State of the Yard

So a few weeks have passed in warm-weathered bliss. The sun has been shining, the garden has been planted, and the grass has been growing! I confess that my trust in the grass seed was minimal at best so I didn't take before and after pictures, thinking they'd be more like before-and-still-before pictures. But seeing the yard now...I wish I'd done it.

I did take a few pictures from mostly the same angles as in the A-door-able post---wherein some of the patchy, sad grass can be seen---in an attempt to show off our re-energized lawn. Let us bask.

Before...

After!

The lattice is preventing Magnus from jumping over the gate. I don't know why he only jumps out there, but we've found if that's blocked off he doesn't try to escape. So we'll probably make a half moon shape with some new slats to add height, just to the gate, and hopefully that will take care of the jail-breaking.
We also started to paint the fence and are loving the white picket look :) Now to get on painting the rest of it...

The grass, though! (happy sighs)

Here's our plum tree corner. Joe was a man-beast and cut all the super thick ivy out of the tree so while it looks sparser now, the tree is much happier now that it's able to breathe. And it will be easier to collect the plums.

Before...

After!

And the grass! (homeowner swoons)

We planted a garden as well. I don't know what my problem is, but I was similarly cynical about this growing as I was about the grass. I guess years of killing every house plant I've ever had has done its work on my plant-related optimism.

Here's a before....

And after. It grew despite all my doubts. 

The big leafy ones in the middle-leftish are my lovely broccoli and brussels sprouts. There are also tomatoes along the far left edge, and onions and potatoes on the far right. The ones in the middle-right that look like weeds are Joe's peppers. He loves him some peppers.

We also have a little strawberry patch and a couple blueberry bushes that aren't in the pictures. They are doing super well and are so adorable to me.

And that's all the before/after fun I've got. But just in case you've got a real "thing" for grass, I included other pictures of our improving yard. It's not perfect yet, but oh, it's so beautiful compared to a few months ago :)

Hammock Corner :

Arbor...still waiting for that to grow in. I think it took some damage from dog chewing last year. Hopefully it soldiers through!

This part of the yard was one of the worst. The area on the right of the picture is next to our patio and it was almost entirely dirt. And there's a ring around that tree-bush that is nothing but newly grown grass. The change is so crazy.

And one for the road. :)

Room Update

Short post. Got some curtains and summer bed trimmings... so we updated our bedroom. It's also been painted and pictures have been hung! And the furniture was moved around a bit...

And so it shall stay for now. I find it soft and welcoming and honestly don't know what else to do to it for the moment.

And that's all! Soon I'll put up pictures of our backyard since it's been growing in, and our garden. It's so green and gorgeous! And if anything of actual excitement happens, that may also be reported. It remains to be seeeen. Mystery. Intrigue. That is what we thrive on here.

A-door-able Springtime!

Get it?! Because there will be doors in this post. Ha!

Winter was a doldrumy time around the Galloway household. Something about the dull grey skies, the lack of greenery, and having to wear sweaters even when sunshine occasionally exists makes the thought of doing any kind of project really unappealing. But spring's been peeking her pretty little head around the corner, so Joe and I went on a kind of mad dash of projects over the last few weeks. We were building, sanding, measuring fiends!

And now is the time when I show off all we have done.

First, our back door used to not be a door. We had one in our kitchen that closed off the laundry/cat room, but the door that led outside was just a storm door that didn't keep in much warmth or...security. So last summer (fall? ehhn) we found a guy selling cool older doors on KSL, and one of them happened to look almost identical to the one in our kitchen. The only difference was that the window was a little bigger. BUMMER.
Just kidding. That's a totally awesome problem to have. I love light!
So we bought the door and brought it home and got all gung-ho to change it out...and then it sat in our shanty for months and months. And more months. Untiiiillll....

Joe got to know his circular saw! That doorway in incredibly wonky, which is to say none of the corners are square. So he had a great time cutting down the sides and ends of the door, holding it up, realizing it didn't fit, doing it all again with new measurements, finding this side or that was still too long....
I should say he had a great time at first. But after the fourth or fifth time remeasuring and re-slicing-off-a-tiny-sliver-of-door he would have probably been okay with just being done.

The shanty makes a brief but glamorous appearance.

 And while he was doing that, I was doing....this!

