sunday's thwacks and shout-outs.

Thwack (verb) : to strike with, or as if with, something flat or heavy.

Shout-out (noun) : a public expression of gratitude or recognition.

Thwacks:

1.) She's done it again folks.  Except this time, she got caught by mom.  Busted.

This is Trudy on the wrong side of the fence, trying desperately to get back into our yard because the neighbor's yard apparently wasn't really that much fun at all.

2.) The husband and I were so so excited to have a 3-day weekend to spend together over the 4th of July holiday with not a whole lot planned. Theennnnn we decided it was a good weekend to build a patio in our backyard.  Small project, nbd.  YAH RIGHT. While this is most definitely a shout-out as well, it's rightful place is here in my thwacks for taking my nice, long, relaxing 3-day weekend away from me.  See shout-out #1 below.

3.) We also spent Friday evening picking up the pile of c.r.a.p. from our garage that the husband roofed while I was traipsing around Italy.

Super fun Friday night activity.  You guys should try it sometime.  Really.

* Note: why not multi-use your snow shovel?

 

Shout-outs:

1.) Per #2 above, we built a patio in our back yard!  We have an odd raised bed that goes along the entire fence line that is just full of dirt.  Half of it I use for my veggie garden, the other half is just yucky dirt, which Lola and Trudy dig in, which gets the patio area all dirty every day, which then makes its way into my house, which brought me to tears of frustration the other day.  So, two days and some hard labor later, a cute little patio we have, with room for my veggie garden next year.

Now we just need some more potted plants and a cute little bench to finish it off.

Some awesome happenings from our patio building weekend:

• Usually we borrow tools, but this time around, we purchased.  The husband got a skilsaw, finally...  poor thing never gets to buy new tools, which is such a man ego thing.  It's that "practical" money mindset again... if our friends are gracious enough to let us borrow, why not borrow?  Needless to say, he was stoked.

• After day 1 of building, we had a contest on who had the most dirt in their snot after blowing our noses.  The husband won.  Dang.

• My arms were so tired from lifting pavers and moving bricks and shoveling dirt, I couldn't hardly hold my much needed Starbucks coffee.  Never a good thing.

• I have the most serving husband ever.  Even after hours of manual labor, he offered up a foot rub before bedtime because he knew my feet had been aching all day.  What a love.

• Lastly, we had the best helper known to man -  Silly Lily.

2.) I have been embarrassed about our front yard for ohhhhh... since we moved in 3 years ago.  It's one of those things I've always wanted to spend the money to fix up, but have been too practical with my money to do so because we can just "deal".  You know how that goes.  So we haven't.  But we were majorly blessed by our neighbor's mom this weekend - who allowed us come to her house and take as many plants as we needed from her beautiful garden oasis.  And what's more is, she came over and bossed us around on where to put everything.. which we needed!  I am not a green thumb; I'm more of a black thumb, you could say.  I kill everything to death.  Black?  Death?  Whatever, make sense to me.

3.)  It's Green Bluff season friends!  The husband and I woke up very early on Saturday morning to get the first pickings of strawberries.  And boy am I glad we did!  Everybody else had the same idea too, and I'm pretty sure they ran out of strawberries within the first few hours of being open.

What are summers for, if you don't go berry picking?  I can't wait for cherries.

Of course there are tractor rides on Green Bluff.

And little toots.

And while we were up there, we couldn't pass up the giant cinnamon rolls from Harvest House.

4.) We enjoyed a BBQ dinner date and wonderful conversation with Kurt and Les, our cousins, on Sunday night.  Love them.

5.) After being so busy on Saturday and Sunday from building the patio, we did our best to keep Monday to just the two of us, with little obligations.  So we enjoyed a BBQ in our back yard and sat awkwardly on the same side of the table so we could both stare at our new, clean, dirt-free patio.

And this is when I discovered the husband is the fastest corn on the cob eater ever.  He doesn't even come up for air.

6.) Above my kitchen sink has been needing some love, but I could never quite decide what to adorn it with.  So I bought these from Linda over at Burlap and Blue - and they're perfect!

via

ps. You really should go see Linda at Burlap and Blue, she's got some adorable stuff and lots of great DIYs!

Cheers.