Operation Garden: Day 2

The garden has been watered today and (obviously) there are no signs of sprouting yet, as the seeds germinate.

My one worry is that the basement is too cold. The tutorial we saw recommended rope lights underneath to keep the seedlings warmer. I will have to see what happens. The good news is that the cats can't get down there and eat my seedlings like the previous years!

I will update with a list of what we are growing tomorrow!

Operation Garden: Day 1

We are trying to truly make our gardening a sustainable, organic and cost-saving endeavor this year. The past three years we have bought a variety of seedlings from my neighbor's greenhouse (all of which are organic and amazing!), but always have supplemented it with seedlings from Menards and other nurseries (at least $75 worth). We have done seeds in the past but they have never worked out with the exception of the beans and peas. They either die or don't get enough sun or get eaten by the cats.

This year we set up a growing station in our basement with a full spectrum light and mini-greenhouses. In addition to starting all our herbs and a few of our veggies, we are trying to start all of our annual flowers. Each summer I spend at least $150 on my annuals and dirt for my container garden and around the house. We are trying our hand at starting them from seed to see if we can do it and save some money in the process.

So far I think we spent about $50 on everything (dirt, seeds, greenhouses, light bulbs, chain for the light). With the help of Melissa and the sidelines cheerleading of Ryan, Miles, Nick and Amy we got all of our seeds planted and tucked away in the basement. So far we have over 100 cells planted.

I am hoping to keep a journal of what works and doesn't work for what we are lovingly calling "The Basement Garden."

Stay tuned!

6 Months

We probably owe everyone a post... eh?

We celebrated our 6-month anniversary of our marriage on February 13. When you have been together since high school without a real anniversary it is fun to "celebrate" on the 13th of every month.

It has taken us 6 months to finally start to relax after all of the hectic craziness of the summer and getting married. Nick has now been at his job for over a year now and I am finally getting the hang of my new job. We have our finances under control and are working on paying off our debt which is a really nice feeling! We have had a winter that has been non-existent, which we are more than happy with. Speech has flown by ridiculously fast (maybe having only 4 students this year has something to do with it). And we haven't done any "big" house projects.

I hope that as spring approaches we will get re-energized to get our yard taken care of! Last summer, even with all the crazy planning and spending of a wedding, we built a deck, got a driveway (finally!) and built stairs to come up from said-driveway. So far we have already set up a growing-station in our basement to start our herb garden seedlings so that we can plant our garden as soon as the ground thaws- which could actually be as soon as the end of March this year. We are going to continue our journey around the yard and rip up the corner area under our silver maple.

Our summer plans also involve a small waterfall, a pond, and a duck. Yes, a duck. I already have named him and I want him to live in my garden. Spring cannot come soon enough.

Where do you buy a baby duckling, anyway?

We are married! We had the most perfect day for a most perfect wedding. We wish we could do it all over again. Nick and I are so blessed to have such amazing friends and family. The ceremony was beautiful, the food was tasty, the yard games were a hit, the photobooth was so entertaining and the dancing was rocking!

We even paid homage to our lovely home in our decor!

So what now? We can't get married every summer... so what project should be next on our list?

What happens when Hilary wants to start a "quick and easy paint project!"

Our bathroom is ugly. The wainscoting is uneven and has screw holes, there are gaps between the floor trim, and there are even parts of the wall where the trim fell off and there is nothing but old paint and drywall. And that is only the start of how bad our bathroom is. We won't even talk about how everything is cramped on one wall, how the bathtub is too small, how the surround is discolored and how the marble doesn't match anything.

Without dropping five grand, we decided to spruce up the bathroom. Well, I decided to spruce up the bathroom, Nick went along with it. We figured a little spackle, paint and elbow grease could go a long way. The bathroom begged to differ.

First, the wainscoting that was crooked and uneven and cut incorrectly came off. The original plan was to take it off and just paint the wall. We then discovered that below the wainscoting was nothing but crumbling plaster. So now the wainscoting, however badly cut, will stay up. Bathroom: 1, Bundt: 0

Second, we decided that paint was still an option. So we removed the big mirror (half of the screws were stripped, FYI) so that if we were to ever get a new mirror we wouldn't have to repaint again or match samples. We wanted to do it RIGHT.