Our original living room coffee table was taken for free from our neighbor's curb. Literally, the house next door. You can only understand how shamefully cheap that feels when you do it yourself, hoping all along that they aren't watching you drag their old, crayon-marked beast into your front door.
It was a great table but it had never been properly finished, so every time we "cleaned" it we'd take off the dust and what appeared to be several layers of the paint. It was also much bulkier than I would have liked. So when we found this table on...you guessed it...KSL, we snatched it up and I immediately took it outside for a sanding. The original wood stain was an okay color but it was covered in paint splotches and scratches and just really needed to be refinished.

I sanded it down to the bare wood on the top for staining, but just did a light sanding on the legs as I planned on painting those.

Also I cheated and didn't touch the bottom of the top piece at all. And then painted all over that sucker around the legs. So the bottom is ugly. Just don't look.

And here's the finished table in our living room! It's the same height and 3 inches longer than our last table, but a good 5 inches less wide. I was surprised by how much wimpier it looked when we first made the switch but it's grown on me. 

Huh. Lots of pattern going on in that room, Tara. 

Our next project was to replace the console under our TV with something a little more substantial to fill out the wall. I took pictures of this process....somewhere....

But I don't know where they are. So instead you get the finished product and you can imagine that we just magicked it there like Harry and Ginny would have. Or Ron and Hermione, if you're more in that camp. 

Oh man. I love it. 

And THEN...we built a fence. A REAL ONE! We needed a better garden fence to keep Magnus out, so that we could grow more than peppers and tomatoes this year and hopefully avoid any further chicken casualties. 

It also safely corrals our yard junk.

And then we thought, hey, a yard that looked nice would be lovely. So we built a dog run too, to keep the dogs from tearing any more holes in our once picturesque backyard. Fortunately our yard was a decent enough size that we were able to give them a fairly roomy dog run and still have a lot of backyard left over. And we still let them out daily to get their zoomies out, so they're suffering no loss. Not that they feel that way....

Dear diary. The fence continues to vex me. The authorities persist in taunting me with
their lack of response to my incredibly sad puppy face. This is my 800th attempt
 to reach them by squeezing through the wooden slats, to no avail. I will not give up. 

 I almost cropped out the nasty, nasty looking yard, but I figured it would be a good example of why we made the run. The rest of the yard is worse. But we shall make it beautiful this summer! BEAUTIFUL!

We do not understand this undue cruelty.  We are betrayed.

We are so pleased with how adorable it is, especially in the corner by the plum tree where it meets the garden. So quaint! I can't wait until the leaves all come in and it is fresh and summery. And the fence will be painted white, so that'll be extra domestic. 

Aaaaand the last project, which we completed just last weekend, are these dog doors that lead from the house, into the shanty, and thence to the dog run. This way they can get out whenever they want and it is SO NICE. Dog doors for gigantic dogs (ahem, Magnus) are really expensive, so Joe just built some of his own using 2x4s and plastic sheets that are normally used for the mats under your office chairs. It worked out really well and the dogs picked up on it immediately, so we're very pleased.

From the house into the shanty...

...and from the shanty to the yard!

We put a trim frame on the dog door inside the house, and will paint it and make it look nice. We tried to do a similar thing in the shanty, as you can see from the photo above, but we had a somewhat disastrous experience with the wood glue and then ran out of trim. So that was fun. Now it looks really special but...who cares! It functions.

Next on the list is planting the garden, putting in bushes and flowers in the front and back yards, and painting the office and rehanging all the pictures in a gallery wall above my desk. We'd also like to do something about the carpet in there, but there's a weirdly colorful linoleum or something underneath so it might take some creativity. Other projects in the "maybe soon" list are painting the concrete floor in the laundry room, painting the kitchen cabinets and walls, building a kitchen table, and putting shelves in our shelf-less office closet. So basically we could just keep going forever. But we love doing it and it's always so nice to sit and admire our hard work afterward :)

In some last minute, unrelated news, I am working on a couple of books right now. As in writing them. It is really fun and exciting to finally be working on the thing that I've always wanted to do. I get a little discouraged sometimes, wondering why I took so long to try it and feeling a bit behind, but after seeing what I can accomplish I feel pretty confident that I will only improve and will learn all the tricks to becoming a bonafide author. And I'm telling you because that's what I do to keep myself accountable. If any of my work is someday on bookstore shelves (or e-reader shelves, as the case may be) then you can look back at this as the moment I decided I would make it happen. So you should probably feel pretty special about that ;)

Here's a quote!

