Framing the Sidewalks

Stephan has been busy finishing up the retaining wall and laying out the framing for the sidewalks.  It is going to be wonderful getting in the concrete to help cut down on all of the dust flying around here.  With all of the busy-ness of the summer, it is hard for him to get a good run at finishing up the projects that need to finished. Between his DJ'ing on the weekends, kids, jury duty, trips to AZ he is in the never ending start/stop way of working.  However, I have complete faith in his busting butt abilities!!!

We are both headed down to AZ, but he is going to be coming back a few days before I will so hopefully when I come back I will have nifty sidewalks to walk on!!!  PLUS, it will get me out of the evilness of skittering or whatever it is called of the sidewalks!  UGH, that nearly killed me last summer.  So I figured, leaving that chore to the boys would be a good thing!

Keeping Watch

While Stephan is hard at work building our retaining wall and eventually the courtyard area, Hedy is keeping watch by chilling under her tree.  You would think the pooch would be happy with more room to run, but she is definitely dying to have the courtyard finished so she can spend her days with mom!

Don't Fence Me In

The house we moved from had 3.5 acres and we backed up to wonderful nothingness.  Hedy and I could go for walks, she could leap to her little hearts content and it was relatively quiet.  Now we are on the corner of the main street coming into our area and I think we are on about 3/4 of an acre (although it could be more).  So needless to say, the space has been a challenge, not to mention all of the stinking holes the yard left us to contend with.

There were so many holes and so much damage to the "land" around the house we had to have dirt brought in to try and level it out, which led to Stephan having to build a retaining wall.

The Great Wall of Bloomfield

Stephan is getting ready for the concrete folks to come out so we can build the sidewalks, patio and the retaining wall to make sure when I am BBQ'ing I don't do some sort of concrete/dirt surfing into Hedy's area!  Isn't he a nice guy to think of that!

Treasure

Of course, all of that digging did produce wonderful treasures!  Like this big ass tire that he found buried!  Isn't that special????   I keep telling him we are going to find something dead one of these days!

Coming Up Roses

We have had a slew of company this month and it has been wonderful!  My daughter came up last week for a few days and I zipped back to Payson to do a hand off with my parents and got to see my brother and nephews as a surprise!

The inside of the house is coming along nicely and we mainly have little things to do to get it ready to rock and roll!  Things like hanging pictures, touch up paint, pulling off painter's tape in places, scraping off the paint from the counters in the bathroom and general organization.

That's all the fun I get to do, Stephan, on the other hand gets to do the REAL FUN work!  Like the outside part.

Although, I will have my hand in the "prettifying" of the outside.  When Jordyn was here we went and bought some roses and yesterday Pat and I TRIED to dig the holes to plant them.  Unfortunately, the handle on the shovel broke and Stephan had to come home after Jury Duty and dig the holes for me!   Ooops!

But they DID get planted and they are going to be pretty!

Isn't she cute?!

Here is one of rose bushes looking all cute and pretty!

Row of Roses

Here is a portion of the ones I planted today.  I still have to drag out all of the weeds surrounding them and build the actual "bed", but it is a start!!!

Wait til you see what Stephan has been doing while I was planting roses!

Laundry Room

I promise I will post better pictures of my pretty new laundry room as soon as we get a few more things cleaned up in there!  Stephan had a heck of time with the washer machine, you wouldn't believe some of the things we are still finding in this house!

BUT I did get it painted with help from our handy dandy neighbor!

I am LOVING the gray!!!

Do you remember those HIDEOUS holes in the wall?

THIS used to be my laundry room!  EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

Thanks, Fred, for making it all prettified!

Weeds the Easy Way

So, you saw the pictures of our cleaned up yard and do you remember all of the weeds?  They were a nightmare!  Plus, the area where we are planning on putting Gooseberry Cottage and the new courtyard was very unlevel.

Stephan fixing something in the yard

All nice and level

No more weeds...in the big area!

Apparently when you go disturbing the earth like that all kinds of critters get pretty peeved!  So Stephan has been finding snakes, rodents and other nastiness in the yard!  So we had to do something about THAT too.

Meet our new additions!  (Not the pooch, she loves critters)  We ended up getting a couple of kittens who will eventually find their ways outside to protect us from the dangers of big bugs, small rodents and evil snakes!

The little grey one LOVED Garrett and enjoyed chilling out on his shoulder.  It was hysterical.

Living the Cool Life

My Arizona friends and family, you will LOVE this!  Granted they put out a heat advisory when it is getting close to 90 degrees here in Bloomfield, but this is how we cool the house.

THIS would be a window unit....I know, keep laughing, may as well keep going for a bit longer too because we have two of these babies in the house and we may even go for a third, because I just can't sleep when it is warm.

Thanks to our lovely units poor Stephan had to buy a new transformer for the street since they take up so much power.  Yep, you can laugh again!  This is the SECOND transformer he has had to buy since I moved up here.  Eeeks!  At least he didn't have to buy a pole this time, right sweetie???  =)

Ikea!

Mom, Jordyn and I had a BLAST at Ikea!  I headed to Phoenix on Tuesday morning, we hit up Ikea on Wednesday morning and I went back to NM on the same day!  Talk about a whirlwind crazy trip.

Jordyn wasn't too sure I was going to be able to get everything in my car, but I am happy to announce that Santa probably traded in his sleigh for a Prius because this puppy was jam packed with goodies AND I still got 45mpg!

All the stuff shoved in my car!

Bookcases, dining room chairs, covers, shelves, more bookcases, lighting fixtures and all sorts of little goodies were loaded in my car!

All my goodies!

THIS is all of my stash from my shopping trip!  Talk about wonderful!!!!

The Aftermath

Wait until you see what all we did with our fun shopping expedition!

My New Craft Room

Let's get to the fun stuff, shall we?

Remember this room?

Now see what it has been transformed into!

I love my new studio!!!

The Front Door

I know it has been a while since I last posted, but needless to say it has been BUSY!  I am, however, trying to get all caught up so you can see all of the fun progress going on.

First, let's go over my front door!  I had some GREAT guesses and although I would have LOVED to have painted it turquoise or purple the color we chose was....

RED!

I absolutely love the color although painting a door is much harder than painting a wall!  It took two days to do and wouldn't you know it, as soon as I started to paint the door we had a HUGE dust storm sprout up that succeeded in coating the door, paint can and me in wonderful dirt.

I am happy to report though, that we all cleaned up very nicely!

Carpet!

We FINALLY got the carpet in the house!  I cannot tell you how much I love my new comfy pad either!  Holy cow, it is like little hugs for your feet!  (At least it is in our area, the kid's area....not so much!)

Kid Area

My Studio

Once we had all the walls painted, it started to feel a bit more like a "home" now that we have the carpet in, holy moly man, it was so wonderful!!!!  All I wanted to do was a happy dance!  Ok, maybe I DID do a happy dance!

LOVE LOVE LOVE!