First day of summer!

It's 'officially' summertime, and in Washington that's only half exciting-- Yes, it may be June, but no, that doesn't always mean sunshine. This year we were lucky however, and got a beautiful kick-off! (Afterwards, not so nice, but you won't hear me complaining!)

I think our Walter is officially living up to his breed of being a water-lover.. first encounter with a sprinkler definitely equaled a good time. (Also, I figure I am trying to keep my well-known puppy obsession to my blog, as to lessen my awkwardness on facebook :) A few pictures came from this, of course!






Here's hoping to more beautiful days like this one!

Every little thing counts...

Every year around this time our poor front porch gets ransacked by our overgrown flowers. Every year I can't decide if they're pretty or awkward (although 'nice', they don't start sprouting until the hit the concrete; making them cover almost half of our walkway) Although I forgot to take a before picture (my parents were over and we got a bit ambitious as soon as we put the new plants down) so all I have is kiiind of what it looked like before...

You can't really see the creepiness of things from that angle... all that matters is that we've replaced it ALL with nice dwarf boxwoods-- we're so excited! We also invested in recycled tire chips instead of beauty bark.. we are barefooters over here and it sure is a lot nicer! (We will need to buy a few additional bags but we wanted to show how excited we were tonight)




Woo! Little improvements. This project, shopping included, was only about 2 hours or so.Here is our frickin' long list of to do's this summer:

-Replace the fence
-Carve out/gravel a side pull out area by the driveway for the second car
-Tear out the junipers attacking the front of our whole yard
-Remove the little island garden thing holding our lovely weeds and blackberry bushes in the front yard
-Build a picket fence in the front yard
-Install Solar Tubes in the bathroom and hallway

Phew! I'm not sure if we will even be able to tackle half of these things this summer... but we're sure as heck going to try! With Bryan having weekends off, and a puppy that needs fencing, we should be pretty motivated. Here's to being productive!!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... superpie?

As many of you may know, my husband is quite the dork. Comics, Star Wars, you name it-- he knows it, knows everything about it, and has been trying for nearly eight years to get me to appreciate it as much as he does. Happily, out of this I have developed a few fantastic addictions-- one of which is Smallville. (Show about the origins of Superman) And after the show being on for a decade; we decided to celebrate the series finale with Superpies. For about two years, we have had our friends over every Monday night to geek it up and make dinner, we are so sad to have it end! Time for a new show addiction. Any suggestions?

(Bryan made pepperoni, I made an apple pie. And we had to get record of our friend helping bake, which is also quite an occurance!)

Is It Spring Yet?

Despite the fact that this has been one of the rainiest seasons to memory, we have still been enjoying our bits of sun around here! I looked on my camera to find that Bryan had taken a few adorable pics of Walter playing in the sun-- apparently growing up means you can finally fit all the toys in your mouth that you always wished you could. Dorky photos here:



Beware: Although he's a retriever, the retrieving is not always a given...

Laundry room? Check.

Finally! Again, a short weekend project lasted longer than I expected. I can't believe how much better it worked out though, so in the end the extra time was totally worth it! Here is a little before and after if you can remember:

Just goes to show you how much storage we actually added. (And can you believe it? Most of those cabinets aren't full to the brim either!!)

I'm hoping all this spring cleaning equates to SPRING soon! I could use a little sunshine!

Bryan's Birthday with the 'Fam

This Monday was Bryan's 28th birthday! His family came over to visit on Sunday. With three nephews and a niece on the way, our little house gets crowded really fast-- but nice to have everyone over just the same! And of course the night wouldn't have been complete without a homemade pie with the Vancouver Canucks logo on it. My husband is pretty the most loyal hockey fan around :) (after pie the jerseys were worn and we watched the game.. good times!)

Backyard 'Gardening'

Last Saturday the sun decided to peek out for a few (windy!) hours, so I figured some outdoor time was in order. I headed over to Lowes to pick up some flowers and herbs, and took a few pics of the puppy as well:


I picked up a few pretty things to plant, including two ranunculus plants (one of my favorites) which are doing just fine in this picture...


But very shortly after this picture was taken, my lovely puppy decided they were tastier than they were pretty-- I came outside again to find a hole where my peach ranunculus plant was, and a lovely scattering of petals and dirt in the backyard. So... adorable, but a pest! Crazy dog.