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."

Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

Clean Responsibly

About a week ago I realized that as an "adult" it would be in my interests to make my house presentable to guests and wanderers-in. I never really had any kind of cleaning schedule, figuring that we would just clean as we go. Which is silly really. When did I ever do that growing up? Never.
...Well, I would do it once my room got past being livable. When I couldn't walk on my actual floor, I cleaned.
Sometimes.

But I started to feel like the house was always dirty, even if it looked clean, presumably because I didn't regularly dust, vacuum, mop, or clean the trim/baseboards/cupboards/counters. And we have dogs. So that's gross, right? You're telling yourself that's really gross, aren't you. In your head. I know it is. I KNOW.

Which is why Joe and I had a little family council in which we decided once and for all that we needed to make ourselves a chore chart. Ya know, like parents make for their kids. Because we are children. We conveniently have five rooms in our house -- one for each day of the week -- and Saturday is the special day that gets everything else. Laundry, dog "present" pick up, yard work, gardening....and so on. Sundays I just water the house plants. Gotta have time for Downton Abbey, guys.

I also decided to try some make-at-home, DIY, whatever you want to label it cleaners. And for some reason, just the presence of something new to clean with made me REALLY excited to clean. I ordered microfiber rags and spray bottles online and was frowny-faced every day that I checked the porch to find they hadn't come yet. But come they did, and I made a few starter cleaners to stretch out my DIY cleaner muscles.

One was a wood polishing cleaner, like a Pledge/Endust equivalent, which is made with castile soap, water, vinegar and lemon essential oils. Should I share the recipe? I'll share.

It's the "Wood Cleaner" Recipe on this handy little picture here, which I got from IHeart Organizing. Her blog is great for little (and some big) ideas about how to make your house tidy AND pretty. And she obviously has several great cleaner recipes, as you can see. According to her blog, she has tried a lot of different recipes over the years and these are her ultimate favorites.

So wood cleaner = 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1 tsp castile soap, 4 drops essential oil.

I also made the "Cleaner with Purpose" which is just a delightfully Tara-approved way of saying all-purpose cleaner. (1/2 tsp dish soap, 1 tsp baking soda, 2 tbsp white vinegar, 2 cups water, 3 drops essential oil)

With these handy recipes spray-bottled up as my weapons, I attacked the house, kindly, with cleanliness. And so far I really like the cleaners. They smell nice and they clean, so I'm pretty content. For a few days it was super clean, and we followed our chore chart religiously. It's slipped over the last few days but we still tidy the room of the day and try to leave any rooms looking presentable when we go out of them.

This isn't really an exciting post, but it's something I've been doing lately and would like to maintain. Thus, if I put it on the internet I will probably do better, right? ....Right?

We've been working on lots of fun projects lately but I'll write about those another time. Aaaalways keep 'em wanting. And oh how you want to read about my baseboards and pillows.
You do.

Recentnesses

Update in five lines because it's late and I should be in bed...

1.We went to NYC, Scotland and Ireland. Dreamy!

2. I bought and built (with Joe's help) a new, wonderful, beautiful computer.

3. The coffee table has been replaced by a $15 KSL find, refinished to loveliness (in my opinion of course.) Also we have a new back door that's actually a door thanks to Handy Husband.

4. My job is still jealousy-inducing fantastic. Joe got a raise so we're sporting happy faces.

5. I'm attempting to do this green cleaning business. Updates to come?

I'll expound later, most likely.....eventually....
Something about Spring and sunshine and not wearing sweatshirts every day makes things like blogging seem more appealing. Also house projects, of which we have many! So here's to future posts that aren't decades away.

I AM THE LAMB OF SPRING! WATCH ME SPRING!

This Is A Post

Well, I think we can all fairly say that I have not done well with keeping up in the blog post department. I just have not been inspired to write lately, and I have to admit that the usual feelings of guilt and failure that often come when I consider my neglected blog have been strangely absent during these last months of non-blogdom. Which I actually think has been sort of good, because it means that I'm writing this right now because I want to, and not because I feel like I owe it to my blog to be a more conscientious master. I just feel like making words appear on the internets, and here they are.

