yard work.

as you know, we've been working around the outside of our house A LOT lately. when the weather is nice there's no way i'm staying inside to clean or just be lazy {or do what i really should: study}.

so every chance we get, we work on the garden, the flower beds, the yard, whatever. even on thursday afternoons when austin only works half a day, we work. recently we went to get another truckload of mulch {free from the city!} to put around the plants in the front flower beds we worked on when mom and timmy were here.

before mulch:

after mulch:

much better, yes? and less watering!

and a little update on the plants we planted around the rain barrel.

when we bought and planted the little purple columbines they had already bloomed so we thought they were done for the year. but check it out! they filled up again with these awesomely evil looking buds...

and then bloomed into these pretty little purple flowers. hooray for surprises!

i also transplanted two wild columbine plants from various places in the yard into a flower bed in the back. i'm hoping they'll make it, but they were in the yard so they would have been mowed down if we hadn't tried to transplant them.

{this one is actually blooming right now!}

another of the plants around the rain barrel is starting to bloom as well.

we moved this little plant to a flower bed, too. he's surviving quite well, but i actually don't know what he is... {mom?}

and just for fun here's some updated pictures of our veggie gardens we planted a few weeks ago.

these pictures were taken a week or so ago and things are actually much bigger than this already. austin even has a few baby tomatoes growing. and our neighbors must think our lawn mower is broken or we don't know how to use it because our grass {er... our weeds in the yard} is soooo tall. like knee high in some places. but since it hasn't rained in forever and who knows when it's going to rain again, we're just letting it grow. the neighbors will just have to look the other way for now.

lucky number 7 {and 150}!

this is post number 150 for my little blog and how perfect that it be one all about my little juliet!

julie boo just turned 7 years old! can you believe it? i remember when i got her she was so little bitty.

every year i make a pretty big deal about her birthday. here's when she turned two {she's so little!}.

and yes, she is sitting on the dining room table.

and here's her 5th {i think} birthday party. she's not happy about the hat...

and last year i blogged all about her 6th birthday celebration.

and this year, lucky number seven did not disappoint. there were party hats, presents and cake.

and i happen to be quite proud of this beautiful cake.

the birthday puppy!

juliet enjoyed the cake, of course.

and then it was time for presents.

so yeah. that was our party for the puppy. ready for honest time? her peanut butter cake smelled so good, i made austin take me to get a peanut butter milkshake because i was craving it!

friends.

austin and i had another awesome weekend because our friends lindsy and rj came to visit us!

they arrived late friday night and we all headed to pin strikes for some bowling and arcade action. as we all know, i tend to be terrible at getting pictures so i don't have any kind of group shot, but i did get a few of the boys playing some games.

after winning all our tickets we cashed them in for awesome prizes like temporary tattoos, bouncy balls, and off-brand slinkies. quality stuff.

saturday we decided to drive down to the georgia winery to sample and buy some wines. we didn't really need to sample, we already knew which kinds we like. but hey, when in rome, right?

and then saturday night we fancied ourselves up a bit for a dinner with austin and rj's fraternity to celebrate their founders' day. the dinner was held at a new winery opening up downtown. two wineries in one day? why not.

{update: i wanted to include this picture i stole from erin!}

now if only i could convince lindsy and rj to move back to chattanooga so i can have friends all the time and we wouldn't have to wait for some special event to see them...

digging and chopping and pretties.

a few weekends ago i told you about chopping down the giant overgrown tree near the mailbox. for whatever reason, i didn't get a before picture of the old mailbox being swallowed by the tree. but i did find this for you.

and yes. that is our house from space. at least that's how i assume googlemaps gets those pictures. anyway. so i've pointed out the giant tree smothering the mailbox and if you can see it from space, it's gotta be big, right?

so we chopped the tree down and built a new mailbox. and then we realized the tree stump was covered in poison ivy so we left it alone for a while.

well austin and i were determined to get the stupid stump out. so we got to chopping.

and although it may look like i'm just posing with the mattock i swear i was actually working to get the stump out and i have the blisters to prove it.

austin and i worked and worked. chopped some. dug some. pulled with the truck some. but the stupid thing wouldn't move. our neighbor provided some cheerleading on the side {and he loaned us the mattock, too!}. eventually, we called in reinforcements and ben came over to help. we finally made progress by having austin pull with the truck while ben chopped at the roots that were still hanging out. then out it came!

so now we have this pretty shot.

woop woop! success. then we filled in the gigantic hole the stump left and now we're trying to decide what kind of plants or flowers we're going to dress it up with. one thing i can promise, though, is that it will not be something that will grow a root ball that big. because i am not doing that again.

and since these pictures weren't very pretty, let me  share some little pretties with you.

saturday night crafting.

don't be jealous, but i've been spending my saturday night partying it up. and by partying it up i of course mean crafting things centered around my dog.

i know you are jealous of my life right now. it's ok. i understand.

but really. for the longest time, i've been wanting to create silhouette portraits of myself, austin and the critters. and since i plan to add a whole collage of photos along our hallway walls, now is the perfect time to make the silhouettes.

i won't bore anyone with the process {there are a bazillion different ways to do it} but i just wanted to quickly share the result of the first one completed.

do you think it looks like miss juliet?

i do. and i think it's adorable. just like juliet. now to make the rest of them and get them all framed. and hang them {along with about 40 other pictures} along the hallways...

square foot gardening revisited.

so last year austin and i decided to try our hands at square foot gardening. it was pretty successful for the most part. but some things didn't work out that great. we think some things were a little too crowded using the square foot method. so this year, we're sticking to raised beds, but not doing the actual square foot grids.

we went with three 4x8 raised beds.

some things we planted from seeds.

while other things we bought already growing from holcomb's.

in the end, we have these three beds arranged in sort of a "z" shape at corner of our property.

thankfully, juliet was there to help us. we clearly couldn't have done it without her.

seriously. she did this all day.

her life is rough.

i'll keep you posted on the gardening update as things continue to grow. and i'll pretend like you care. you should, too.