Ho ho ho

And the ever-popular Christmas petunias...

And then there were two.

There had to be sacrifices. Soup and pie must be made.

Santa Fe

We're back from our 10 days in Santa Fe. What a great place! So nice to go back again! We did a bit of everything--hiking, shopping, browsing, museums...it was relaxing and way too short!

You can check out more pics here. We took so many pictures that it was hard to whittle them down. Just a few highlights:

-Tent Rocks National Monument is amazing. We were intending to only do the easy loop, and then I said "Hey, let's just see if that [steeper] trail leads through the rocks. We don't have to do the whole trail." Well, it did, we ended up doing the whole thing, and were rewarded with the most amazing view.

-Bandelier is also fabulous, even though it started raining the second we stepped out of the visitor's center and onto the trail. But we had a great place to wait out the rain and again were rewarded with a fabulous hike.

-The Book suggests that you don't travel above 7000 feet unless you're used to it. Santa Fe, at about 6500 feet, was fabulous and I felt great. Taos, at about 7500 feet, was not so great and we weren't able to spend as much time up there as we would have liked. I hate when books are right!

-In my opinion, you should not be able to identify that what is crossing the road in front of your car going about 50 mph is, in fact, a spider. Just saying.

-Do not listen to Rob when he tells you that I buy too much yarn. He is a yarn-buying enabler. Had I gone yarn shopping alone, I would have returned with 6 fewer hanks than I did.

-We encountered some interesting people in Santa Fe: the worst plastic surgery job I think I've ever seen, the worst eyebrow pencil application, a pair of outfits which made me glad I'm not prone to seizures. But we met some of the nicest people, too: a hostess that got us into Cafe Pasqual's without reservations on a busy night, a lovely gallery owner (OK, so she wanted to sell us an amazing piece of pottery, but she didn't have to be that nice) , an artist that I met at the coffee shop because I wanted to pet his Neapolitan mastiff, Blue (who was 8 months old and had to be at least 200 pounds) who told us to call ahead to the gallery to make sure Blue was there if we wanted to visit him again, and lots of other people who just seemed to take the time to be nice.

And now we're home and back to work. Sigh.....

A new bench

I went home to PA last weekend, to see Mom and Dad, and to see Deb's new baby, Haley. It was a lovely weekend, despite the rather un-lovely heat.

Look what found it's way into my trunk as I was leaving:
A bench, walnut with oak legs, made by Dad. Too bad he doesn't make things that'll last!
It's absolutely perfect right there, by the back door to the mudroom. It's much more comfortable than the stoop for taking off our muddy shoes. It's absolutely gorgeous, too. I'm not sure my pictures do it justice.

Thanks, Dad!

Playing in the dirt

I think this might just be the adult version of playing in the sandbox. That said, all that "playing" has now gotten us a patio that's big enough for us to have the table on so we can eat outside! Particularly impressive given the 90+ degree heat we had this weekend, I think.
Abi helped, too.
And look what Geoff brought from the farmer's market! Black raspberries! (Because apparently, in his mind, providing back-breaking labor isn't enough). I'd gotten the blueberries this morning. So I ran back out to get some vanilla ice cream.
Seems like a pretty good way to top off a hot July weekend.

It's looking more like a patio everyday...

Rob has been working hard all weekend putting in the flagstone.
Here it is so far. He figures it's about 1/3 of the way done. It looks absolutely fabulous--we'll have the best patio in the neighborhood.
And a gratuitous picture of the butterfly bush by the side of the house, which seems to have enjoyed being abused by the contractors--it's never looked this good!

Our new patio

Well, perhaps you can use your imagination just a bit...

Rob took a week off while I was away to start digging up the backyard to put in a patio. He did most of what you see above, and all of what you see below. This weekend we finished the digging and most of the gravel. The next steps are to put in a bit more gravel, put in stone dust, then put in the flagstones. But that will have to wait for next weekend because at the moment we're both too sore to move.
All the dirt that was dug up had to go somewhere. Look who's Queen of the Mountain.

