The painting fairy never showed up...

I put out a request for her, but sadly she must have been on vacation so Michael and I had to finish the cabinet and bathroom painting all by ourselves!!

Fortunately, I am super pleased with the results. I LOVE the brown cabinets. The green bathroom walls are a tad brighter than I was hoping for but I'm going to live with them. I am opting to not paint my bedroom the same green (that was the original plan)-- so if anyone needs two unopened gallons of Behr paint in 'celery', let me know 'cause I can hook you up!!

I also opted to go ahead and put out the new linens that I bought for our master bedroom. I was going to save these until we had repainted that room-- but I'm so done with painting for now and I really wanted to get these out because our old ones were literally falling apart. I love them! At some point, we'll come back in here and paint the walls a more matching shade of khaki... but that is definitely for another day....

My latest project...

The pictures probably speak for themselves. This is our master bathroom and the change in progress is not so much out of a need to redecorate as out of a need to repair the only 4 year old cabinet surfaces that are already chipping-- and actually have been for the past 3 years (@%#!@$&~!!).

This is my first time ever to paint cabinets and so I went to Home Depot armed with paint chips and ready to ask for any and all advice.

The paint counter lady assured me that if I used "XYZ" paint, I would not need to prime it. After the first coat, I was doubting the quality of her advice...

Three coats (and 3 days later), there is some significant improvement! I think I may just need one more coat plus a sealing finish.

(You may also notice that I took this opportunity to clean out under our bathroom sinks which were a disaster area!!)

A trip down memory lane

Yesterday, the girls and I had to make an unexpected trip to Woodstock, GA and so I thought it would be fun to take a run by our very first house-- since we were relatively near by. Michael and I built (not literally!) this house during the first 3 months we were married-- which any good marriage counselor will tell you is a big NO-NO! But-- we've managed to survive for nearly 15 more years so....

Anyhow, it was interesting to see the changes in the Acworth area-- we used to be in the 'boonies'-- no shopping or anything for a good 10+ miles around us. That had certainly changed. I was pleasantly surprised at the shape of our old neighborhood-- there were some houses & yards that could use some more TLC, but overall it was in decent shape.

Without further ado, here are the pictures:

We planted the Bradford Pear and Maple trees in the front yard and they were teeny tiny (remember, we were poor newlyweds-- we bought the cheap landscaping items at Home Depot!!). They are HUGE now!! Glad someone else has been able to enjoy them... We also planted (and repositioned about 3 times) all of the holly bushes by the front walkway and those are nicely filled in as well. "Our lawn" also looks to be in fairly good shape-- we redid the entire lawn during our first summer---re-grading the lot and planting/watering in the seeds. That was a project we have NEVER repeated (wonder why??!!).

It would have been fun to see the inside-- the site of another HUGE project (we finished the downstairs 'bonus room' entirely by ourselves).

It all seemed a bit smaller than I remembered (especially the front lawn-- I remembered that as being MUCH LARGER-- probably due to that grass project previously mentioned??!) It could also be that the plentiful trees have grown and filled in quite a bit...

Anyway-- it was a fun experience and I don't even think the girls were too bored!

I am done...

Three and 1/2 hours of blogging later and I think I might be just about caught up!!

Happy reading!!

How does YOUR garden grow??!

The Timms family is beginning a new adventure-- a home garden! I've dabbled the past two years with containers of tomatoes and peppers and have decided to make the (small) plunge into a bona fide garden this year with my two assistants!

Bringing the water (please ignore the weeds!)

I decided to do a "Square Foot Garden" for several reasons: #1 it requires no tilling up of the hard Georgia clay and pulling out of Bermuda grass, #2 it requires no tilling up of the hard Georgia clay and pulling out of Bermuda grass, #3 it is supposed to be fairly maintenance free (other than watering), and #4 did I mention there was no tilling involved??!

Measuring the 'squares'.

In all seriousness, Square foot's claims of easy & practical gardening make a lot of sense and have a great appeal for someone who would rather do just about anything than pull weeds (or Bermuda grass)! My father-in-law graciously agreed to make the garden box for us and I chose a 4 ft x 4 ft square for our first try at real gardening.

16 squares ready for plants!

We planted several tomatoes, a few peppers (sweet & hot), some marigolds (to keep the bugs away from the tomatoes), a few phlox (from Emma's co-op class), carrots, herbs, sweet onions, one strawberry plant and one zucchini!

Our finished garden-- some seeds, some already started plants.

The girls are super excited about this so I hope that it goes well! I'm a little bit apprehensive about it but am willing to give it a try. Hopefully by mid summer we will be rolling in tomatoes and peppers and onions and will have all the salsa & spaghetti sauce we can manage! Perhaps then I'll have to learn the fine art of canning...

Dog protection! !!

(Although so far, he has surprisingly left it alone! Maybe I should plant veggies on my porch cushions and he won't chew them??!!)

Got Scarecrows?

I am so proud of our little hometown...okay, maybe 'proud' is a little too strong of an emotion... but it was neat of the community to come together to pull this off...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSPNMCvh18M

http://www.braseltonnewstoday.com/archives/965-Hoschton-surpasses-world-record-goal.html

These were our contributions to the endeavor... Beauty & the (scarecrow)Beast:

The really funny thing is that we have nearly 60 of these guys around the entrance of our subdivision and EVERY TIME I drive in, I think "Who are all those people and why are they standing out here??"!!!

A new look for Fall!

Although its not 'officially' fall yet, I've decided to try out a new look at "TFT"...

I think I'm just getting excited about cooler weather & pumpkins in the yard (even though it's still in the 80's here!)

