SNOW!!

I'm sitting in my office at work and I turned around to look out the window and I noticed that low and behold it is snowing!  The first snow of the year!  CRAZY!!! 

Before, after, and a surprise!

So I wrote on Facebook that I placed rubber mulch in my flower beds.  It looks so much better than bark, it holds the moisture in better, doesn't loose it's color, and is coated with antimicrobials so it will not grow mold. 

Here is the flowerbed before I did any planting or layed the rubber mulch. It is pretty sad looking.

Here it is after rubber mulch is placed, and flowers planted.  I should have taken pictures before the tree started to loose it's leaves.  It looks so much better. 

This is a close up of the rubber mulch.  It looks real and totally improved the look of the front flower bed. 

We were completely limited on what we could do to the front of the house per HOA regulations.  We wanted to increase the curb appeal by placing nice chocolate brown shutters, paint the front door, and change the entrance light fixtures to bigger ones.  The HOA shot down each of these ideas.  They said we could do anything that was already done on other homes...I don't think they understand that this does not help us STAND OUT from the other homes in the area.  Some of these other things involved placing siding or rock up on the house.  Both of these options are REALLY expensive and we wanted to improve curb appeal for small $$.  Geez...they totally don't watch HGTV (my favorite channel). 

Anyway, we hope our small changes help us bring in the $$ quickly because.....

DRUMROLL.......

We are moving and need to sell! 

Yes, you read right.  We made an offer on a home almost 2.5 weeks ago and just heard that we are under contract.  We are supposed to close by October 30th!  We are kinda freaking out that October 30th is only 2 weeks away. 

We have a LOT to do in the next 2 weeks and not looking foward to it, but we are WAY excited!  I will post pictures of the house a little later! 

Just a tad bit behind...

So I've slacked again and just barely posted things from back in July. So please scroll on down through some posts to see the previous ones that took me forever.

I had some serious issues with the slide show feature today. It totally ticked me off and then I called Ashley and of course she knew how to fix it. I should have called her earlier and saved myself some time. Thanks Ash!

Oh well...I have more to post but will call it a day today. More later.

Battle wounds...

When Al sliced his wrist open with a mirror (accident) back on Memorial Day weekend, I took pictures with my phone camera while we were in the ER. When we got home, I couldn't find where my phone had saved them. I looked forever. Then the other day I FOUND THEM!

**WARNING**

Bloody pictures to follow...

If you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip this post...

(Personally, I think they are awesome pictures and not gruesome at all. But I've been reminded that not all people like blood. I just wish my phone camera was better quality; they are a little grainy and don't show all the cool anatomy that the mirror slice exposed.)

His wrist is healing slowly. He has had problems with some "binding" of the tendons. The surgeon thinks he has some scar tissue that developed around the tendons which is limiting his movement. He has another follow-up appointment next week (I think) to evaluate to the need for further surgery to break up the scar tissue. He has been doing his exercises to loosen the tendons but it just doesn't seem to be improving a whole lot.

We hope he doesn't have to have another surgery. However, he says, "if I have to get it done, I want to get it done before Christmas so I can snowmobile at the cabin." Talk about priorities. LOL!