Housewarming

After much anticipation, we finally had our official "housewarming party".  We wanted to wait until most of the interior had been repainted and the yard was decent.  We spent an entire weekend solely devoted to the party's preparations which included painting the front door; purchasing and stringing up outdoor lights; borrowing a picnic table, chairs, and serving items from our neighbors; cleaning the house from top to bottom; and of course making some delicious food.

Steve sent out an email about a week in advance letting people know of the party.  We had about 18 "yes" responses, so I planned on food for 20-30 people.  The party was to start at 6:30, but we had told people to feel free to come and go as they pleased.  When 7:00 rolled around and no one had showed up, I began to get nervous.  But, soon the doorbell rang and people came!  Instead of the anticpated 18+, we only had 8 show up.  However, this was the core group of people we've been hanging out with, and we had a great time sharing our home with them!

(The lights were a big hit!  We got the idea from the previous owners.  They had lights strung up outside and we had hoped they would leave them.  They of course took them, but we found a decent deal on some online and now have our very own!  We have left them up since the party and don't have any intention of taking them down soon.  We've gotten compliments from our neighbors and we look forward to using them more!  The red picnic table was borrowed from our neighbors for the party.  It ended up being the center of the action.  Everyone wanted to eat outside, so we spent the majority of the evening outside around the table.)

(I went a little crazy on the food.  We had pulled pork and sloppy joes.  I had enough food to feed an army, and barely a dent was made.  No one even at the sloppy joes!  The pork was the big hit and I made a spicy homemade barbecue sauce that was also a favorite.  My neighbor helped me out and made some deviled eggs to go along with a veggie tray and chips that I set out.)

(Thank you Pinterest for all of your lovely ideas.  I made these little "jar" desserts that were also a big hit.  I chunked up brownies, drizzled them with caramel sauce & added pecans for turtle brownies along with chunked up shortcake, strawberries and whipped cream for strawberry shortcake. Yuuummmm)

(I know I am a crazy person, but I'm okay with that.  I made little signs for all the food, drinks, as well as the trash receptacles.  I didn't want to be asked a bazillion times (or apparently 8) as to which was trash and which was recycle.  One of Steve's co-workers razzed me about it all night.  Just blame my OCD.  Oh and the labels were made via my Cricut machine.  The machine cut out each individual letter and tag, but I had to glue the letters onto the tags.  It took a little longer than needed, but it was a good distraction from all the cleaning and preparing.)

Everyone, of course, absolutely loved our house.  They were all shocked that we owned a house in this neighborhood.  The area we live in is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Lima and has stayed in the best condition.  They all loved the architecture, space, and decor of the house.  They are all eagerly anticipating party 2.0 (TBD).  

Storm Clean-up

Over the weekend, my AWESOME parents came to visit.  They braved the 100+ degree hit and helped us clean up our yard, cut down and trim tress, and haul all the debris to the edge of our yard for city pick-up.

Because of the storms that went through a couple of weeks ago, the city of Lima decided to do a debris pick-up free of charge.  We wanted to take advantage of the offer and clean up some of our trees to be hauled away.  We knew the pickup was this week, and only had one weekend to get the stuff done.  We were in need of supplies (and muscle power, especially since I am not allowed to get sweat or dirt in my eyes) and my parents came up with tools in hand.

They brought a wheelbarrow, chainsaw, pole saw, rakes, clippers, my sister Sara, my niece Emily, and my brother's dog Reese.  My parents' were dog-sitting for my brother and if we wanted their help, the dog came as a stipulation.  Ha ha, even though we are not pet (Ramses doesn't count as a pet, he's a family member) we enjoyed Reese's company.  She's a really good dog and just laid around most of the time.

Their visit also happened to correspond during a very busy time for Steve.  He had to work 12 hours on July 4th, 14 hours on the 5th, and he did 9 hours on the 6th.  My parents arrived early afternoon on the 6th and got to work before Steve came home.  Once Steve came home, he took over the pole saw while my dad prepared the chainsaw to cut down a dead tree in the back yard.  The tree had 2 trunks not a whole lot of space to fall down. My dad (who is an engineer) knew which direction to make the cuts to cut the trees down.  They didn't fall exactly where he had planned, but it worked.  Mom and I watched with our hands over our eyes as we were predicting all that could go wrong.  But luckily, things went smoothly.  The tree got cut down and hauled to the debris pile out front.

We (by we, my parents and Steve) would only work a few hours outside at a time.  We worked a few hours Friday late afternoon and then a few hours Saturday morning.  My parents were the first to wake up on Saturday and went out to work without letting us know.  Did I tell you how AWESOME my parents are?  We all went outside soon after they did and got busy.

