good things.

good things are happening around here lately. and i'm soaking it all in.

first, i finished up my clinical rotation at the rehab hospital. to celebrate, austin and i met up for drinks and dinner at big river with two other students who were at the same site as me, but from different schools.

also, i dyed my hair. and got 2 1/2 inches chopped off. kind of happened by accident, but the end result i'm pretty happy with. ready for summer, i suppose.

also, i was on spring break last week from school. this picture pretty much sums up the most of the week. very exciting.

and since i was on spring break i made plans to meet up for dinner with bri. it was super good to see her face and hang out. we also got to meet up with the guys after our dinner. so. fun.

and bri, i really, really, wanted to share the picture i took of you with tears streaming down your face from laughing/choking to death, but you told me not to. so i didn't. but i will keep the picture so i can look at it any time i need some cheering up. :)

austin and i even got to have an impromptu dub's date {with juliet in tow}. if you're looking for a peanut butter milkshake that's the definition of thebombdotcom, dub's is the place. also, they'll give your pup some soft serve ice cream.

and the last good thing i am super excited about right now is the warm weather we had over the weekend allowing my to get out in the garden and get some dirt under my nails. we mulched, we dug, we weeded, we planted. it was glorious.

i planted succulents in a colander and i just think they're the cutest.

and, of course, juliet was soaking up the sunshine. nobody can complain about the first warm day of spring. except maybe austin. because he got ridiculously sunburned. a word to the pale: coming out of winter hibernation should be a slow process.

hope you all have had good things to enjoy lately, as well!

a new friend.

yesterday evening as i was doing some work out in the garden, i found a new friend.

a very angry new friend.

this little guy was not very happy that i accidentally disturbed him while planting some things. but once he calms down and stops striking at every thing that moves maybe he'll actually appreciate the new plants that he can now hide under.

while i'm on the topic of gardening, can anyone identify this plant?

we were given a bunch of these the other day, but we have no idea what they are. anyone?

presents!

as i mentioned in yesterday's post, austin and i brought some goodies back to tennessee with us. and as promised, i'm back today to share those goodies with you. cause i wouldn't want to break any promises.

first, we brought home a ton of plants to plant in our gardens. we also got a bunch of pink daffodil bulbs and some blackberry lily seeds.

i don't know what's in the water back home, but i need to get some of it because apparently it makes hostas grow to be the size of houses. thanks to tucker for modeling as a size reference here. and also for letting you see how ridiculously hot it was outside.

so as baby hostas have popped up here and there, mom and tim dug them up for transport back to our house in tennessee. they're just little guys right now, but hopefully they'll like their new home around our back patio and grow up to be huge.

not so sure if this guy is going to make it or not, since tucker didn't do his job and keep the deer out of the yard... but we'll give him a shot.

we also brought home quite a few purple coneflower plants.

and although it doesn't look like much right now, they'll eventually have purple flowers and hopefully they'll attract more butterflies than bees...

and for the final item from the plant category, we brought home some sedum.

i believe that these little guys will grow up to look like this:

{image from here}

i can't wait to get all my plants in the ground, but we're actually going to get some more hostas and some cannas from some other friends/family first. anyone else have plants they want to donate to our house? i want my gardens to look like pretty jungles!

the other presents we brought home are for prettying up the inside of the house. in case you didn't know, my momma is a genius scientist smarty-pants and a really crafty artistic person. she makes stained glass art of all kinds and she donated some pieces to our house!

we got this pretty blue flower piece for our living room window. {turns out i'm not so great with the camera and i couldn't quite get a good picture of the whole window without it either being way to dark, way too light, or this kind of blah shade of blah.}

but up close to the glass, you can see how pretty the color is and the details. i literally smile every time i walk into the room and see it hanging over our couch.

and as if that wasn't enough, momma gave us two more pieces! we've got this victorian style flower piece hanging in our kitchen:

and this little green flower hanging in our bathroom.

unfortunately, our stupid windows have stupid little bars dividing them into little sections which are really screwing up the glass. for the one in the kitchen i was at least able to hide them a bit with the edges of the piece, but the one in our bathroom didn't work out that way. eventually, though, and hopefully sooner rather than later, we'll be getting all new windows installed without those dumb little bars.

anyway, so those are the goodies we brought home from virginia. a big thank you to momma and timmy for being willing to share these things with us. i feel like it makes it a little easier to be six hours away from home when i can bring little pieces of home back with me and i get a little reminder of home by just looking around.