Christmas!!! Part 1

So it is December now and I am just starting to get into the Christmas mood. Chris is insistent on doing Christmas this year - real tree and all. The first part of this is getting the lights on the house. When we returned from Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving many of our neighbors already had their lights up - some going much further than others (yea, there is a lighted pig in a Santa suit...idk). Chris has been talking about getting lights for the house for several weeks now. This past weekend we finally got around to it.

We decided to go simple this year. I wanted just white lights, some icicle lights and some for the front tree. Chris wanted LEDs, same brand so we had the same shade of white. Easier said than done. We bought two Targets out of the lights we needed and still could have used more:

Chris strung the lights on the porch and the top of the tree, while I did the bottom:

This being my first light stringing experience, I was shocked at how little one string of lights covers. Four strings and the tree wasn't completely covered - and it's a small tree. Even after all of that, I am happy with how it turned out.

It's nice and simple. And maybe next year when we get more lights we can add on it. Not too shabby for our first year. 

Sandy, Good Riddance!

As I am sure most of you know, roughly two weeks ago hurricane Sandy hit the east coast. We fared better than our neighbors but we were not without damage. We lost power for about a week and a half (hence the lack of blog posts...sorry folks). Thought I would make it up to all of you by showing you some of the pictures I took of the damage. First let me give you an idea of how windy it really was. This is a picture of a stick, about an inch in diameter, that is firmly wedged in the deck.

Luckily, those types of flying missiles missed the windows, but one or two did go straight through the tarp pool cover. The only real damaged we suffered was to the back fence when our neighbors trees fell and uprooted the fence. The pictures are more impressive than my explanation:

And from another angle:

In that last picture you can see the tree resting on the neighbors house. Here is a better shot:

They lost three trees, but the other two feel along the fence, so they did not cause any more damage to either their house or our fence:

They have had the trees cut and are still waiting on stump removal before we can really put the fence back together. No worries though, Lucy has no desire to go near that part of the fence. As I mentioned before we did a lot better than some of our neighbors. Here is a shot from the house in the back cul-de-sac:

The next street over (a grouping of small ranch style homes) was much harder hit than our section. I thought it rude to take a photo, but there was one home that had a large tree fall right down the center of it, essentially crushing the one story home. Luckily, the family was able to be evacuated even after the tree had fallen. 

All and in all we got really lucky. The property damage was not that bad, and frankly, the worst part was the loss of power. Even that had a silver lining, I got a surprise visit back to Pittsburgh (where we picked up a generator) and I was given a perfect chance to really clean out the fridge and freezer.  

Front Yard Reveal

Some black mulch, spring bulbs, and a ton of manual labor and it is finally time to reveal the front yard makeover. So first the befores:

Jungle-tastic!

Shaggy for sure. And the in-progress pictures:

Wasteland with a Peony. 

Getting Better and now with mums. And the reveal:

So non-jungle-like it hurts. What you can't see are the 112 spring bulbs (Daffodils, Tulips, and a pair of Irises) that I planted under the mulch. I am hoping for a colorful spring. We also plan on getting some plants in the spring once we see how it fills out. As a bonus, we also did the tree on the otherside of the driveway, before:

And after: 

Fall Color

So last week I also mentioned that we were redoing the front flower bed/mini jungle. We worked really hard last weekend to rip it all out, leaving it looking awful!

Woo, hard work.... So while we were working on getting this back to something we want in our front yard, we picked out some fall mums to add a bit of fall color (and a sneak peak of the black mulch that I put down - Big reveal on Friday):

A rather large orange one:

And some color...albeit not really fall themed:

So while we are still working on dealing with the jungle turned wasteland in the front yard, we did put some fall mums in, hopefully to enjoy for at least a few weeks - it is getting really late in the season. But even so, There isn't much in this space, so I think I will let the mums come back next year to add greenery during the spring and summer, and some color during the fall. Lets see if they come back in the spring. 

Front Lawn: Falling Cleaning

In early September, Chris picked up some bulbs for fall planting:

By some, I mean a lot. There is a big bag of daffodils in featured above and we later picked up another big bag of tulips to mix it up. Both of these are early-mid-spring flowers that require fall planting. I have big plans to get them planted before the close of October. Hopefully, in future years this will be not a big deal, partly because these bulbs will come back every year, and mostly because we won't have to deal with this first:

So maybe, and just maybe, I left the front yard get a bit out of hand. It wasn't really my fault, I swear. The plants left by the previous owner just took over. This left it looking very messy, and devoid of variety - you can barely make out the peony that I found in May.

So Chris and I decided to take some drastic measures. The plan is to replace this triangle of miniature jungle with some mulch and a more 'planned and maintained' look. This will be bordered by some landscaping stones and for this season at least, will feature those bulbs and some mums. So we started ripping it out:

Oh, look, the peony. I was going a bit slowly, so Chris helped me out:

So right now it looks a mess. I'll admit. But this is just the first step. We went to Home Depot and looked at landscaping stones and mulch, but the weather yesterday was gross (like fifties and rainy) so this is a project that will continue into next weekend.  

U! S! A! U! S! A!

I was unaware of it until last weekend, but the front of our home was missing something:

With Memorial Day helping him out, Chris informed me that we needed a flag, a rather large flag:

With a limited amount of help from me on the placement, Chris broke out the power tools (not that they ever really made it away in this house) and installed it himself:

So while we went one of the three days of Memorial Day Weekend without a flag, we are more than ready for the 4th of July!

Brass Lion, that Funky Lion

Okay, I guess there is a reason they picked a monkey rather than a lion, but I'm pretty charmed with our brass lion. The first thing that Chris and I noticed about this house that ensured us it was going to be a winner, was the brass door knocker:

Although it is not something that I would have picked out (right?), I really enjoy the charm and character that it brings to the front door. It is a statement maker even before you meet anyone who lives here. Unlike the knocker though, the door knob and the locks had seen better days (not to mention, we needed to change the locks anyway):

 Well, Chris made quick work of this and now we have new locks in brass to complement the lion:

So shiny and new! Okay, so the locks aren't that impressive, but they were a good reason to share the awesomeness of the lion door knocker. Mission Accomplished!