We have mowed and weed-eated the yard. Cleared out the weeds and grass from the area that will become our flower beds around the house. Cleaned up the trees and shrubs. Dug up an old wooden flower bed in the side yard. Mowed again, cleared out some more weeds. So, we have been busy little bees and have become quite the regulars at Ace and True Value.
While we were working in the front yard last weekend, one of the neighbor boys came over swatting a stick at the grass and offered to help us to kill weeds in our yard. Being that we are in need of some help with killing the weeds that have run rampantly through our yard, this new stick swatting technique interested us. The little boy swatted away at the offending weeds and swore that this was going to work. This lasted maybe a minute, until the neighbor boy said he had to go catch the alligator in the gutter. Chad asked if there were alligators in the gutter and the boy simply replied, "Of course." Well, ok. No weeds or alligators were actually harmed. Here is a picture of the front of our house after all of our yard work:
We picked up our lawn mower a couple weeks ago and it has been getting a lot of use. We chose to buy a push reel mower because we have a lot of rocks in our backyard and we didn't want a rock to be shot through one of our windows while we were mowing with one of those new fangled, gas powered mowers. Not only is the push reel mower great for the environment and cuts great, but we (well, Chad) can mow the yard and not come in splattered with dirt and grass. Chad is actually enjoying mowing the yard and working on the yard, go figure. It's funny though, outside looking in, one would think we are the in your face Earth lovin' type of folk because we recycle, Chad now mows the yard with a push reel mower, he rides his bike to work on nice days, we rarely eat fast food, we try not to waste food or purhcase items frivolously and I am trying to convince Chad that we should start composting too. I bet our carbon footprint, as they say in the Green industry, is pretty darn low and surpasses many of the actual in your face Earth lovin' folks.
This past weekend we started out Saturday morning by cranking up our music and heading outside to work in the yard. Chad mowed and I finished clearing the flower beds. Since the stick swatting technique didn't seem to keep the weeds from coming back, Chad brought out the big guns and poisoned the weeds into submission. This was not in tune with our new green lifestyle, but what can you do? And don't worry, I went inside when the poison came out. Then we went to pick out our new carpet for upstairs. Picking out carpet, as Chad pointed out, was much easier than deciding on what we wanted for dinner that night. We brought eight or so carpet samples home, laid them out, immediately we both picked the same carpet as the "one". Easy. We wanted to get the carpet ordered because that would give us a hard and fast deadline for completing all of the interior painting and the baby's room.
Once the carpet was ordered, we came home and got right back to work. Chad began removing the wallpaper from the baby's room. The baby's room is the smallest room in the house and there was only wallpaper on one of the walls, but we were still a little scared about the whole removing wallpaper process. We had heard too many stories on how wallpapering or removing wallpaper is guaranteed to make the happiest married couple bicker. We seriously contemplated just painting over the wallpaper and calling it good, but I couldn't stomach that thought. Chad used fabric softener mixed with water and sprayed that on the wall to remove the wallpaper. Not only does the room smell outdoor fresh, but it actually removed the wallpaper! The paper came off pretty great and the wall was in pretty good shape. The wall just needs to be smoothed out a bit and prepped for painting.
We're taking some time off next week to go to Boulder to visit with friends and family and to get some shopping in and we are very excited. Hopefully, there won't be a freak snow storm that interferes with our travel plans. I say that jokingly, but I wouldn't put it past the Montana weather gods. Wish us luck and talk to you soon!
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