Studying Again?!?

Yup. Tomorrow and Friday I have mid-term exams for structure and function. Three of them. Tomorrow there are the histology and anatomy practicals. Friday is the big written exam. Needless to say, I have been hunkered down studying this week...Sadly, no exciting updates to report about the house today.
The one good thing about this exam, is unlikely last time it falls at the end of the week rather than on a Monday. This means I actually got to enjoy some of last weekend and will certainly enjoy this coming weekend. The highlight of our weekend was Groupon tickets to see the Warsaw Philharmonic play. This was my first Groupon purchase and it was worth it. The Philharmonic was excellent. Had a great piano soloist. My favorite part was the the third encore where they played almost a mash-up of several favorite songs, like many of the ones featured in Looney Tunes. Many people were clapping along. I really enjoyed myself and it was a nice relaxing break. Well, back to the grind. 

Grass Master

So all of this work in the front yard has made Chris a bit obsessive about the lawn. Our lawn is alright. Better then the guy on the left, on par with the guy on the right, but it pales in comparison to the guy across the street. His lawn is perfect and Chris has decided to step up his lawn game. Now I didn't see any crabgrass, but Chris manged to find and remove a lot of it:

To add to the visual appeal of the whole deal. He cut the grass really short before digging:

Not exactly an improvement at this point. But he put down 'lawn soil' and new seed. He then fertilized the whole lawn.

So we might be the only house with a sprinkler on in Mid-October, but Chris is hoping for a better lawn in the spring. I am filing this whole obsession about the lawn under "Man Things" but as long as he is doing the work, he can do whatever he wants. 

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. 

Flooring Update III

So last week I left you with a little teaser of what the hard wood floor in the Family Room was looking like:

Well, Chris has been working at it a bit each day. The giant pile of boxes has gone from this:

To this (clearly now a work zone and no longer a foyer - Sad face):

Clearly, Chris is hard at work. And now the floor about half way done!

Ohhh, Ahhh. I think it looks really nice so far. He looked at molding this past weekend at the Home Depot, but he hasn't committed yet. And there is still the other half of the room to finish before he gets to put that down anyway. Still very pleased. I think the wood floor is an even better color than I expected in that room. So back to work to finish the second half!