Between Two Pheasants...

Keeping with my tradition of posting way late, here I am updating the blog after a month since my last post. Life is hard. Blogging about life is harder. We have a deck and it's kind of amazing. It's not done, of course, so let me give you a phase two deck project update. Big Ken left. Life got in the way. It rained. A lot. We ran out of screws. Broke the pilot hole bit. Had to order it online. Ran out of screws again. Finally got the top screwed down. Here's the longer version. One of our lovely neighbors loaned us his deck jig, and I immediately loved the idea of not seeing a bunch of screws on the top of our deck. "So, yeah, let's do that," I said. "It will be great," I said. (No one thought it would be easy so no one said that.) Source

We had a very productive weekend at the Pheasant's house. After three days, we have a deck. Well, not entirely, but very close to looking like one. Fake it 'til you make it, right? Day 0 - Home Depot Run My dad came down on a Friday afternoon so we could get a jump start on the weekend. Any good DIY project starts with a trip to the big orange box, Home Depot. It took us two hours to figure out which supplies we needed based on the stock. FYI, apparently no one works at Home Depot on Friday night. Here's a photo of my Pops with my purse cruising the aisles. 😂

Just a quick post on our fence (post, get it?) We finished it this weekend! And, here's what it looked like shortly after we moved in.  And now!

Early November, on a random Saturday, the girls were playing in the yard and I decided to kick-down the back fence. Yep, kicked it down. That's HOW READY it was to fall down.  20 minutes later....viola!  Before and after: So, feeling a little open and not secure, we decided to BYOF (Build Your Own Fence) last weekend. We nearly took it over the finish line. Not finished but close. Dug some post holes:   Set them in concrete:  Bought a skill saw, trimmed some redwood planks to fit and leveled them:  Looking better:  Sunday evening around 5:10 p.m. (man, it gets dark early):  Two days later, my parents came in town for a Christmas performance at Cinderella's school. Dad and Handyman banged out the right side of the fence. View from the Bebe's room: We are off to Home Depot now to buy the supplies for the gate and trim. More to come!

I remember a moment when we were walking through the house with our realtor thinking, "a french door really should go where this window is so people in the house can access the backyard." At that time, I had hoped these hypothetical people would be us and we are! We people are the proud owners of a new french door (as of August)! The door is from Home Depot (Orepac is the brand, I believe) and it was not cheap, but it was about 1/2 the price of Andersen which the price of a small car. We had a real handyman/Jesus' sidekick, Ricardo, install it for us. The door is fiberglass and has a real wood grain texture. Since it is in a fairly sunny location, we opted for something that was a little more indestructible than wood. The hardware is also from Home Depot. Now that it's here and we have a glorious view to our outdoor fireplace, I'm dying to put in a deck. That's going to be a project for 2017 and hopefully sooner rather than later. Side no...

So, here's our beloved home between May 1st and Memorial Weekend. This first picture shows the giant hole in our siding that was covered up with sheet metal. We took out a wall a/c unit when we put in the mini-split system. Hence, the hole. Knowing we were going to patch and paint the house anyway, we left it. So ugly. Here's the next phase in the process on this part of the house. Patching the hole! Our new handyman (not to be confused with The Handyman), Ricardo, and Jesus took siding from underneath the double window to match the second story siding. And, here's the patched hole. Viola! As you can see, the back of the house has also been primed, but the trim paint hasn't been put on. Not sure about that smiley face. By mid-May, the back of the house started looking like this. Lots of patching and extra layers of primer. May 16th, front of the house! Shut the front door! Literally, it's yellow and beautiful! A close up of the front porch. T...

Question: how do you really freak out your neighbors? Step 1. Paint your house bright blue. Step 2. Change color to gray half way through. Work progresses around the house. Here's the latest Front of the house:

As if the exciting news couldn't get more exciting, we found out that Jesus could actually spend more time on our house than originally planned. He's in between jobs which means he can spend more time on our house. Check out the progress he made in just one week! West side window:  Back of the house after power-washed

Twin baby Olive Trees, that is! During a beautiful weekend in May, I took Cinderella to the Flower Farm Garden Inn and Nursery for some special mother/daughter time. We planned to have lunch and return home, but these rascals came home with us. Two fruitless olive trees for the backyard at a great price, $35/each! They've added some much needed symmetry to our backyard.

My happy place is Healdsburg, CA, specifically Dry Creek Road, my aunt and uncle's house, in their backyard. It is so beautiful, peaceful, and relaxing. Their yard is full of treasures my aunt has collected over the decades. She has a real knack of taking seemingly odd items and putting them together in a cheerful and stylish way. Nate and I were married there five years ago which only expanded my love for Healdsburg.

We have two cherry trees in our backyard and one of them is big and beautiful and has to be at least 30 or 40 years old. In late March, it bloomed with the most fragrant smelling flowers. The whole backyard was intoxicating.   I had visions of our family picking cherries, just like we did at my grandparents' house when I was a child. After waiting over two weeks for these babies to ripen, I finally picked the "good ones" on Tuesday and let the birds have the rest. They must be Rainer cherries or another yellow/pink variety because they never turned red. If you know or have any ideas, please leave me a comment.     We literally have one bowlful of cherries.

...dig a hole and plant it! When we moved from Kansas to California, my mom's childhood best friend, Sarah, stopped by our rental home in Sacramento with a lovely, totally California, housewarming gift--a lemon tree! We potted it in hopes it would survive until we found a more permanent home for it (and us). This little guy gave us two lemons last year, and is loaded with 18 lemons right now. I can't wait to make lemoncello, lemontini, lemon fizz, and lemon drops this winter/spring. There might just be enough for lemon bars, lemon pound cake, and lemon cream pie too. I'm a sucker for booze and sweets. Two weekends ago, I planted it in our backyard and it's starting to bloom again! It must really love its new home just as much as we love ours.