quitter

Today I canceled Netflix. We used to watch a lot of movies, but recently we haven't. And I know that we won't have time very soon.
For the past three years Netflix was great, but now it's time to say good-bye. If we need a movie I'll go to the RedBox.

What a difference a year+ and lots of hard work makes

I'm calling the backyard complete! Next year we will do some more planting, but all the hard stuff (except for the fence I'm not sure will ever come) is finished!

Michael with the help of his dad did a great job on the pergola. I can't believe how great it looks. Well done guys.

This isn't even true before shot because at this point we had already graded the yard and poured the patio. You need to imagine a messy, muddy, uneven hole of a yard.


Now look at it! I don't even want to think about how much money we spent on it, but it's worth it. This yard is now a place to hang out and I think that baby Perry and I will be spending lots of time playing back here.

planted

The garden bed has been planted! Tomatoes (Green Zebra and Mystery), Peppers (Orange Bell and Little Sweet Reds), Rainbow Chard, Lettuce (Buttercrunch and Red Leaf), Zucchini, Yellow Cookneck Squash, Cucumbers, Basil, and Carrots. I plan on planting some Green Beans and Sugar Pumpkins once we build the little wall for the back raised bed. Hopefully next weekend.
We also planted flowers in the 3 front pots and the 2 small back pots. I've got one more to plant that currently has last years lavender - which to my surprise came back. The rosemary that shared the pot unfortunately did not.

Graden Bed #1

There are 5 garden beds planned for our little backyard. Today we planted the first one. I'm tired, sunburned and really pleased with how it turned out.

Michael, laying the ground work.

Holes dug and plants placed.

FINISHED!!

It only took ALL DAY to get this done.
It will look so much better when there is grass.

Close up of the plants. We have 3 Hydrangeas, 2 Peonies, 6 blue-green Hastas, 1 veragated Hosta, 2 Columbines and 1 Minnesota Faux Orange tree. Whew!

And they said it couldn't be done.

We finally cleaned the guest room!

That's right...it's clean...and awesome.

The furniture has been rearranged and the room looks much bigger. We also rearranged the office, cleaned and reordered the basement and cleaned the garage. All in all we cleared out about a dozen bags and boxes of things to take to the Goodwill and filled 2 giant trash bags. Whoo!

I feel so much better with the house clean and de-cluttered. And I sit and drink my hot chocolate in my freshly cleaned office I'm finally feeling Christmas-y. Clearly all it took was to finish the guest room project.

Horrible Photos of a baby quilt

My first baby quilt - the photo is darker then it really is especially on the boarder.

A close up of the bees and stripes. (You can't really tell from the photo, but the light green has little bees buzzing around orange flowers.)














I promise I'll take better photos in the future.

The tote!

The tote is complete!
I love it and have trouble wrapping my head around actually finishing a project. It was easy once I figured out the directions (some words were missing) and everything was cut out. I would like to make a smaller version because this one is just a little big for everyday use and that is really what I need. So without any further ado I present to you..the tote!

Outside of tote. You can't really tell but there is a vertical pocket on the front designed to hold a newspaper or trashy magazine. (Will Brad and Angelina really stay together? What will happen to their 8 million children?)

Quick peek at the inside and the outer water-bottle pocket.
Very handy for those of us who dehydrate easily.

Closer view of the inside. Note the pockets. I added two on the right side.
One to hold my epi pen and the other my Benadryl. Yeah!
I love the cheery fabric and that the green apples are pink inside. Yum!

Tricia also made a great tote. Check it out!

Walking

I just walked 3.87 miles home from the car dealership. The Honda is getting its 40,000 mile scheduled maintenance. I didn't want to wait the 4 hours and no one was really available to drive me home. So I walked. It was less than 4 miles, people all over the world walk further than that, but to me it seems like a very big deal.

Yeah for walking!!!

I have taken a cold shower, sipped a Gatorade and applied BenGay to my legs and back. Now I'm going to take a bit of rest.

Tallulah is so not getting walked tonight.

PHOTOS! (Enjoy Dad!)

Okay, Here we go.

First - this the the room BEFORE. Nothing special, nothing really wrong with it either. Except that it is so bland. Really, really bland and who puts carpeting in the room that leads out into the muddy backyard? Seriously people?!

