Weekend Randoms

This weekend has flown by. I have been very bad about blogging this week. Although I do have a lot to post about ;0)

Friday evening I was invited over to my neighbors to join in on there monthly get together to play BUNCO ! I have always wanted to play. My mom plays with all of her friends and it seems like a really good way to spend a night with a group of friends, whether it’s all women or couples night….

I invited one of my girl friends to join me. She had played once before, and I had no clue how to play. The only things I knew about BUNCO were… You played with dice, money was involved, and it involves no skills.

The game is easy and really effortless minus throwing the dice down on the table. If you win, you get money. If you lose, you get money! Although I did not win a dime, my friend Carrie walked away with money ;0)

Saturday morning we woke up and decided to have several friends over to enjoy the pool and weather! Well little did we know the weather decided to not be cooperative, so we decided to leave the pool gathering for another weekend and go to the movies! I will give you one guess on what we went to see …

THE HUNGER GAMES !

I will post my opinion about the movie sometime this week !!

I am a huge sucker for April fools day jokes. I always forget. My neighbor who is also a blogger decided to write a post in delight of APRIL FOOLS DAY. I believed every second until those very last two words … I literally huffed and puffed out loud bc I got so excited for her … That’s the excitement of April Fools Day I suppose… I will not believe anything for the rest of the day …

April is my favorite month and look forward to the beautiful weather it has to offer !!!

HAPPY SUNDAY !!

Backyard Project #3

We are almost done with our backyard. Its finally starting to look like alive instead of a desert with a huge water hole. JUST IN TIME FOR POOL WEATHER…. :0) We have primarily concentrated on the one corner you see in the pictures. The next project and hopefully the final project will be in another corner you really have not seen in the photos in project one OR two .

We finally picked up the remaining rock and pavors …oh! my! goodness! that was alottttttttt of rock. Don has a friend who owns a landscaping business. We decided to call him and ask for recommendations about sod and where to purchase. He was actually able to purchase the sod and bring it to us. We were very thankful as we do not have the appropriate vehicle to transport the layers of dirt, grass, ants and whatever else crawls through sod ( however we will soon 😀 )

Enough of the blabber, here is the start and the ‘finished’ backyard.

Finally looks like a back yard…. HAPPY HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE !!

Accident Prone

Don and I woke up Saturday morning and started the day with a bike ride. We decided to grab a bagel for breakfast at Einsteins Bagel Company ( The Asiago Cheese Bagel is my favorite with chive cream cheese ). Anyways… We began our ride back home and the wind was incredible. It did make for a good work out though :0) My legs started to reallllly burn so I decided to stand and ride like we do in spin classes.  I stood up on my bike for about three strides and all of sudden on my next down stride my right foot slipped off my peddle ( at the time I thought it slipped ) and hit the cement. Next thing I know my bike is zigzagging back and forth and I finally fall flat on my back along with the bike.

FIRST let me say that I was completely embarrassed because where we live there are tons of bike riders and on nice Saturday mornings riders are everywhere. My fall definitely did not go unnoticed.

SECONDLY my foot did not slip of the bike. My foot peddle completely fell off and flew off my bike. As don and I were walking home I was curious if it was my weight that broke the peddle…Don said NO,, It fortunately was a defect with the bike and the way the peddle was installed on the bike. I had an Immediate sigh of relief.

LASTLY as the day went by several large and small bruises started to appear. UGH !!!! I thought I broke my right hand some how.. I am so glad that didn’t happen. How could I clean someones teeth???

Well that’s not it…Yesterday we had our first swim in the pool for this year. We decided instead of going out to dinner, we would stay home and grill out. Every now and then we really enjoy a good juicy burger from steak and shake so last night we tried to mimic those burgers. We had some cubed steak in the freezer we were going to try because they were skinny and we needed to use them. Well as they were cooking Don started to cut cheese with one of my really sharp knifes. I insisted on him to stop and use the mandolin…. Why I chose the mandolin over the CHEESE grater I have NO IDEA. Well after a few slices of cheese my right middle, ring and pinky finger ALMOST joined. Ahhh!!!! I have always been warned about that and I finally learned. I can’t catch a break…How would I work with two fingers ?

Hope you didn’t have such bad luck this weekend. No new recipes this week, Just a delicious REPEAT.

Backyard Project #2

Its a whopping 75 degrees here in Orlando so we decided to continue working in the backyard. Thanks to our American Express points we cashed them in for a home depot gift card. We used them to buy plants and soil to continue our landscaping.

The picture above is before we started the second part of our landscaping. Notice all the rocks and pavers along the back fence. I am so sick of rock I want it out of my sight for a very long time. I almost paid a neighborhood kid to pick them up for us.

These pictures aren’t the best however you get the idea. We planted podocarpus along the fence line. The goal is to have them grow  up the fence to hide the neighbors back yard junk !!! They are supposed to grow very quick. Tomorrow we plan to lay mulch around the bushes !

Thankfully Dons parents came over to help us ! I was very grateful for that !

Next Project : Pick up more rock and pavers. Lay sod.

Tomorrow I am trying TWO new recipes for dinner. Will post results!

Backyard Project #1

In my first blog post, I mentioned we bought a home in August. The house is older but really just needs a few face lifts. One of the deciding factors to purchase our home was the outdoor living area; it has  a huge screened porch, enough room for Lola to do a little bit of running AND a pool :0) We love to entertain at our house!  The backyard was something that definetley needed some love! ( The potted plants were given to me by my mother just to add something there until we decided on what we wanted to actually do ) This is a photo of what this side of the yard looked like.

I could not tell you whether I have a green thumb or not because I really haven’t planted anything before. I can tell you that I have not killed the potted plants yet 🙂 Don has also been a huge help with keeping up with them. We decided we wanted a more tropical theme in the back because of the pool. Off the bat we already knew we were pulling up all of the pavers and laying down sod; That project will wait closer till springtime.

One Saturday while I laid by the pool, Don started to pull up the pavers. He wanted my thoughts of creating a garden wall. To be honest, I really did not know what that was until he fully explained his idea. Before we started on the garden wall, we lined the pool with liriope.

I say WE, but I did not help at all. We have a very kind neighbor who really enjoys doing projects like this and offered to help Don. After the finished this project, Don had the itch to continue going. While I was at work, Don and our VERY VERY VERY kind neighbor built the garden wall frame.

The garden wall set empty until the coming Saturday. Don and I woke up bright and early to venture to Home Depot and Lowes. We purchased a few large bags of red bark, the plants and a whopping 2000 pounds of dirt ( rough estimate ).  Don and I both have 2 door vehicles, imagine what that looked like having 1000 pounds of dirt in a 2 door car.It looked  like I lowered my car! I was embarrassed and to make it worse I had to make 2 trips ! After all said and done, we were left with this . . .

Friday night my parents came to visit. They have a HUGE truck. We kindly asked them to help us finish up our project by hauling the last part of our project home! We certainly did not care to leave the wood to show. The framing finally was covered by stone. The final touch 🙂

We are extremely satisfied with the finished project. As you can see, we still have TONS of pavers to continue to pull up and sod to be laid. A little at a time is okay with me. We have a lot more planned for the back yard. You will have to wait and see 🙂

Till then, Happy Sunday … I hate Sundays, it just means tomorrow is Monday ! Blah !