And this is what we found. A hole where the medicine cabin used to be... so much for an "quick, easy, weekend project-" eh? Bathroom: 2, Bundt: 0

SOOOOOO... now Nick has to patch the wall with drywall. AND THEN we can paint.

That's what we get for looking for a cheap and easy project. I guess it is still cheap, but who knows what else we might find. I am afraid to look.

Winifred Manor: 2 years later!

We sure did slow down on showing pictures on the progress of our home! The guest room was finished in December 2009, yet we never posted any pictures of the final product.

Here is a picture update of our house after celebrating our second year!

The guest room (also known as Hilary's Craft Room) is completely finished now and looks great- well, it looks great when we take the time to clean out the junk that always seems to accumulate. We are going to add a ton of shelves to hold all of my crafting supplies!

We also rearranged the living room and got some new furniture, and added an electric fireplace to the dining room. Our bedroom has a nice little reading nook and my office is so much more useable! Our home feels even cozier now! It definitely is a home!

Happy Houseaversary!

It is our second year Houseaversary today! We inadvertently celebrated it with a new faucet in our bathroom... sadly it wasn't because we wanted a new faucet but instead because our sink in the bathroom decided that it wanted to leak everywhere for no particular reason. Next weekend we are going to repair the rest of the bathroom, put on a fresh coat of paint and finally make it look nice! And it only took us two years!

We will post pictures soon! I can't wait for the project to be finished!

Helping our street

Saturday morning, Hilary and I gathered with many of our neighbors to show support for a proposed project to revitalize the street corner of Ohio and Winifred. This hellish turn is plagued with blind spots, crazy intersection angles, and speeding drivers. It's an accident waiting to happen.

We waited for city officials to drive by in a bus, so we held signs that said "Please fix our street" and "Road of terror." Unfortunately, someone either thought we were demonstrating AGAINST something, or that we were a legitimate safety concern, because after twenty minutes of waiting with our signs, a police officer pulled up, got out of his vehicle, and starting talking to us.

Although polite and understanding, the officer explained that someone had called the non-emergency number on us and he came by to see what was the commotion. He stated he was concerned that the gawker effect (someone look at something out-of-the-ordinary) would cause an accident.

Eventually, he left, leaving us all with a sense of civic disobedience. We did not disband, and eventually the big moment arrived. The city officials (twenty or so minutes late) slowly drove by our intersection and continued down Ohio. A very anti-climatic finish to a Saturday morning.

Rising Waters

The Mississippi is about to crest again. Of course we had to take a walk to see how high the water is getting. Poor Harriet Island is under water again.Harriet Island under water, March 29, 2011. (Click picture to enlarge)

Nick and I were being dorks the other day and watched two hours worth of PBS documentaries on St. Paul history. We learned that the Mississippi River, back in the beginning of Minnesota being a state, used to be really wide and shallow where downtown St. Paul is. They said that during a drought you could actually wade across it without a boat. There was also a neighborhood right on the banks called "Little Italy" which wasn't filled with Irish, but instead, Polish immigrants. At that time Harriet Island actually was an island but became landlocked when they built up the river to make it a major area for importing goods. It was super interesting!

A Winter Getaway, or "How to Avoid a Blizzard"

Nick and I couldn't have chosen a better time to leave Minnesota's snowiest winter. We left for Arizona February 18th. We were greeted with rain and apparently it never rains this hard in Arizona. But it was all okay because that rain, was causing a blizzard of epic proportions back home. So we enjoyed the rain and even had the chance to soak up some rays while everyone was digging out for two days straight!
We took the Apache Trail around the Superstition Mountains for a day. It was the scariest drive ever but totally worth it! We saw some of the most beautiful scenery Nick or I have ever seen. We visited with his uncle, and ate a ton of great food with Nick's parents.

On our last day there we climbed Black Mountain and made it all the way to the top. It was a beautiful and sunny 65 degrees. It was a great view from the top!
But then we had to come home... and shovel what we had fallen while we were gone. I think we still couldn't have planned our trip any better!