Thanksgiving

I feel like it's so easy to skip over thanksgiving this year - and head straight into Christmas. Maybe it's becasue we aren't traveling for any holidays this year, so I'm especially excited about decorating our whole house (for the first time) for Christmas.

While watching an episode of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Johnny Cash (guest staring) sang this song, which I'd never heard before. I really enjoyed it and hope you do to! It will end up as a Facebook status soon, I'm sure.

We've come to the time in the season
When family and friends gather near
To offer a prayer of Thanksgiving
For blessings we've known through the year
To join hands and thank the creator
And now when Thanksgiving is due
This year when I count my blessings
I'm thanking the Lord He made you

I'm grateful for the laughter of children
The sun and the wind and the rain
The color of blue in your sweet eyes
The sight of a high ball and train
The moon rise over a prairie
Old love that you've made new
This year when I count my blessings
I'm thanking the Lord He made you

And when the time comes to be going
It won't be in sorrow and tear
I'll kiss you goodbye and I'll go on my way
Grateful for all of the years
I thank for all that you gave me
For teaching me what love can do
Thanksgiving day for the rest of my life
I'm thanking the Lord He made you

What's for Dinner?

Homemade Lasagna

This is the first time I've made lasagna and it got a very warm reception from Dave. We used some frozen red sauce made form his mom's recipe (his favorite), added some tomato sauce and italian sausage. Then noodles and cheese, in layers of course. 

Dave's reaction...."Mmm-mm-mmm!! Lasagna with no onions! All right, baby!" 

Win. 

Home Improvements

Three weeks ago, Dave finished sanding, staining, mounting the shelves for our library. 

Some close-ups of the finish. There's a lot of dust right now due to current home improvement project...

So they look great. Dave did a great job. :) We are waiting for some furniture to arrive to have a chest of drawers to go under the Map. And on the look out for a good comfy chair or chaise for secondary seating. And an old chest will be the coffee table. It should be very Old World... that's the goal...

Next project. laminate flooring in the living room/library. Here are some photos of the project in progress. 

Farewell carpet. 

Red plastic underlay installed. 

And right now David is busy pounding away to install the flooring. 

Hydroseeding: A pictorial summary

So some housing updates. About a month ago we had grass put in... kind of. It was going to be $2k for sod or $250 for hydroseeding. The cost benefit was what swung us. Sod is quick, (relatively) easy, and has instantaneous results. Plus no weeds. Hydroseeding is economical. That's about it. 

Hydroseeding is applied by spray. It is a mixture of newspaper product, chicken poop fertilizer, and seed. Tall Fescue is the variety we got. It's what the local nursery recommended. 

After application, we have an aqua colored carpet. It needed to be watered four times a day to keep the seed moist for it to sprout. Once it reached 1" we reduced watering to once a day. (And yes, we had our LOVELY neighbors call the Water Police on us again... But I'd already notified the city that we were restarting our lawn so we didn't get penalized. This time.)

This is Day 8 growth. 

This is day 21 growth. We probably will not be mowing our lawn until December. Which is fine. Because we don't have a lawn mower. 

Since we haven't been able to walk on the grass until this week, the inevitable weeds sprouted. The back yard is quite this weed zone... Definitely more weeds back there than in the front. A lot of nutgrass weed in the front and back, but I am choosing my battles and nutgrass is not one of them. I will be spending approximately 1-2 hours a day for the next week to try and get the weeds under control in the back yard. The back yard grew in thinner, so I want to throw out some extra seed to help fill the yard out - but not until there are "no" weeds ....  A lofty goal....