whew

I've tried to start a post for the last 3 days but have either run out of time or been too exhausted to think about finishing. We had a surprise visitor to our house on Thurday. A tree company was doing work in our neighborhood and noticed that we mulch under our trees and such. The tree guy stopped and asked me if we could happen to use some more mulch. Um, yeah! So we got two truck loads dropped off at the end of our driveway.

If you can't see how much two truckloads looks like, it's enough to completely fill a 17' Uhaul. Completely fill. Yeah, that's a lot of mulch to move. And to top off this giant project, I decided to start a dry streambed to corral our random drainage from the neighbors up the hill so all our new mulch doesn't run away when we have some awesome spring/summer storms.

I really hope we have some good thunderstorms this year- last year was disappointing. So while he was dropping off the mulch, I casually asked if they had time and would agree to take down our dead tree (it was right by the driveway at the front). He said yes, for a price of course, but I agreed because every other tree company had a $500 minimum to come out to do work and I only wanted that one tree cut down...not 7 others and a bill of $1500. So tree = mulched. And our streambed is virtually free too because we are using all the landscape rock that we buried under our last mulch (whoops!). So far I've only excavated a 4'x2' section and we've gotten halfway down the stream. We did spend $16 on smaller river rock for the top of the river and we will need to spend about another $20 to get to the end of our stream, but it's looking nice!
I also got some plants for the yard at the growers outlet with Chris' mom yesterday!! It was so much fun and I completely forgot my list once we were there. It was like plant deal overload :) So I didn't get the liriope or daylilies I wanted, but I love the plants we did pick up and I've got big plans for moving a few of our old plants...shh, don't tell Chris!

And because I probably won't post again this week because I'm working on a house plan! yay!! for my old boss! double yay!! here is my new favorite piece of furniture. It makes me so very happy every day :)


It's actually a tv cabinet from Ikea, but it is the best shoe storage bench I have ever seen :D Ok, so I'm being biased, but I do totally love it! And it was only $34.99 so I got a very useful item for under $40. yay me! And of course, my little models showing off how awesomely cute they are where ever I am with the camera ;)