Monday, March 30, 2009

Birthday Celabrations!


Last Wednesday was my 26th birthday, but we put off celebrating until Saturday, and celebrate we did! We spent the day at Rock Canyon Park with our friends Nathan and the G. Family. We had a picnic lunch, flew kites, blew bubbles, played wacky baseball, and rolled down hills until we were too dizzy to walk.

Afterwards, we came back home and were joined by Mike and Julie for Pork Barbacoa (thanks, Reecie, it was delish!), cake and ice cream, presents, and board games. I am really glad that I had so many people with me this year to celebrate my birthday, this year was a bit difficult for me, and the support helped me get past it. You guys are great!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Spring Fever?

Now that it is "officially" spring, I have been anxious to get out and get my hands dirty out in the yard. I have so many projects intended for this summer, and I am intimidated by the amount of time they will take. This weekend we dug out most of the lilac, rose and forsythia bushes that were lining the side fence in our back yard. I think both Mark and I are more drawn to an ease of upkeep type of gardening. So anything that needs constant fertilizing, trimming, dead heading and pruning is out! Also having them gone makes our yard seem tidier and larger.
As always we also have the vegetable garden to put in. Every year this is my greatest challenge because I want to put in about three times as many plants as the garden will comfortable hold, and about five times more than we can eat. I think I am going to approach this year differently. I am creating a layout plan in advance and am planning on sticking with it. I am also trying out nasturtium this year, I planted the seeds for the early crop this past week, using large patio containers. I'm really excited about these, I think it will be fun to have bright colorful flowers to throw into our tossed salads.
Our third project is digging out 5 tree stumps, from the trees we cut out last year. I am not looking forward to that project at all. Yet, it will give us so much more use able space in our yard.
If there is enough time, and enough funds, we are also looking at replacing the back fence as well.
All of this brings me to wonder if all of this work is worth it. I mean, we recently had our home on the market, before deciding to stay so that the G family could live with us. So, after they are in their own place will we still want to stick around? If we don't will all this time, effort and money be worth it?

ka-ching!!!

Okay, I know that many of you think that my bargain hunting is silly, and that I get overly excited about it, but I just had to share my deal from this weekend!

albertsons
Kellogs products are on sale for $2.50 a box, a price that I would NEVER pay. Yet, it was the beginnings of a great deal.

8 boxes of frosted flakes
1 box of Fruit Loops
1 box of pop tarts (can you tell Mark was with me?

-$8 in manufacturers coupons
-$4 from Albertson's double coupons
-$10 in store special (when you buy 10 Kellogs products)

For a total of $3.33!!!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Quilting and Composting

This has been a busy weekend at the Carney house!
First off, I finally finished my first quilt. It is far from perfect, but it feels great to be finished with a project that I have been working on for over a year! I want to make a rag quilt for my next project...I'll keep you posted, hopefully it won't take me a year!


This weekend we also assembled a new compost bin for our backyard. I am excited about reducing our waste, as well as creating a lot of yummy compost for our gardens. I am determined to have a nice yard...someday! Tomorrow our grass is being aerated so hopefully that will help!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Free Fixes!


For any of you that may have ever been to my house and have had the great fortune to hear my pipes hum to you anytime the faucets turned on, or the dishwasher ran, or the clothes washer filled, or, or, or....The performances have come to an end...or so it seems! I am terrified of doing plumbing ourselves, because niether of us know anything about it. Sure, we can change a faucet, toilet flapper or shower head, but tracking down why the pipes are humming? I don't think so. So, I finally broke down and called a plumber, over coming my fears of a ginormous repair bill. The repair bill never did materialize, and the pipes learned to sing in under ten minutes (which included finding the problem!). I did not pay a single dime and when you turn on a faucet now, you hear.....water! I can't believe we lived with our humming pipes for three years!

Monday, March 2, 2009

Our Weekend!

Cousins, big-horned sheep and hours of driving, oh my! We spent this past weekend taking a road trip out to Montana to see my family and it was great. This picture was of Mark, bright and early as we set out for the open road. We went up to celebrate Robert's birthday with him (early, but better than not at all!). We got to spend some time with my Aunt Karen, Uncle Dana, cousins Honey and Michael and my Grandma as well. I'm glad we went. We got to see some amazing scenery, like this neat lake that we stopped at to stretch our legs...

We will be heading back out again in August for Christopher's birthday, so maybe I will remember to take some better pictures !