Author Archives: April

This is love…

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“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” 1 Corinthians 15: 3-4

Thank you Jesus for suffering on the cross and bearing the cost of the sins that I could not pay. How blessed it is, on the third day that You rose again! Thank you for the hope and the salvation that your sacrifice brought humanity. And for forgiving me, a humble sinner who has found life in Christ. It is only through You that we can be saved, and that we can truly know what love is.


I need an Armadillo

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Yay! We have grass! It’s not much to write home about, but it’s green! Which means a lot when you live in a water conservative desert city.

And not only do we have green grass, but the apricot tree is sort of coming back.

Never mind the dead branches in the middle, those are Annie Dog’s signature. (She likes to jump into the plants and trees when we aren’t watching.)

Speaking of dogs, the grass would be greener and more plentiful if it could actually be watered. Annie and her assistant Goldie, tend to enjoy chewing on hoses, and rendering them useless until being meticulously repaired by Bubba.

Here are the most recent victims…

Hopefully these poor unfortunate souls can be repaired and re-used in the front.

I know you can’t count them, but there are FIVE hoses there. Five hoses that watered the once pretty yard. Five hoses that only lasted a couple of weeks, sometimes a couple of days, due to the rotten beastlys that I have chosen to share my yard with.

Numerous methods of curtailing the hose chewing have been attempted. We have used a quick connect, to remove the hose entirely from the yard, hence, removing any temptations from Annie’s habitat.This didn’t work, because it curtailed our watering habits since the hose needed to be brought in from outside the yard and connected to the faucet. Then,  we used a hose reel. This worked pretty well, as the hose lived inside a box, which effectively concealed and protected it from our canines. However, the tangled mess that became our hose was too hard to deal with. Frustration ensues…So to end the frustration, I am currently looking at some different watering options, but that’s a whole different post.

The hoses and sprinklers are not the only things getting injured around here. Friday while Bubba was trying to repair yet another chewed up hose, he cut through the hose and through his finger.EEK!

Three hours at the urgent care and six stitches later he was good to go.

Maybe it’s time to invest in one of these…

Via

I love the pooch they have on their site…

Via

That look of utter disgust is just hiliarious. That’s the look I want my doggies to make the next time they try to chew through an expensive hose. Of course, I don’t want them to get hurt, I just want to discourage the hose chewing and plant-eating a bit.

By the way, does anyone want two “free” dogs?

Bearizona

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Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Bubba and I have been out of town, and frantically trying to get the house and yard together. (Remember, we are planning a belated backyard wedding reception this summer. At our house, that is currently a dusty hot mess!) With two dogs and two jobs, and only two sets of hands, it can be challenging to get our projects done. And even harder for this little shutter bug to pull out her camera and document all of the work done and the miles traveled. Or maybe it’s just that we’re two lazy procrastinators that plan on putting everything off until the last minute. Let’s go with busy….

My sweetheart and I, mainly I, thought it was time to head out of town for a little adventure. So we left our brat dogs ,Annie and Goldie, with Grandma (aka my mother, by the way, she really hates being called Grandma to a couple of rotten muttlys!) And set out to see the Grand Canyon, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world!

Along the way we saw…

Teepee’s…

At the Wigwam Motel…

And classic cars…this one was Bubba’s favorite.

And I got to meet a celebrity!

Tow Mater! I couldn’t get his autograph, he was having a hard time holding the Sharpie.

After that, the weather turned cold and we didn’t make many more stops until we got to Williams AZ, which according to their welcome sign is, “The Gateway to the Grand Canyon”. They should be paying me for this promotion ya know 😉

Upon arriving in Williams, AZ (the gateway to the Grand Canyon) high’s were in the mid 40’s and it was too late to visit the Canyon that evening. So off to bed we went, with dreams of hiking and ohhing and awing over the giant hole (not the one in my head, but the natural wonder of the world). But not before touring the little town of Williams.

This church was super cute, I love old churches.

