Friday Favorites!!!

Woohoo, it's Friday!!! This week was SO long and it was a pretty rough one at work. I'm definitely glad for the weekend to be here!

1) Lunch date - Josh worked from home today, so we decided to go out for lunch. We went to Charlie's, a really good BBQ place right down the road. This is the second time we've been and we've enjoyed both times. The owner stopped by to check on us just like the first time we went. You can tell he really cares about his business and his customers!

2) Garden - We've been working on our garden a little each day for a couple weeks now. We tilled up a little area in the back corner of our yard and built 2 raised beds to put near the front entrance of the garden. We finally have just about everything in the ground. We just have a couple things that aren't quite ready to go in and we may plant a few more things. We have several types of peppers and tomatoes, okra, sugar snap peas, a watermelon, squash, zucchini, lettuce and a cucumber plant. Hopefully everything grows well!

3) Shumaker wedding - We had Spenser and Melanie's wedding this past Saturday. We were running late and we ended up not taking any pictures, but we had a really great time! We got to catch up with Tony and meet lots of new friends. I got to meet a lot of Josh's co-workers, including his boss. It was nice to be able to put some names to faces.

4) Brew Day - We brewed a lager last Sunday...and by "we" I mean Josh and Andrew. I mostly cooked and did little things around the house. I made spent grain pizzas and they were really good! I may have found a recipe I'll stick with! 

5) My Vegas Slots - If you know me, you know I love saving money. Even more than saving money, I love free stuff! I'm going to Vegas in June for a conference and Jen introduced me to My Vegas Slots. I'm well on my way to having enough points for a show!! Woohoo!

Rocking Chair Front Porch

A rocking chair front porch was pretty much a requirement when we were house shopping, so we made sure we completed ours pretty early on. Sure, there were tons of other projects that needed to be done and some of them are probably more important, but this is one that I could take on in the afternoons after work with not much assistance, so I jumped right in a few weeks ago. We already had to buy a ton of stain for the fence and deck, so I had that on hand already. We used Ready Seal in Pecan. It was easy to apply and it looks great! I just rolled on one thick coat and it is holding up really well! I love the stain, so we ordered more for our fence. I did it about a week before Easter and it has taken this long for me to post about it. Wow!

Anyway, one day cleaned and stained the porch. We had to wait 48 hours before we could use it like normal, but we did walk across it a few times before that. It was fine. 

You can see the stain color pretty well here.

We decided on these for the rocking chairs. They're no longer available on Amazon and I haven't been able to find them anywhere else, so I'm glad we bought them when we did. We saw similar ones when we were in MD for a lot more money, so I was happy with the deal we got on these. They were a little more pricey than the plain looking painted ones you can find in other places, but I absolutely love these! 

Once the rocking chairs were in place, next on my list were some hanging baskets. I wasn't completely sure what I wanted, but I've always loved ferns. They're simple, but so pretty. That's what I went with. I messed up the hanging at first. They were SO uneven. Josh fixed it for me though and I love the way it looks now! I would like to get a small little table to put between the rocking chairs, but other than that, I think I'm finished with the porch other than seasonal changes! 

Speaking of seasonal changes...we do have a flag pole to go on the porch...we just haven't gotten around to putting it up just yet. It will definitely go up before Memorial Day!

We both love our porch. I had to work half a day on Good Friday. It was a slow day and I didn't need my full work setup, so I took my laptop down to the front porch and worked from a rocking chair. Josh and Bailey even hung out with me while I worked. It was a great day! Unfortunately, right after that, the pollen hit full force and we haven't been able to enjoy it so much since then.

The pollen is mostly gone now, so I worked on the porch with Josh for a little while today too!

Our Fence!

We got our fence very shortly after moving, but I haven't really posted about it. 

We knew we wanted to fence in our back yard before we ever moved. That's one of the reasons we were so excited to move...to have a nice sized yard that we could fence in, hang out in and let Bailey play in! We toyed around with building our own fence, but quickly decided we REALLY didn't want to go that route unless it saved us a LOT of money. We priced some things out and got a couple quotes. It wasn't going to save us a lot of money at all. One of the quotes we got was from a person one of my closest friends used, so I was hoping he would come out with the cheapest price. He did! We went with Kyle from Better Built Fence Company and we were very happy with his work! 

Here are some in progress pictures. 

End of day 1...the posts are in!

The majority of the framing is done here.

This is from inside the fence

 Most of the pickets were up here

An almost finished picture from inside.

Just a little more to go. Bailey was already enjoying her new yard!

Here are some finished pictures!

We got 2 5ft gates - one on each side. We can lock them if we want to. The latches are super handy and easy to open from both sides.

We are both very happy with the finished fence. We will need to stain it soon, but other than that, we're all good to go. The fence was finished within a week, even with some rainy weather in February! I know it would have taken us months to finish this project, so I'm glad we decided to go with someone who knew what they were doing! We were concerned about how small our yard would feel once the fence was up, but it actually feels bigger! 

We plan to stain it in the next few weeks. I'll be sure to post more pictures when we do!

Oh, the joys of living next to the woods...and a pond...and a ditch filled with rocks

Those things all sound so nice...and very peaceful. And trust me, they are! I love our yard. I'm now convinced it's just about the perfect size for us at this point in our lives...though if it were much bigger, we would probably get a riding lawn mower, so maybe a bigger yard wouldn't be all bad. Either way...the size is great for us. We don't regret not getting a larger yard. 

The down side to all of the things that make me love our yard is that they all make a perfect habitat for snakes. I'm terrified of snakes. Guess who found the first snake in our yard? Yep...this lucky girl.

Josh was cutting grass in the back yard the other day (long overdue) and I decided I would grab the weed eater and help out. Fun fact...I had never used a weed eater until this week. Josh used to be able to cut our grass and trim everything up in about 30 minutes, which is less time than it usually takes me to do dinner, so I never did any of that in our old house. Now, I try to pitch in and help out since there's a lot more to do. 

Anyway, I was minding my own business, planning our garden out in my head and trimming the perimeter of our fence when I noticed a tiny little snake slithering away from me. Of course, I screamed. Then I was fine. I was proud of myself actually. I didn't run away. I just let out a little scream. Then Josh came over and picked it up and played with it a little. 

I'm totally kidding...he didn't pick it up at all. He didn't even see it. This is a picture I found on the Google, y'all. But, like I said, he was a tiny little thing. I looked him up and found out he's a ringneck snake and totally harmless. We probably shouldn't mind having him in our garden. I've come to terms that we may have some things like this hanging around this time of year. I'm cool with that. Eat all the critters you want out of my yard. Just don't show any of your big, scary cousins your new hangout.