I'm a yarn whore...

Oops, I did it again! No, I didn't shave my head ;) I bought more yarn! OMG, I have such an obsession with it! This past winter, I started branching out from my afghans and bought some books on how to make crochet scarves. I've now made maybe 8-10 of them, and they were (if I do say so myself) kind of a hit! I gave a few to my mom while we were in Europe (where else would someone from FL use a scarf??) and I wore a few there myself. We both got loads of compliments on them... Mom told me that she got more compliments when she got back to PA, so now my head has swelled :) Anyway, what I did AGAIN was to buy up yarn at Big Lots. Yes, I said BIG LOTS! Chris and I were there a few months ago (before Christmas) and they had all kinds of yarn that they had bought up from some distributor and were selling it (name brand stuff like Lion Brand, Bernat, Patons, etc) for $1-$2. I bought it up like crazy. Well, yesterday we were out and near the Big Lots so after we ran some other errands I requested a Big Lots stop, hoping that maybe they would have more/different yarn, but thinking that the chances were slim. After all, Big Lots is a close-out store, and they get what they get and usually you don't find the same thing there twice. Well, I got to the area (near the greeting cards) where I found yarn before, and they still had some. I assumed that it was the same kind that I bought up on before, but went to check to be sure. I was wrong! Yes, there were some that I had seen before, but there were LOADS of new kinds too! So, I showed them to Chris, and he agreed that I should buy up on this too. The same yarn I found there is sold in JoAnns and Michaels for anywhere between $5 and $8 a skein, depending on what brand and type.

Here is a few scarves that I made before... I really should take pictures of the others that I made that I still have.

I'm getting a free haircut!

As I write this, I'm "fighting" with my bird because he is wanting to give me a free haircut. He loves to preen my hair. He nibbles off the ends when I'm not paying attention and when I finally catch on to what he's doing and pull him away, he lunges at me and grabs another clump of hair in his beak and trims away. Normally I wouldn't mind a free haircut, but in my opinion, Franco is only concerned with the clump he is currently working on, and does not have a vision of what the final cut will look like. I've now put him on the desk, and he's working on shreading up some travel notes that I took for an upcoming trip. He's such a busy bird!

Nothing else is really new, that's why you're hearing the tales of Franco ;) Have a good week!

I’m old and out of shape!

Yes, I have discussed getting older this year. Yes, I know it is lame to complain again. But, here I sit, two days after working in our garden and I’m sore. Seriously. My arms, my quads, my hammies, my abs. I’m sore. I’m out of shape and it is sad.

Saturday I took on a “chore” that I actually enjoy. We bought new rose bushes and hibiscus plants to put in our flower beds around our house. There were some failed attempts at starting up some hibiscus from a mail order company, but those little guys weren’t very mature, and I think our dry winter did them in. So, I dug them up (that wasn’t hard, they were pretty small) and replaced them with more mature plants that we bought on sale at Lowe’s. Good deal! I also weeded the beds and pulled up some other plants from the previous owners that either irritated me (some things grow like crazy here and are impossible to control) and others weren’t doing so well. The up and down was a good bit of work, but I felt good.

Then, I had a great idea. I saved one hibiscus (a larger one) to put in our back yard along with the new rose bushes. We had 10 small rose bushes to plant, and I decided that I would finally uproot these monster plants in our back yard. I have no clue what these things are called. They’re gynormous green plants that sprout clusters of tiny purple flowers that the bumble bees (those big fuzzy guys) seem to looooove. Eventually, these plants have orange-y berries on them too. Oh, they’re awful. I hacked them back in the summer this past year, and when I waged war on them again this past weekend, they were thick and as tall as the gutter on our garage (in some places). I should say first that I uprooted two of these buggers in our front yard. They were on either side of our steps to our porch. They weren’t quite monsters… I’ve hacked those down a number of times and the other bushes have engulfed them, so they were (relatively) easy to uproot. The ones in the back? Not so much. It took me forever to get them up. There were a total of four plants. Two HUGE ones and two medium size ones. I first chopped them down from their tall height to about two foot tall, so there was less to deal with. The pile of cuttings took over about a 6’ x 6’ area of our yard! I was able to get the first of the huge ones up and out of the ground after I removed a smaller one first. Even the smaller one was pain. I used a shovel to dig it up and then used a pruning tool to cut the thick roots so at least I could get up the main root ball. Ugh. Did the same thing with the first big one but it was nowhere near as easy. Pulling and shoving and everything else. Oh my! Finally I got it up with most of the roots after about an hour. I then ripped up the smaller of the two remaining and rested for a bit. I puttered with getting the roses ready to be planted and cleaned up some of my other mess, repotted some violets and the such until Chris returned from running some errands.

Chris has a lot of experience with doing lawn type stuff. His dad owns his own landscaping company and Chris used to help out when he was a kid/teen. He was a maniac. Within about 10 minutes he had the final massive root ball up. Then, he showed me how to swing a pick axe correctly to break up the remaining roots and till the soil. Wow, I’m so out of shape. I went gang busting on the little garden! Now I’m paying for it. I should have stretched first or something. Anyway, in the end I have a pretty little 10’ x 4’ (or so) rose garden. I’m hoping to plant some bulbs this coming weekend to finish it off. We already put down the mesh and mulch, so I’ll just cut through the mesh to plant a few bulbs. Too pretty, but wow, I’m sore!

Not much new...

I was waiting until something interesting would happen this week to write about and share on my blog, but nothing has happened that is blog-worthy. Hmph.

In my boring news, this should be a relaxing weekend... I'm looking forward to some outdoor fun tomorrow. I bought some new roses and hibiscus for our gardens and a bunch of new violets for inside the house (I have a "mild" obsession...). Hopefully I'll finally get to going through boxes of old decorations and getting rid of what I haven't unpacked since I left Seattle and reuniting myself with some things that I've long since forgotten about. I'm sure I'll find a treasure or two that I'll want to hold on to ;)

I'll write again when there is something a little more interesting to write about...