And we visited Bearizona,I didn’t really get to see what this was about, but seeing all the beary good billboards (sorry, I can’t resist a good pun!), I at least wanted to stop and take a picture of the gate.

And the sign…

Doesn’t it look like he’s holding his paw out for your cash?

The next day, we woke to snow, lots and lots of snow. The nice  people over at the Weather Channel  predicted an accumulation of 10 to 15 in that afternoon and into the night, and very low visibility. Meaning, that a trip to the canyon would just be a nice view of clouds and fog.  That’s when Bubba and I decided it was time to move south, to Phoenix.

We had hoped for warm sunny weather once we drove the 2 1/2 hours from Phoenix to Flagstaff, and that’s just what we found our first afternoon there. However, the next morning we woke up to rain and cold. Not exactly what we had in mind. But on the bright side, we did get to stay in luxury suite, at least it was luxurious to small town folk like Bubba and I.

We had a balcony! I’ve never stayed in a hotel with a balcony before, here’s our view, not very glamorous, but it sure beat the brick wall we’d had the night before…

And our own hot tub, now that’s something I could live with…

Since it was cold and rainy, I was able to talk my Bubba into taking me to a magical place I had only heard about in the blogosphere….IKEA! We don’t have one in our neck of the woods, so it was the highlight of the trip for me.

I’ll have to do a post about all the loot I found, after seeing the cost of shipping, I really wish I had spent a little more time shopping.

After visiting the mecca of all that is good and cheap, we were ready to fill our bellies. We’d heard about In-n-Out Burger, and since it was another stop that isn’t found here in the Duke City, we gave it the ole college try.

Cheap, fast, presentation was lovely, but not something I’d be craving in the near future.

After we were in-n-out of In-n-Out, it was time to look for the AZ State Capital building. No such luck, but I did get some nice shots of these yellow trees that I just fell in love with, you can also see them from the balcony of the hotel. Wonder what they are…

Here’s a close up…

After getting lost numerous times, we decided it was time to head home. To give you an idea of what the trip home was like, here are some shots I took along the way.

See those snow covered mountains? We ended up driving over those!

This was taken just outside of Gallup,what’s that white stuff you ask? Yeah, that’s snow. And yes, I am a wimp when it comes to that stuff. By the way, the roads got icey right after I took this picture. I was too scared to take a shot of the ice. And yes, again I’m a wimp.

Thanks for being kind and sitting through my version of a vacation slide show! This will be the last for a while, so you won’t have to worry about avoiding eye contact to keep from hearing about my travel escapades.

Green and Spring all over

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March to me means, green and lots of it. Maybe it’s that certain holiday that requires most of us to wear green lest we suffer the pinchie consequences, or it could be all the green that’s popping up in the emergence of last years dafodlis and iris bulbs.

Or the FRUITING Mulberry tree in the backyard. Yup, fruiting, which means we have mushy mulberries littering our walkways during the summer months. Yummy but messy.

The rose bush is sorta coming back, I hope the ole girl didn’t completely freeze over the frigid winter.

Hopefully soon I’ll have some green grass to show you, but if you are interested, tales of our grass growing saga can be found here and here. Here’s Bubba sowing the seed…

Is that a sprout?

By the way we have the little fence up to keep the brat dogs out of our grass experiment. It’s not working…

Here’s to hoping for lots more green in the coming months!!

P.S. I am linking up the the monthly color story over at Pancakes and French Fries. This month the color was shades of yellow, but I cheated and decided to switch April and March (I’m a rebel like that!). Now, here at my casa/blog March will be emerald and April will be yellow. Sorry Jules, hope you forgive me!

Tail Spins

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The past few weeks Bubba and I have been shoveling, scraping, occasionally cursing, and wishing we’d had enough funds to higher our own guy. No we haven’t put a hit on anyone and buried them in the backyard, but we have torn out the old xeriscape, weed membrane and all.