Dirt therapy

I had a tough week this last week, so I decided I needed to spend the weekend digging in the dirt. Of course, I am now unable to move my arms, but that's just a minor detail...

I decided to tackle the front walk, redigging the beds, putting in plants and mulching.
It may not look like much now, but I planted 20 of these little guys, 6 different kinds, so hopefully I'll have a bit of Provence in my front yard by the end of summer. I'm a little concerned about the "needs good drainage" part of the tag, but am hopeful about the "drought tolerant" part.
These are dropping all over our lawn. They're lovely tulip poplar flowers.
As with anything that deals with the house, one thing always leads to another. I had to bring the front bed around the side...
...and under the fence. The iris here are from my neighbor who was thinning out hers. I'm going to thin out my Siberian iris from Anna and return the favor. As for my "helper"--it's no wonder some of my other bulbs aren't coming up! She's either right there with me (which was interesting when I was using the pick ax)...
...or she's supervising.

Mmmm....

...the smell of spring....Ever since we cut down a tree that was blocking sunlight, our neighbor's lilac bush has taken off. Right now, we can smell it when we walk out the back door.
And this year? This year it's come under the fence and is growing in our yard.

I don't mind one bit.

Snoozing

They had a rough day.

Spring has Sprung!

It was such a gorgeous day today! I couldn't resist taking a quick trip to Home Depot to get a few flowers to put by the back door. These are ranunculi (Ranunculuses???)
I was so glad to see a few things popping up in the garden, after the trauma all my plants were put through by the contractor. Looks like the peonies survived, as well as the irises from Anna. And i think my neighbor's lilac bush is creeping under the fence--no complaints here!

Rob also moved some flagstones around as a first attempt at dealing with our mud problem. Baby steps.
And now it's dinner time! The master chef at work.
Yummmmmm....tuuuuna......

A Wintry Mix

So yesterday there were crocuses blooming all over the place.

Today we're in a winter wonderland.


Rob, Abi and I took a walk on the nearby trail while it was snowing. It was really quite beautiful--so of course I forgot the camera. There weren't many people out and about, so we left the pooch free to roam and zoom in the snow.

Rob made a special trip to get birdseed to fill the feeder (whilst Abi was making yellow snow)...

...which Abi promptly started to eat (the birdseed, not the yellow snow. I think.).

Hopefully we'll see the crocuses again soon!

Sunbathing

Abi seems to be OK with her new backyard and decided to take advantage of last Saturday's warm weather to work on her tan.



It's a little too cold for that this weekend. Abi got a bit confused by the sudden urge to hibernate and by her classification as a bird dog yesterday--we found her munching away in the container of bird seed.

We passed!

We had our occupancy inspection today (yeah, I know, we've occupying for awhile now) and we passed first time around! Woo hoo!

Our Christmas decoration

There were requests for a posting of our Christmas tree. Unfortunately you'll have to wait another year for that particular picture, since Christmas decorating wasn't high on the list this holiday season. Instead, here's our Christmas wreath, hung on our front door. I guess it's about time for that to come down, huh?



Happy New Year!

Elvis is in the house!

It didn't feel like home without him!



We were really busy this week and got a lot done. Nearly all of the boxes are unpacked (and now in a soggy pile outside because of the rain). We found Rob's teapots from China (and this isn't all of them, even though we lost 2 in the move).



Some pictures were hung.




We also bought a lot of shelving for the office and the upstairs hall. You were wondering who in the world ever goes to the Elfa sales that the Container Store holds every Christmas? Well, now you know. Rob put 'em all up, though I'm not convinced it was quite as easy a task as the woman at the Container Store led us to believe. But the result is fabulous!




We ushered in the New Year by cooking a yummy New Year's Eve dinner in our new kitchen and drinking a nice bottle of champagne. It's finally starting to feel like home.