Lovely Sunday.

As I mentioned Friday, I spend most of the weekend coordinating an annual Chamber of Commerce dinner and action and a high school prom at my banquet hall this weekend. Despite the hours of work plus Eugene’s baseball games on Saturday, we managed to squeeze in some wonderful {much needed} quality time together on Sunday afternoon/evening & some little house projects too.

Our main goal yesterday was put best by Eugene as he talked to our neighbor; we were just trying to help out “the eyesore that is our front yard!” It’s gonna just take time until we can get the outside of the house looking nice. We’ve decided to mainly concentrate our budget & effort on the inside of the house before we tackle the outside. Regardless, we had to tackle a few items asap cause the grass was getting embarrassingly high in our front yard.

Remember back when I got my lift on to pull up a whole bunch of stones in our front & back yard? Well, it’s looked like this, except with taller grass, since then. {Not okay.}

We used the excess stores we removed from the backyard to make a fire pit, but we’re not 100% sure if we’re going to use the ones left in the front for a landscaping project, so just to be safe we {finally} moved the rocks to a temporary hiding spot by the side of the house.

Eugene did some quick shoveling to  make the mound somewhat level so that we can mow over it. We’re telling ourselves that it looks somewhat better now, despite the weird crop-circleish shapes going on in our front yard from the stones & piles of leaves that we failed to move in a timely manner. {Oops.}

 

Wondering about the two little boy bikes in our front yard? {No, we didn’t adopt two fifth grade boys.} While we were working on moving the stones, two young boys rode by and asked if they could help.

Umm, YES!

They said they could help us pull weeds. What do you mean weeds? I don’t have weeds? Bahaha, riiiight! Even fifth grade boys are appalled by my overabundance of weeds! ;)

So they helped with weeding & even helped me tackle another green nemesis of mine: ivy. Man, this stuff is wicked. It’s thick and stinkin’ pesky & while we pulled some away back in the winter, it still is an ugly sight around the side & back of our house. Not to mention that it was even growing through the windows and into the basement when we first bought the house {yuck!}

 
{then}                                                                        {now…not much better}

It still doesn’t look like much, but my hands are all cut & sore today from ripping out some of this beast.

Our new neighborhood friends helped a bunch with this side of the house…

…that is, until they got distracted by the potential fun in our backyard. They untangled a swing left by the previous owners, tested our tree for chiming, & had a water fight with our hose. I just smiled as I continued pulling ivy; it was nice seeing kids play in our back yard!

I was a bit scared that the boys were going to get hurt testing the swing & they weren’t about to listen to my warnings, but, thankfully, the swing actually worked. I also did some minor damage-control weeding to reveal three red tulips on the side of our house. {Pretty surprise.}

I hung my birthday gift pansy basket on our lamp pole {that doesn’t work} just for the heck of it, so now it actually has a slight purpose.

The boys left on their bikes not long after their water fight & Eugene grilled us some FABulous steaks for our meal. I added a delish baked potato {Red Lobster style} and we savored every bite – a great in-home date night dinner!

And to top it off, I even got two coats done on our kitchen/dining area window!

And we were even left with time to watch some Shark Tank together in bed. All this in just one day! See why I said it was a lovely Sunday? :)