Here’s our progress thus far…

{Notice the little aussie shep enjoying the newly un-earthed and muddy dirt that lay under the old plastic weed membrane and pea gravel.}

Here’s what we started out with…

It doesn’t look so bad in the pictures, but it really is that bad. The dirt and dust get trapped in dog fur and carried into the house. Yuckie…so there is definitely a need for some sort of ground cover. You can find more of my ideas for the yard and some before pictures here.

As you can see, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Only half the yard has been stripped of it’s gravel. And that half hasn’t been tilled under and seeded yet. And I am still researching pet friendly and desert friendly plants to put in the flower beds.

But in between all the work and the planning, there is plenty of fun being had.  For instance, Bubba and the doggies have been going on “spins”…

More??

I don’t think so buddy…

Of course both dogs get a spin

But personally I think Annie likes the hug more…

Aww…

P.S. Bubba would like it noted that in the sequence of Goldie being spun, it may appear she was dropped after her spin. But to the contrary she was gently placed on the ground, he was simply asking her if she would enjoy another “spin” around the yard. Thank you, and good day!

Green Clovers Abound!

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I am not one to proclaim my crafty skills from the rooftops, I’m not even one that really shares a lot of her crafting attempts.  It’s not that I don’t have “skill”, it’s that I get antsy, and want no need the project done. Projects with immediate results are my favorite!

I recently experimented with one of these immediate “results projects”. With it being St. Pat’s day, I thought I would share one of my classic crafty fails. A jolly green wreath…

I started out with a dollar store wreath spray painted white, some dollar store faux flowers, a wooden green clover I had on hand, and some left over ribbon from my sister’s wedding.

Here’s a during shot, quite a complicated process. I cut the cheap-o flowers short on their stem and just stuck them willy nilly into the wreath.

Then, I tied my clover to the wreath with some of my leftover ribbon.

And here she is on my front door…

A little dinky looking, and a little crooked, but full of that St. Paddy’s Day cheer!!

Maybe for Easter I’ll buy a wreath…

The “Yard”

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Remember in this post, I had mentioned that Bubba and I are planning our belated wedding party this summer. It will be held in our backyard, which currently looks like this…

Scary, I know!! My poor plants have been “Annie-fied”, and our landscape gravel that served as ground cover has been run across, wrestled on, and nested in so much, it is no more.

The backyard is now a giant sand box with spindly sticks that used to be beautiful plantings.

And we’ve got the  cinderblock walls of different heights and very close neighbors to contend with. Here’s the taller of all the walls, as well as a shot of the neighbors roofs (rooves?)

Here’s a better example of the different fencing levels. See in the corner, we’ve got the one side that is 7ft while the other is 4ft. There are even portions of the wall that are 3ft! I guess a some of our neighbors are more interested in getting to know us than others.

I know cinderblock walls aren’t pretty, but they do provide much needed privacy. So, I am choosing function over aesthetics this time around. The Bubba and I are getting bids from local fencing companies to achieve a more level fence in the back.  You know what they say, “Good fences, make good neighbors.”

Not that my neighbors are bad, but it would be nice to have some level of privacy in the backyard. Ya never know when I might want to do some nude gardening.

 

Anywho, moving on…Bubba and I are hoping to rip out  the nearly non-existant gravel with underlying “weed barrier” and attempt to plant grass. I say attempt, because here in the Southwest we are all on some pretty tight water restrictions. Plus, the soil is pretty sandy, I’m not sure if seed will even be able to root in the stuff. It will take come extensive conditioning to make the dirt grass friendly.

We’ve considered a few options…

1. Sod, this turned out to be entirely too much of an investment for us at the moment. Especially since I fear that any type of green grown cover will either burn in the sun or get trampled on by our sweet puppies.

2. Hydro-seeding which is essentially a spray on lawn that is typically seen on commercial sites and in highway medians. It is desirable to some because it’s cheaper than sod and grows faster than seed.There are some residential hydro-seeding contarctors in our area. So, I may give them a call. However, I fear they may chuckle when they see what a postage stamp yard we have.