While I have been a miserable blog host, I do like to think that I have been successful in other ways. For example:

In July, Joe had a birthday. I remembered this birthday, I gave him a present for it (I'm pretty sure), and he managed to add another year to his number count of time on this earth. In related news, he's 30 next year. Just thought I'd share that, I know he'd really love me to point it out. :)

In August, nothing remarkable happened. I guess we can pretend like Joe and I remembered that we started dating in August 2 years ago, but we didn't think of that. At least I didn't, until just now. While trying to think of something that happened in August.

In September, my mom had a birthday. I remembered it and gave her something that was probably less awesome than what my brother gave her. He has a ninja-type ability to bemoan his lack of present ideas (for anything--Christmas, birthdays, random other gift giving occasions) and then suddenly, when said "lame" present is opened, it's amazing and perfectly suited to whomever it was gifted. But the good news is, despite Spencer constantly showing me up in the world of gift giving, I think my mom still likes me and will continue to acknowledge me as her child. Success.

In October, we celebrated living in this house of ours for a year. Our celebration went something like this:
Me (on skype): Husband! We moved into our house a year ago!
Joe (also on skype, because he was at work): Yay!
We also successfully dressed up for Halloween, and both of our costumes were decided before the day of! I know! Joe was Tobias Funke of Arrested Development, and he ordered a blue body suit on Amazon. That takes some ahead-of-time thinking, you know? I was impressed. As for me, I dressed as Merida from Brave, which makes this the first Halloween in probably three years that I wore a costume that anyone recognized. I must admit that it was very strange indeed to have people come up to me (at our church party) and say "you're the girl from Brave!" without any hesitation or eyebrows raised in confusion. No one asked "who are you?" only to respond with a trailing off "oh....." when I answered that I was actually Kaylee from Firefly and I know it's hard to tell but it would be more obvious if I wasn'twearinggreenpantsfromthethriftstoremen'ssectionandohnevermindIcanseeIlostyouat"Kaylee". Never fear, though, next year I'll be back to the land of costume obscurity. I've got ideas already. (Who is this prepared person whose body I inhabit? Confused.)

November was, for me, the most interesting/successful month this year. Not only because it contains my almost-favorite holiday (...that's Thanksgiving...) but because a few days before November started I heard about National Novel Writing Month, referred to by those in the know as "NaNoWriMo." And despite not having prepared at all, and barely having any semblance of story, I decided I was going to try it. And it. was. HARD.
The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel between Nov 1 and Dec 1. No problem, I thought. If nothing else I can just jot down a couple thousand words of garbage writing and call it a day (month). Not so. I was surprisingly dedicated to writing down quality stuff, while at the same time not focusing too much on what I wrote. Speed and solid writing, that was my vision for November. I wrote every single day (except for a couple around Thanksgiving) for at least an hour, but usually more like three or four. And on November 30th I typed my 50,035th word and "won"  NaNoWriMo. (You win if you pass 50,000 words. There were 42,000ish winners this year). I discovered that I actually do like writing, even when I have to do it all the time. I realized that I can write a novel-length amount of stuff and still find that story interesting. I learned that how you write a story can take a boring idea and make it compelling. And, probably most importantly, I know for sure now that I can be a writer, if I put in the time. So that's what I plan on doing.
And for those who are curious, my NaNo story is not yet finished, nor am I finished with it. I'll be writing it until it's done....probably another 50,000 words away. :)
(And Thanksgiving was a wonderful week spent up in Idaho with my Aunt and Uncle and my awesome cousins. We also saw Frozen which I highly recommend.)

And now it is December, which has been treating both me and my handsome hubby splendidly so far. We completed another project in the house -- putting up shelves around our wall-mounted t.v. -- and we've been enjoying the warm glow of the light on our cute little Christmas tree. I have purchased gifts for several people, and it's not even Christmas week. Small victories, I tell you.

And now I have blogged. Watch out, all. I'm unstoppable!
Except I'm going to stop this post. Right now.

Hi-Ho Kevin, Away!

Alright, it's about time I tell you about this great adventure we had when our awesome friends Geremy and Madeleine invited us to go on a day trip to Antelope Island. Have you heard of Antelope Island? I hadn't, but apparently a lot of people, especially outside of Utah, know about this place and even have it as a box to check on their list of adventures to do here. Huh.

