Freshly Redesigned
I recently upgraded my Wordpress installation (it’s the software that makes this site go), but because I’ve neglected it for so long, the transition from older software to the newer code sort of goofed up a few things.
So, as I got into fixing some things, it required that I started fiddling with other parts of the site, which then required other parts to be messed with and so on, until then a full fledged site face lift became necessary (at least I feel that it did)…and what you now see is the result.
Anyways, I hope you all like the new look, it’s pretty minimalist, clean and simple. I’ve increased the font size for improved readability and gave some spacing to others. Plus all this gives me an outlet for some creativity and keeps me relatively sane (though some might beg to differ).
Enjoy folks. Oh, and I promise to add more photos and updates in the coming days.
Wishing Y’All A Merry Christmas
As you gather around your Christmas tree with friends and families and are quietly reminded of all the things that are truly important, we wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
Often with these holiday blog posts, I try and come up with some profound way express the true reason for the celebration, but I will rather spare you my sidewalk preacher bit and just say, that when you’re out fighting the crowded malls and trying to find that perfect gift, just remember that there is only one perfect gift and has already been given, it’s up to you to accept it.
Remember to keep the “Christ” in your Christmas.
God bless you all.
The Triumphant Return
Well folks, it’s been a long absence from blogging, but it has been quite the busy Fall. After all the rain this past Summer, left quite a lot of “around the house” projects either unfinished or undone. So now that we’ve had a good stretch of cooler, dry weather, the weekends have been filled with lots of back-breaking work.
We started by trimming a few trees, which turned into a major pruning of all of our oak trees, we have 15 or 20 on the property. The cutting, pruning and trimming was the easy part…you just break out the chainsaw, have your willing neighbor climb up the tree and do the cutting, while you direct him from the ground and sidestep any falling branches. But the bigger job comes with finding a way to get rid of what you cut.
After 2 weekends of cutting up trees, we had a backyard full of branches, leaves and brush. We thought we’d call up someone to simply haul it away, but not for $800, so being the cheap, do-it-yourselfers we are, we decided to save ourselves some cash (at the expense of my back) and rent a 6″ brush chipper from the local Cash Savers Equipment rental center. Sounds easy enough, but 2 backbreaking days of dragging, sawing, cutting and shoving logs, branches and various tree parts into the deafeningly loud chipper hopper took quite a toll on my back and body in general, just in time for the next project (of course, I had to wait until I could actually move my body before starting something new).
Next on the docket, the front yard. No, not merely cutting the grass and cleaning up the yard, that would be WAY too simple and physically non-intensive, nope, we’re talking ripping out every existing plant and replacing the entire landscape. Yep, because we like to get in over our heads and create more work than necessary.
The easy part was paying our handyman to rip out and haul away the existing plants, the hard part was ridding the planting areas of roots, construction debris and carefully maneuvering around cable lines, sprinkler lines, gas lines, wires and other essential utilities that are barely buried beneath the thin layer of cheap-ass, weed infested, builder installed top soil. While the soil in our Rocklin home was hard clay and mucky when wet, Texas soil is like trying to dig in to 3 feet of solid friggin’ reinforced concrete. No wonder one of the top equipment rentals is an air hammer. It’s all rocks and solid things that look like rocks and it’s a wonder that anything even grows.
So after digging, trenching, pounding, a gazillion F-bombs, scrapes, bruises, blisters, a little blood, a few fire ant bites, 100 frog sightings and 1 snake, I managed to successfully replant the entire front yard. It was a project we’ve wanted to do since moving in, but the Summer is too hot to plant and the Fall is somewhat unpredictable, but this year, the conditions were right..fortunately (I think). Either way, it’s done. HooHah!
Next up is restaining the deck and fences…does the work ever cease? Apparently not, but the lovely conditions we’ve had here (70’s and 80’s) sure makes it nice to be outdoors.
So now that I’ve thoroughly bored you with my rundown of household projects, along the way, we managed to snap some photos of the kids, the dogs and some other stuff, so you might want to head over to the photo blog and see what you missed.
Until next time, folks.