3. Seed, this is desirable because of affordability. I could  buy 2 lbs of the stuff for ten buck-a-roos at the local garden center. But…(yes there are lots of but’s in this post), seed is very labor intensive and I am not entirely sure we’d have grass by the time the party rolls around.

There, three very good very viable options. It’s just a matter of deciding how much money and time the Bubba and I are willing to spend on a yard that may or may not hold up to poochies. Oh, that’s another thing, everything that gets planted out back will need to be resiliant enough to hold up to two very active dogs.

Oi Vey! I think I need to lay down!!

I Heart February

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February brought many things, first of all a Valentine’s Day celebrated with my husband. Our very first V-day spent as Mr. and Mrs. April (yeah, Bubba hates that one). He brought me these lovelies to celebrate…

Then we took a stroll downtown…

Fur to cover your Hide anyone??

How about a pint of Glorietta Beer?

After all that hide covering and beer drinking you’ll probably want to take a nap on your Supreme Bedding.

And after your nap, you can wake up and enjoy a beautiful sunset…

I hope February brought you many pleasant strolls, happy naps, and pretty sunsets to enjoy!

 

I am participating in a Color Story Linky Party over at

Pancakes and French Fries. Please join the fun!

Sleeping Beauty

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I’ll admit it, I’m lazy. And I’ve been super lazy about blogging lately. Not because I have nothing to blog, because I just simply can’t sit down and do it. Not right now, not with all the other important things to get done

You see, Bubba and I have decided to throw a party this summer…at our house…that is currently painted with 20 kazillion paint samples, and dare I say, so cluttered it could almost end up on Hoarders. This party would celebrate our marriage (because at the actual wedding we didn’t really have a party, and only included immediate family), and as a very belated house warming party (I’ve lived in the yellow casa for nearly 3 years now). So, needless to say, there’s a lot of work to get done between now and this coming summer. And I’m hoping I will have a lot more completed projects to blog about. Let’s just say, I’m a great starter but a horrible finisher!

To decompress from all the stress and frustration, I’ve been looking at pretty rooms on House Beautiful. Particularly bedrooms, our bedroom is less than relaxing. The Bubba and I definitely have our work cut out for us in that room.  So, I am definitely in need of some inspiration.

Have a great weekend!!

All photos courtesy of House Beautiful, and are linked to the HB site.

A Boy Named Dutch

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Remember my muddy $5 oops paint, and what an awful shade of mud it was even after using copious amounts of white paint to lighten it up? Well, after dealing with my muddy test spots for a couple of weeks, I bit the bullet and just painted over them. My kitchen cabinets are now white…again.

{And I just couldn’t resist the self portrait!}

The paint is Dutch Boy’s Bright White, Medium Base, Semi Gloss. And thanks to the cheaper price for a gallon as opposed to a quart, my doors and trim work will now be Dutch Boy Bright White as well.

It’s actually not a bad color in person, and in the day light. The picture makes things look a little minty green, but it really is white. And it went on quite smoothly, and being low VOC it wasn’t too stinky. I may be a Dutch Boy convert.

And speaking of paint (actually paint has nothing to do with it, but I really couldn’t find a good transitional sentence), Bubba (aka my husband) and I celebrated our first married Valentine’s Day together. He gave me the funniest doggie card signed by Annie, Goldie and himself, and these…

And he did the DISHES! Without me asking him too!!! Yes, most women would want something more valentiney for the big V day, but not me. Give me a silly card that makes me laugh, some pretty yellow flowers, and an empty kitchen sink, and I’m happy as a clam. He also made me a yummy dinner, but of course, being the wonderful hubby he is, that happens every night. ( I hope this post earns me some brownie points!)

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! And if your anti-Valentine’s Day, I hope you were able to adequately avoid the sappiness of the day!