The Last Few months

We haven't done any new posts in some time, we have taken a bit of a break for the last two months on home improvement projects.  Things we did during that time included having a garage sale one weekend, and actually made some money on many of our old ceiling fans and light fixtures we took down.  We also did some traveling; one trip to Houston and another trip to Fredricksberg.  Besides that we have just been enjoying some downtime and playing lots of games with friends.  

So while this has ultimately been down time for us, it would not be true if I said we didn't do any projects, because we did have a few.  Dustin tried his hand at some tiling.  This took place in the front entry hall.  We removed the carpet from the hall closet because it was DISCUSTING.  Leaving us with concrete in the closet.  We also had concrete in the opening that we created between the entry hall and the game room.  Here are a few photos of that job.

 The closet after the tile was placed in the mortar, no grout yet.

  

The opening to the game room - Dustin's "thinking position"

Guess the position worked because it looks good.

Another very small project was hanging some "art" on the wall.  I had a photograph I had won at a career fair in college of some of the rock formations in Utah that I had no frame for, as well as a crocheted piece we got for Christmas that one of Dustin's cousins had made for us that says "Miracle"; neither of which I had a frame for.  My very handy and crafty father had made this really neat shadow box for a belt Dustin made for me out of wood from a barn at my grandmas farm that had a rustic quality I really liked, not to mention the sentimental part of it being from my grandma's farm.  So I asked him if he could make me some more cool frames with weathered wood for these other two items I had.  Well he did - Thanks Dad!

 

 

 The other main project was planting a small garden.  We were going to do a large garden, but we decided between our future living situation being somewhat up in the air (as we are hoping to put the house on the market asap - a few more projects have to be accomplished first) and trips we have planned that it would be better to keep the garden small.  So we limited the space to peppers (jalapenos and bannana), tomatoes, lettuce, and onions.  So far so good...

The garden.   If you want to know about the

orange sign, ask Dustin sometime.

 Lettuce and onions already sprouting up!

 Tomatoes (I made the cages out of some left

over wire fencing we had in our backyard)

 Peppers

I also potted up some flowers for our front porch -

though the pot has not made it out there yet

In Houston since we lived in an apartment we could only have a patio garden using planters.  We successfully grew peppers and tomatoes in them, we tried lettuce, onions, oregano, and basil, but the sun was much to harsh on our patio so the tomatoes and peppers were the only thing that did not fry to a crisp.  I did plant one container with a strawberry plant I bought (strawberries are in my top 5 favorite fruits), however they did not produce anything last year.  The stawberry plant was the only plant we moved with us to Brownwood.  To my great suprise it survived the multiple freezes we had (even being in a container) and made it through till now.  And now look....

 Strawberries!!!