We weren't sure if there were restrictions to the city clean-up, but figured we might as well put it all out there and then we'd take care of whatever they didn't take.  This morning, as Steve was getting ready for work, I heard a truck outside.  I got up and called Steve over to the window where we watched the cleanup.  A dump truck and a backhoe showed up and went to work.  The dump truck driver parked the truck in our driveway and then he went and dragged the limbs and such into the road where the backhoe picked the stuff up, drove to the dump truck, and dumped it in.  Our pile filled up an entire dump truck!  As soon as they were done with our pile, an empty dump truck showed up and the full one went on it's way.  Thanks City of Lima for taking care of our debris (Steve thought it was pretty cool we got a bunch of trees trimmed and hauled away for free, but then I reminded him it wasn't free, it's what our taxes went towards -- ha!).

(The 2 trees in the background have been dead since we moved here.  We have a couple more trees that are dead, but this is the only one that is in a safe enough area to be chopped down by ourselves.  My dad mastered the chainsaw and took them down.)

(First tree fell a little more to the left than planned, but it worked.  When he cut the second part, it fell straight into the evergreen trees.  He had to make a few more cuts, and then he and Steve were able to pull it away from the evergreen trees without harming them.  Whew.  Thanks dad!)

(No more tree(s)!!  The stumps are still there, but we'll deal with that at another time.  Next on the backyard list is trimming all those bushes -- which are thorn bushes-- as well as clean up around the garage.  We predict the backyard will gain almost another 1/3 of the area once the weeds and such are cleaned out.  We plan on focusing on that in the fall when everything is dead and comes out easy.)

(Debris pile in the front.  Most of the limbs were from Steve trimming the trees with a pole saw.  Then we had a couple limbs fall from the storm.  My mom also went crazy raking all the small twigs from around the entire yard.  All we knew was to put "storm debris" on the curb and the city would take care of it.  We weren't sure if it was supposed to be chopped up, tied together, so we just threw it all out.  Our pile was the biggest on the street.  There were just a couple of neighbors who had small piles.)

(The pile grew after we added the chopped down trees.)

(Backhoe dropping limbs into the dump truck.  Steve was a creeper and would place the camera so that they couldn't see him watching through the window.  The guy in the lawn was the dump truck driver.  He pulled the stuff towards the road so the back hoe didn't have to go into the yard.)

(The pile is all gone!!  They did a really good job and I don't think they damaged the yard at all -- which wouldn't be a big lost seeing as how the rest of the yard is dead.  We will just have to rake the edge and can put the stuff in our yard waste container for next week's trash pickup.)

Highly Anticipated

Back in the middle of May, Steve and I noticed these weird plants poking up out of the ground in random locations in the backyard.  We weren't sure what they were (I thought they were weeds and was going to pull them up), but we decided to wait it out (or maybe just too lazy to do something about it).  Finally, some pods started to form and after some research online, we discovered they were lilies.

Since before memorial day, we've been pampering them with lots of water and checking their growth.  We (Steve more-so) have been highly anticipating the day that they would bloom.  Lo & behold, they finally bloomed over the weekend!  In fact, the first one popped upon the morning of my LASIK surgery.  That afternoon, there was a terrible storm and we were afraid we'd lost them, but they are good and strong and are continuing to bloom into big lilies.

(This picture is actually a bonus picture.  I was really taking a picture of the mulching job and new pavers in the back of the house -- more on that in another post-- but you can see the lilies on the left.  They are located to the right of the garage as you pass through the brick wall into the backyard.  The bushes on the right of the picture are on the backside of the house.  We just began mulching the backyard and laid the pavers to keep the mulch form falling onto the sidewalk -- we are mulching pros!)

(On the morning of my LASIK surgery, I happened to spot that one of the pods had finally opened up!)

(After a crazy storm that knocked down some big limbs -- more on that in another post, ha!-- the first lily was opened more and they were doing great!)

(The blooms are bigger than your hand!  We are thoroughly enjoying seeing them through our side kitchen window.  All the anticipation finally paid off!)

(The next pictures were taken today, so you are all up to speed on our lilies.)

(Now that they've bloomed, they've become top heavy.  We will be purchasing some stakes to help support the lilies! But for now, our bags of mulch are doing a great job.)

(Next on our anticipation list is my tomatoes!  On a Menard's trip, I got a hanging tomato plant as a bonus item --Thanks Steve!!  I'm a little skeptical of how it will work out, but we'll see soon enough!  The hardest part was finding a location that it could hang without squirrels being able to get to it.  For now, it's hanging on our arch in the backyard, but it's not permanent (as you can't walk under the arch now). Before purchasing a better stand, we wanted to make sure the plant produces.)

(There's 2 green tomatoes in the center that I can't wait to turn red!  There are several blooms on the plant, too, so I anticipate a lot more tomatoes!)