It began as a kind of worrisome thing, since the projected temperatures for that day were over 100 degrees, aka human-puddle hot. But as we drove across the barren salty flats on a bridge straight out of a sci-fi western (it probably exists), complete with bleached bones, the temperatures were at a comforting 92 degrees and that eased our minds. The plan was to go out on an hour-long horseback ride, enjoy a picnic, and call it a day. So we came to terms with the fact that we'd probably be baked crispy and eaten alive (apparently a LOT of people have trouble with the bugs over there, as seen in reviews) and we tromped over to the barn land where the horses seemed to be.

This turned out to be completely fun. Probably the most fun I've had in a long time, even though when you break it down it was really just me sitting on a horse for an hour. But I have to tell you, the grin never left my face.

Oh, and here's some buffalo we saw driving in.

Insert prairie appropriate song here. 

And this rather mangy looking coyote.

Ok, back to horses. My horse was majestically named Kevin. Say hi, Kevin!

Kevin is not amused.

Kevin and I immediately became the best of friends. He stood perfectly still for me so I would not fall off the other side of him whilst trying to mount, and he even let me use saddlebags to hold all my water bottles, sunscreen, and camera. All the essentials of a true horsewoman ... cowgirl ... professional leisurely horse rider.

Joe got the horse everyone secretly wanted to ride. His name was Joe. The horse, not Joe. Although obviously Joe's name is Joe too. Joe was huge, tall, and beautiful. His mane stayed on one side of his neck, very properly. Don't be fooled by his look of disdain in this picture. He was a very nice Joe horse. Well, I guess he might have been a bit disdainful too, if we knew what he was thinking. I'm sure he knows he's the prettiest horse at the party.

Joe squared.

 Madeleine's horse was named Numbers, which was apparently a reference to the brand he has on his shoulder area (a lot less silly reason than the name sounded, right? I was expecting a cute story, and instead heard about his seared flesh. Ho hum). Geremy got a dappled grey (not really. I just like to say "dappled grey" for some reason. But it was dappled) named Scout.

This be Scout.

Alright. Picture overload, ahoy!

The ride was free-range, more or less, meaning that the horses didn't just train in on each other's back ends the whole time. We could roam around each other, walk side by side, speed up, slow down. Whatever we wanted that didn't get us thrown off. These horses are apparently used a lot by the LDS church in their historical movies, so they were super well trained and actually responded to us kicking and pulling the reins.

We were first taken nearish the lake to see a giant herd of buffalo that were just hanging out there. Our guide helpfully pointed out the ones that were trying to mate, and some goofy-looking ones trying to cool off by rolling around in the dust.

It was pretty cool to see that many buffalo (I think they're technically bison but let's be real here, buffalo is much more fun to type. And to say). At some point I apparently got a smudge right in the center of my lens so I apologize for the murky cloud in the middle of my picture.

Every picture I took of Joe looked good. Look at him! So savvy!

The group

 Couples shots!

Maddy was kind enough to lend me her sunnies. They are strange upon my face,
but I was really glad for them in the blinding sun.

 We took a break at a the water hole. Numbers was completely absurd. The other horses lapped up the water in a very dignified, horsey way, while Numbers dunked his entire face in and blew bubbles.

We then headed back to the barn.

One last shot of some Joe riding Joe action.

 If you too want to have a blast roaming around Antelope Island on the back of a potentially willful animal, we went through these guys. Our hour ride cost $50 per person, which seems pretty reasonable to me. Do it!

We were famished after horsing around, so we decided the lunching time was at hand. We'd actually brought a picnic lunch of sorts, but Madeleine suggested this bison burger joint that is on the island itself, so we went there. Burgers sounded better than soggy PB&J, weirdly enough. I didn't take pictures, because the place honestly looked a bit like a glorified rest stop, but the burgers were large and delicious.

After that it was so stinkin' hot that we decided to forgo any further sightseeing (despite my desperate wish to see a porcupine) and went to our friends apartment for some decompression time.

That was our adventure! It was so much fun, and not even that hot (on the horses. In full disclosure it was extremely toasty once we started walking around on foot after) and I didn't notice a single bug the entire time. We did apply the bug spray generously, though, so maybe it was just quality spray. I have to say I would definitely do this again.