Flowers and Food

April showers did bring May flowers :)
the tulips died but then my second variety of flowers bloomed ;)

 So pretty :)

 Even the plants we planted last year in front of the window

 have some buds on them

This weekend I tried making some Sheera/Rava Halwa

Indian sweet dish made with semolina, sugar, milk and nuts

and I did get to finally use some saffron :)

came out pretty good...can be eaten hot or cold

Yummm!

This and that...

Yes we are ready for Christmas!!!

With lights to decorate the outside of the house :)

I know I know...we have not had thanksgiving yet...but its best to be ready :)

 Look what I did :)

A little wall art in the kitchen

the black circles are actually chalkboards and the white circles are whiteboards :)

Perfect for writing our weekly menu or to leave messages

 

 Practiced my gift wrapping skills...

 Grant got some more toys/tools

seems like he needs a new one for every job

we so need to get some storage in the garage

 Aren't these cute

little worms to tell us when it is time to water the plants

More Gardening...

So this week we tried to get the first level of the house done. 

We cleaned and tidied up level one and Grant steam cleaned the basement carpets.

 So we are now ready to move in stuff from the garage into the basement.

We still have to steam clean the living room carpet, maybe next week.

Today we did some more gardening...don't worry we are almost done!

My stains arrived in the mail this week. Can't wait to try them out on the cabinets. 

Still need to decide on a sander though.

This morning we put all our plants in the sun and gave them some nutrients.

 We bought a few flowering bushes on that were on sale. We got three pink lilac bushes to put in 

the front of the house right below the window and two white hydrangea bushes to put on

either side of the driveway. And we just realised we forgot to plant the white lilac bush on

on the side of the house...it is still out there :) We will get to it sometime this week.

 We started the morning with mowing....It was a nice sunny warm day.

 

Awww just because they were sitting pretty in the sun.

My car turned 1 this May....Still loving it!

 Then we decided to continue working on our path to nowhere. We used the rake to 

pick stones from the mud. We made a good dent in the rock pile today.

We kept going till it was mostly mud and less rock :/ 

we might have to hand pick the rest of the rocks :(

 

 Then we planted...

 

 We got done around 9pm...In the pic below you can see the 2 hydrangea bushes on either 

side of the driveway. Well they are all small babies now, some day they will grow into bushes :)

  The 3 pink lilac bushes...can't wait to see them grow and bloom! This is what they should
look like grown and in bloom.

  Oh and we cut the half dead ugly tree and decided to make it more like a bush. In the pic below you can kinda see what it used to look like.

We will watch it and if it doesn't grow ...out of the ground it goes.

Our pathway is almost done!

Tomorrow is our day of rest.

Yaaaay for two day weekends!

More landscaping...

We still like the squares on the dining room wall....here is what they look like all dry and in daylight - not light brown anymore :)

 

Yesterday we decided to work on the yard again...i think we just don't know where to get started with unpacking (so much to do) so we just end up in the yard :) We still have to put in our pathway/walkway so I guess we have a good excuse will we ever get done with the yard...who knows?

Yesterday on our way back from servicing my car we stopped at our fav greenhouse. They had a huge sale on their tropical trees, just what we need for our indoor plants.

So we picked up a dwarf banana tree, a palm looking plant and another modified tropical artsy looking plant (sorry don't remember their names :) Here they are I potted them in some pretty pots. Will leave them out till their roots grow a little before I take them indoors. (I have also identified some flowering bushes and some trees that are on sale that would be perfect for our yard....maybe next weekend :)

Then we decided to tackle our pathway-to-be...

this is how it used to look

 Then we marked out the pathway and killed the grass on it...helps with its removal.

 

Then we cut through the dead sod

 And pulled it out piece by piece

 The straight edge spade was great at cutting it out

 Half way done and our yard trash can is filled almost to the brim

Yaaay all done just that little edge to take care off now

 Check out our new little AMES dump truck perfect for carrying stuff around the yard

 Then we tackled that corner and decided that our garden needed
some widening so we had to re-do the edging for it.

 

We put in the edging, raked the soil to even it out then the stamper came out

 It worked really well...real workout for the arms

 Me trying it out...building my muscles :)

 Here is what it looked like this morning from the front door. PERFECT! don't you think?

Now just have to take out the railings.

 And look who came to visit, our stupid resident mole. Made a tunnel right through/under our walkway.

Oh well some more stomping and then will lay down the rocks.

 Here is Wiki wondering what we are going to be doing out today.

 

Ok I better get outside and finish up - Grant says we got to be done by 3pm cause there is a USA soccer match that is on :/ 

....so bye byee until next time :)