And Round 3 goes to...???

Ever since we've moved into this house 3 years ago, I have had an ongoing battle with our dog, Jake, over the outdoor patio furniture cushions on the deck. I happen to think they look nice to sit on and prefer that they remain on the furniture. Jake happens to think they look nice to sit on-- until he gets bored and decides they look like fun chew toys. I have lost the last two rounds of this 'game'. Whenever I lose, Jake becomes banned from the deck until I start to feel sorry for him and then cave and give him deck privileges again (of course, by this time the deck is really 'safe' for him because there are no cushions to destroy!!)

As a result of our last 'round', the chairs & sofa on the deck have been cushion-less all spring and summer. I have a hard time justifying spending nearly $200 on cushions that may just become doggie chew toys. I've had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket and decided to hold out to see if I could find an end-of-season deal on furniture cushions and a last-minute trip to Target yesterday yielded a bonanza! Check out what I found for $15 each!!

It must have been the first day they marked the patio furniture down to 50% off because they still had lots of inventory so I could actually find 5 that matched and that I didn't have to talk myself into liking. Whoohoo!! Now that it's 95 degrees outside, we can use our deck!!

The dog, on the other hand, will be back to being 'banned'-- which means that now he will probably resume his digging under the shrubbery looking for a cool place to hang out... or barking his discontent until we put him in his kennel in the cool basement... or winning me over with his pitiful looks and 'promises' to not even put a paw on my new cushions...

Who can resist such a contrite looking face?? Me-- that's who!!

So... today is the big 4-0!

After being greeted by Michael and the girls singing, "Happy Birthday to you-- you're twenty times two-- you're no longer in your 30's--- but we still love you!"-- we went out to a yummy breakfast at Mimi's Cafe... and then I came home to find this:

http://mooresforsuchatimeasthis.blogspot.com/2008/06/sowe-had-little-bit-of-fun-this-morning.html

After finding our way in through the balloons, streamers and toilet paper everywhere, the girls opened their "A&E Spa" and set me up with a bubble bath, candles & music-- followed by a 'foot treatment' (sugar scrub & peppermint foot cream), a massage and then Michael painted my toes (he did a pretty good job but I don't think he should quit his day job!).

Oh, I also forgot to mention-- Michael called his good friends, Kevin & Taylor (you know, the radio people!) and had them wish me Happy Birthday over the air this morning. Taylor was SO NICE to say that when she met me on Monday that I didn't look at all like I was about to be 40!! I LOVE HER!!

We had cake and presents this afternoon and will wind up the evening with dinner with friends at one of my favorite restaurants in Atlanta.

All in all, it has been a great day... 40 is not too bad... I guess :-)

p.s. I have to add that Emma keeps singing Michael's version of the "Happy Birthday" song but instead of twenty TIMES two, she says twenty PLUS two... she is now my favorite child!!

Getting back to normal

I've been without internet access since Monday (our wireless router died) -- which has been KILLING me! The upside is that I have nearly everything washed and put away from our trip, there are groceries in the kitchen and I've made at least a small dent in the yardwork (i.e., weed pulling!) that needs to be done. The girls and I have also been to the pool for the past two days and Abbie's completed 3 days of Tennis Camp in the neighborhood. Whew! I think I need another vacation!!

I have a few more 'wrap up' things that I want to do from the trip so check back in a day or so for a very special slide show as well as an 'interesting things we learned' list... Also, we found out yesterday that we get to do something very fun on Monday morning... so be sure to check back next week for more details about that (I'll give you a hint-- it's related to 'the pants'!)

Giant hail

So, last weekend brought some severe weather to the Atlanta area. Because we are sound sleepers (and Michael sleeps with the bathroom fan on!), we never heard the round of severe storms that went through on Friday night. We did, however, get to experience the full glory of the Saturday storms. Let's just say, I am so thankful that we live in a house with a basement... I would have hated for my kids to have had to spend their entire Saturday in a bathtub with a mattress over their heads. As it was, we spent a fair amount of our day huddled in the playroom 'puppet theater' (it's under the stairs) surrounded by all manner of blankets and pillows-- and because Glenn Burns (the local weatherman) said so, my children were also decked out in their bicycle helmets (okay, okay-- it seemed like a good idea at the time!!).


We were blessed not to have endured any damage whatsoever considering the size of the hail that we found in our yard after one 'wave' of the storms passed through...

(As a side note, I just figured out I can click and drag to move pictures when I am composing a post instead of the tricky cutting and pasting of html code-- woohoo!!)

This would be considered golf-ball to tennis ball sized hail according to the meteorologists. All I know is it is the largest, funkiest looking hail I have ever seen in my life. I'm especially partial to the one that looks like a sunburst. Obviously they impressed me as they are still residing in my freezer-- I don't have the heart to let them melt. I'm really interested in finding a way to cut them open and count the rings (another trivia tidbit from the weathermen-- hail collects layers like tree rings as it rises and falls in the storm) so maybe that will become a homeschooling activity one day...

Needless to say, it was an interesting day-- which doesn't even take into account the fact that Michael's dad was being transported to Atlanta via ambulence for what we now know was pneumonia and a mild heart attack. So in addition to trying to hold down the fort (or, you know, house) and keep children, dog and fish (oh wait, we just left them upstairs to 'blow away') safe, I was also worrying about the rest of my 'people' out driving through that mayhem. Thankfully they were all kept safe and it looks as though PawPaw will make a full recovery. The other silver lining is that Georgia got some much needed rain so hopefully we can actually use water outdoors this summer.

We are blessed.