This would be why someone carpeted this room. It was the easiest way to cover up the horrible tile that previously lived there.
This is the bright blue and about halfway through the scraping up the glued on carpet pad phase.

And the room now. I softer blue-green, grey tiles that are cool to the touch.

We will grout them this week, put up the baseboards and move in the furniture! Yippee.

So Sore

It only took 7 hours, but we have tile in the sun porch. it's not grouted yet and we can't walk on it for another day, but the tile is down as far as I'm concerned. While Michael prepped the sun porch I worked on planting the remaining pots that have been sitting around. It looks good, but I'm too tired to go take pictures.
Whoo!

Pillow

This is one of the pillows I made a few weeks ago to "spring-up" the living room. I love the cheerful orange flowers.

Cooking with Morgan

Today was a cooking day.
Last night I sat down with cookbooks in hand and wrote out a meal list for this week. Then after mass Michael and I headed out to the Hy-Vee to pick up all the ingredients. Then I really got to work.

So far I have made:

• 3 mini lasagnas - each one serves two.
• 12 mini meatloaves - 4 BBQ, 8 Italian - two loaves per serving.
• A chicken pot-pie from scratch. Making my own stock, chopping all the veggies and making the pie crust.
• A batch of Cranberry Scones with orange glaze. (super yummy, I've eaten two already)
• I've also set aside some chicken to make enchiladas with later in the week.

So this should be an easy week for making dinners as everything is frozen and ready to go. Yea! Deep Freeze!

All in a night's work

It is 1:00am and I just finished dusting the house and cleaning the bathroom. I had planned to do these things on Sunday, but at Midnight I decided "Well, it's technically Sunday, so I might as well do it now."
And I did.
It's nice knowing that the bathroom countertop is free from my ever shedding hair and that the celing fan baldes are clean.
Now, perhaps I should think about bed.

Boring Info, Boring Info, Etc., Etc.

Yes, I know that I promised pictures of our super cool kitchen but I just haven’t gotten around to downloading them from the camera. I will do it though.

Speaking of pictures Michael is picking up 2 disks of our wedding photos tonight. There are 215 pictures deemed good enough to keep. We will be getting 1 4x6 of each of them and then ordering additional pictures from there. I’m excited to see them again and re-live the wedding excitement, especially since I finally cleaned the guest room – which had been serving as a daily reminder of the craziness. Did we really need to save EVERY bag that contained a wedding gift? No! Why did we save them for the past 2 months? I have no idea. The bags are gone, the piles of tea lights have been boxed up and put away, the floor is now visible and so is the bed. It’s amazing!

The house looks like it did before the engagement, back when I had time to do things like sweep under the sofa and dust the top of the TV cabinet. I really like the house better when it is clean, it feels bigger than it really is, and now that we have re-claimed the guest room it really is that much bigger. I still have to tackle the office and the top of my dresser (which serves both as a closet and a dirty clothes hamper), but I think I can get at lest one of those things done tonight.

Tonight is also my first Personal Training session. This is exciting! What I really need is someone to tell me how to use the machines correctly, what my body can handle and how to improve my overall strength and health. I met my trainer last week, her name is Katie and she seems really nice and not all fake blond and super perky which the majority of trainers at this location are. Wish me luck!

The best Kitchen EVER!!

We just finished putting the kitchen cart together and it looks awesome! It holds our blender, rice cooker and crock pot along with assorted bowls, all our many, many washcloths and Tallulah's ear cleaning supplies. All things that have been living on top of the fridge, crammed in drawers in the living room and generally strewn about the place. It is so nice to have this additional cabinet space. There will be pictures up tomorrow. I love our kitchen!

Desperate Plea for Yarn

I am more than halfway through a project and I've run out of yarn. I've run out of Rowan Linen Drape in Cornflower. Rowan no longer produces this yarn and I can only find in on e-bay in Watermelon or Splash, colors that won't quite work with the soft blue and yellow baby sweater that is so close to being finished. Well not really SO close, but the end is in sight and for once I felt like I was going to finish something. The knitting gods are apparently not with me. This is what I get for using my stash. sigh.
Anyway if you happen to have a skein or two of Rowan Linen Drape in Cornflower please contact me at morganaperry (at) gmail (dot) com. I have lots of yarn to trade with and at this point I'm willing to offer a cash reward.
Please help!