribean to do that.

The note bandit.

We've got a caper on our hands. Someone has been leaving notes on our door... I guess I need to explain. Let me back up for a minute...

While I believe our neighborhood is very safe, there have been a few cars broken into and a few lawn ornaments stolen. I think it's one of the teenagers in the hood, but nonetheless it's better to be safe than sorry - so the neighbors of Ardsley decided to put up a "Neighborhood Watch" sign right at the front of our entrance, hoping this could defer any petty theft.

And it worked... until this week.

On Tuesday Dave and I went out for dinner at about 8pm... and got home at 9. We both got into our jammies and took our contacts out. (We've been married 4 years - the spark has been replaced by the dull flicker of the boob tube.) I went out the front door to shake out a blanket that Arnold had been lounging on.. when I discovered a note tucked under our welcome mat. I picked it up and looked at it and it said... "I wish you good wishes, police officer."

HUH?

So Dave called a neighbor to see if it was a joke. She knew nothing about it. As soon as he hung up with her, she called right back and said "Oh my God, I just went to my front door and I had one too!" So one thing led to another and we discovered about 5 of us had received notes. All different, but all signed or addressed to: Police Officer.

We called an ACTUAL police officer and he came out and took a report but said he really couldn't do anything because it wasn't a crime. I'm sorry but isn't this Trespassing at the very least? Can't we dust for prints? Where's the forensics team?

Since it was 10:30pm by the time he got to our house, we didn't call anyone else to see if they got a note. But I would love to know if anyone on the next street over got one. How very strange. It could be a bum that's been riding his bike around lately. But why in the world would he bother with sticking notes in everyone's doors? The one helpful thing the officer said was that he thought it might be an elderly person by the way the "I" was written. Apparently it's a very old way of writing that's not practiced anymore.

I'll keep you posted on the case of the Note Bandit.

Photographic evidence.

I'm not kidding when I say the weeds are taking over.

Luckily I won the battle against this one...

P.S. No making fun of my very expensive gardening clothes.

Promised pictures!

Here are some pictures of the flowers. I took them with my new digital camera. LOVE IT. It's the Canon Elph.
These red flowers get tall and skinny....
These big fat purple ones are in a bed in my front yard. I have no idea what they are called.

These daffodils are growing in the backyard. And next to them you can kind of see the blue plumbago that's growing. I actually had plumbago at the Belmonte house so I wasn't really surprised to see that growing.



Here is a big picture of these vines that are growing over an old clothesline. In the back left you can see something with white flowers - that's jasmine. and the one on the right is actually wysteria. So it smells really good in this corner - but I am going to have to attack it with some clippers because wysteria grows like CRAZY. It will take over your house if you let it.

"And then there's Maude."
These weird, very tall, red and yellow flower is all over the place. It's very tropical looking, but it's as tall as me!! I'm afraid what it will look like when it's the middle of the summer.

Flower Power

I don't know when or how it happenned... but in my race against time, where I am trying to conquer the weeds before summer actually hits.... flowers have started to spring up in the backyard. It's the wierdest thing too because I was convinced that I had killed everything and was doomed to look at an ugly yard for yet another summer. But no - we've got honest to goodness FLOWERS growing. Maybe it's because I was so focused on the dollar weed, I had no time to "accidentally" pull up what is now beautiful blooming stuff. So yes - you could say that procrastination pays off!!

I'll post pictures with my new camera tomorrow - but last night I took a walk around and found, daffodils, lillies, impatiens, plumbago, hibicus, jasmine, wysteria, and some tropical looking red thing that gets really tall!

Land Baron = Land Lord

It's official - we've got a renter living at Belmonte! I wouldn't say we are officially landlords yet... but it's definitely a step in that direction. It's a friend of mine that needed a place to rent FAST because she is going through a divorce and needed to move out of her house. And she wanted to pay us rent - so it's turning out to be a win-win situation. We went by on Friday to make sure everything was ok and see if she needed anything and I have to say it's WEIRD seeing someone else living in your space! But I didn't feel sad or anything - just strange. I guess that's because I really feel like Ardsley is our home now - not just a fixer upper that we are dumping our life savings into.

We are boring. I know.

It's been awhile since the last post... there were a few factors that contributed towards that fact. The most obvious one being that we were gone for 9 days. We went to Mississippi for a wedding and for a general family visit. It was nice to get away... but of course we missed the boy, and I started to get the itch to do more work on our yard after seeing how beautiful my mother-in-law's backyard is! She's got a green thumb and can make anything grow. It's like a tropical resort back there!
The other factor is that work has been heating up for both of us and really I am just too mentally exhausted to start anything when I get home. It's May Sweeps for Dave... and the Players Championship is next week so everyone at my office is crazy. This is my first year where I have to run all the edits, and graphic and audio sessions around the building. Quite literally it's like trying to organize a bunch of chickens who just got their heads cut off. People are just acting crazy.
And the last excuse.... errr I mean reason.... is that our digital camera just flat out died 2 weeks ago. And really what's a blog with no pictures? That's no fun.
That camera had a good run. It lasted 4 years - which I would say was a pretty long lifespan! Considering we took it all over the world, in all kind of temperatures, I dropped it numerous times, and my cousin spilled beer on it at a wedding last summer. It put up a good fight, but it's just a tired old bird!!
So yesterday we went to Best Buy and decided to spend some of our tax rebate money on a new one. Dave relented and let me get a SMALL camera. I LOVE it! So now I can fit it in the tiniest of purses!! I think the digital camera has come along way, because this tiny little thing has got all the features of our old camera with about half the size.
So I'll be taking pics and getting this blog up and running again!
Hope everyone had a nice spring break! :)