Success!

Thanks everyone for all your help. The yard sale was a huge success. With all the proceeds and donations, the total was around $2,488. Not much in the scheme of things, but every little bit helps. I am now going to try and list all of our supporters, because without them, this would have been impossible: Noel and Donna Smith, Johnny and Liz Nimmons, Amanda D'Ercole, Kitty Nimmons, Corey Sharp, Bianca Garcia, Paul Krushin, Tyler Greene, Mai Nguyen, Kamie & Brandon Yzaguirre, Susan Wagner, Barbara Spofford, Cindy Stelzer, Jared Smith, Danielle & Sean Williams, Wendy & Dennis Bowden, Maria Culver, Devan Kastner, Matt Keck, & my wonderful neighbors.

I Want Your Junk!

A dear friend of mine has been diagnosed with breast cancer and is set to have chemo, surgery, and radiation. She is such a wonderful lady and I can't say enough good things about her. My goal is to raise as much money as I possibly can to help with her expenses. My first fundraising endeavor is to have a huge yard sale where all the proceeds will be used to help her. I am taking donations of things to sell in the yard sale. Therefore, I Want Your Junk! The sale is scheduled for April 15th and 16th. So let me know if you have anything that you want to get rid of and I will come and pick it up. If you don't have anything you can donate, you are welcome to come and help me work the sale. Thanks in advance.

Front Yard Landscape Part 1

March 21, 2011

Tired of being the Addams Family of the neighborhood, Huy and I decided to do something about our front yard. We figured we would take it slow and tackle one project at a time so we decided to create flowerbeds around our two pine trees.


Here is a picture of our yard Before:



We started by attaching a piece of string around the tree trunk and measuring out how large we wanted our flower bed to be and then spray painted a guide line around the tree by using the string to go around in a circle. We then dug up the grass (replacing it in our backyard where we needed some) that was within the spray painted circle. After many trips to Home Depot, we had paver stones, leveling sand, garden soil, weed cover, and black mulch. We got our begonias at Joseph’s nursery in Pearland. Using the leveling sand and a level, Huy placed the stones around the tree. We filled them with 8 bags of garden soil each, placed the weed cover on top of the soil. We cut through the weed cover and placed the flowers in the soil (10 begonias per flower bed, alternating red and white). We covered it with black mulch and there you have it. Of course this sounds easy, but it took us two days. We certainly could not have done it without my Mom who doled out awesome advice and watched the little one for us.


Here are the AFTER pictures:



and

I've Got to get Me One of These!

Yeah, that’s a quote from independence day. Quite apropos for the content of the link I’ve provided. I saw this on a friend’s Facebook and was blown away by the possibilities. Here’s a little background: I love America, but there are a lot of people that don’t (including some of its own citizens unfortunately). As much as I hate to say it, we are in a bit of a delicate situation here with rising deficits, threats from all sides, etc. You never know what will happen. So in the past few years I have been researching ways to be more prepared and self-reliant. An amateur survivalist, if-you-will. I have read in one of my books that diesel, with added stabilizer and stored in a cool place will have a longer shelf life than regular gasoline. I also noticed that during Hurricane Ike when all the gas stations were completely out of regular, plus, and premium octane gasoline, they still had diesel available. So I have been thinking of getting my hands on a diesel truck to equip as my BOV (bug-out-vehicle). I also daydream about having my own plot of land tucked away with a bunker, er I mean cabin (bunker sounds a little crazy). Then I saw this link and thought it would be perfect. A mobile, steel, behemoth that uses diesel. Awesome!


http://dprbcn.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/keg-apartment-aristide-antonas/

Scarlett's First Bike Ride

March 13th, 2011

Our test dummy for baby gear is white and fluffy.

Everything checks out and we are off on our first bike ride as a little family. Ummm yeah, I obviously need to work out more, my thighs were burning before we had made it down the block. S did well for a while but started to get a little irritated there at the end…as did I…because of exhaustion.

New to Blogger

So I tried Tumblr.com for a while but things just weren't working out so I am officially switching to blogger. I am going to attempt to add some of my posts from tumblr onto this site.