Digging in the Dirt...Lots of It

Last year we moved into our new house and spent much of the summer scraping, painting, unpacking, and working with many contractors. This year we can focus our home improvement on the outside! 

We waited a full year to finally obtain our compost bin, which we can use to leave yard waste out with the trash. The delivery fee was a strong deterrent...but we finally we made good use of the Camry, which never ceases to amaze me in all it can do. 

With this new purchase from the City of Ann Arbor, we have started digging efforts. Our vet told us when we brought Brady home that lilies are toxic for dogs--especially those pups who eat everything--and so we have been putting our all into removing the well-established and widespread lilies that have run rampant in our backyard. Brady likes to keep on eye on things while we're working hard.

Last weekend we also began digging for our back patio. Julie came over and was a huge help.

In order to lay the base of the patio, we'll need to dig down nine inches and create the appropriate grade so that rainwater will run off of it. Then we'll need several cubic yards of gravel and sand delivered, in addition to the pavers or bricks...this will be a multi-weekend project. More photos soon to come!

Late April is here, and spring has sprung. 

In typical Michigan fashion, it snowed last weekend. This week, though, has been warm, rainy--and green! Loren and I went flower shopping at the farmer's market yesterday morning and bought trays full of pretty yellow pansies for our front bed. Finally, after a long, hard winter, I was able to happily dig in the dirt. 

After sweating out unusually high temperatures last summer as we waited several weeks in July for back-ordered parts for our air conditioning system, our boiler died unexpectedly this winter during a stretch of near-zero temperatures with wind chills in the negative teens. We are loving this beautiful, cool/not cold spring weather!

We made a Home Depot run this afternoon and bought white fencing material for the garden, as this summer we'll have more than rabbits to keep out. Brady and his best buddy from down the street, Meemo, had fun playing in our muddy backyard and tried to "help" as I staked out the garden spot for this summer.

Brady uprooted an old tomato plant from last year (i.e. giant stick), and Meemo decided to join in the fun so he could have it, too. Brady wasn't keen to give it up.

Brady, a tired and happy pup...even after having been toweled down and dried off after Meemo headed home. Brady and Meemo love mud!

On another note, we celebrated closing on our house one year ago on March 29th! 

Loren and I are home in Effingham for a few days for my Aunt Karen's memorial today. On Monday, Karen passed away after a battle with cancer. She was the second-youngest of my mom's seven brothers and sisters and will be remembered fondly. 

On the drive down earlier this week, Brady was sound asleep before we made it to the interstate when we were leaving Ann Arbor, and again slept through nearly the entire seven hour trip home. Even though we were home two weeks ago for Thanksgiving, I think Brady has grown since my parents saw him then.

My dad is still working on getting Brady and cats to be buddies. Brady is a bit overly friendly for the cats, who aren't sure how to interpret his enthusiasm when he wants to play.

My parents' back porch, which has survived two Golden Retrievers in the family, unfortunately succumbed yesterday to sharp puppy teeth, and Brady is no longer allowed unattended on the porch after having started chewing through the floorboards. As a result, he spent time hanging out by himself in the backyard while we attended the memorial. When we got home, our muddy little Brady enjoyed his first bath time.

Christmas decorations are up!

During August, Loren and I had a short break from projects on the house when we took a couple weeks to travel and enjoy the end of summer. Now we're back to work and preparing for things before the colder weather is here. We started using our good old steam heat system a couple weeks ago, and so far all is going well. 

In addition to putting out fall decorations and bringing plants inside, we continue to work on a few projects, both big and small. For the living room, Loren and I bought a wingback chair on Craigslist and are in the process of recovering it in fabric to match the window seat and cushions that my mom made for the living room. 

One of our projects has been having a fence put in the backyard in "puppy preparation" efforts. Our puppy joins us in only a week-and-a-half, and I plan to walk home over my lunch break each day, at least in the beginning, to play with it and take it outside for a potty break. A very pleasant and unexpected convenience is that the School of Education on campus, where I started working last week, is only a 15-20 minute walk from our home. 

We've also been doing some work with paint and decor upstairs.We now have a very green bedroom ("grape leaves"--which I love) and another bed--compliments of Mary Kate and Rob--so we now have two guest bedrooms we can use.

We made a few changes in what is our other guest bedroom. The bedside table below on the right was the table my Grandma Stolz kept beside her bed and that my mom had refinished as a gift for me.

We're hoping to hang the windows below against the soft brown (named "harvest brown") of the walls below as decoration in the same room. These windows were in my Grandma and Grandpa Stolz's farmhouse that has been in the family for generations. When my dad was born, my grandparents put in their first and only indoor bathroom--it's always been a house full of history, and it's touching to have a few memories from their house in our new home.

Our high velocity air system is in! The compressor and condensers went in along with 6-inch diameter flexible tubing down the backs of closets from our attic upstairs. The vents are a few inches across and blend well with the ceiling where they are placed in each of the rooms. 

Overall, we're very happy with the system. The downstairs stays five degrees warmer than our upstairs where the thermostat is, which was a bit of a surprise, but it's still offered a very welcome reprieve from this summer heat wave.

Below are pictures of the window seat cushion my mom made for our living room west window.

We've had fun using our placemat and napkin set that Pam, Ajay, Sara, and Stewart gave us for our anniversary.

Finally...my garden has produced tomatoes. Tonight we used fresh parsley, thyme, and tomatoes for our dinner. Our sprinklers are being well-used.

 This has been a lovely, albeit rather hot, week. Loren took Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off so we were able to spend time together and finish up a few more projects around the house. Our big news is that on Friday, we finally heard that the parts for our AC system--on back order for a couple months now--have arrived. Tomorrow morning, they will start installing our high velocity air system, and by this Friday evening, our upstairs should no longer be in the mid-90s each night. Box fans and lunch box ice packs only go so far.

One of other our major accomplishments is that we picked out a rug for the office.

Beside our fireplace, we once had a coat closet. It is now Loren's electronics closet; this closet holds such useful items as the Wii, Wii Fit, DDR, Xbox, PS3, Stewie head of Family Guy DVDs, among many other related things. (I was assured it would still have plenty of room to hold outerwear...) The closet door is a solid closet door, and after we managed to get it back up from the basement stairs, we also managed to get it propped up in the driveway, where Loren gave it several coats of Swiss Coffee to match our trim work. It looked a bit like a nice beer pong table set-up in our driveway.

Photos of our living room...

March 2012- Our Front Room

July 2012 Our Front Room

We also finished the second coat of paint in our guest bedroom upstairs, which we decorated with quotes about wine, a map of Napa, and some pieces from our favorite wineries.