BLOOMS

Over the past few years that we have lived in our house Sam has grown to love gardening and frankly anything to do with the yard. Love is actually an understatement because he could be outside 24/7 if he was able. Yes, even in this 100 degree weather we have been experiencing - that doesn't stop him, but only means more water refills! He has worked hard to get the yard where he wants it to be and this year all his hard work has come to fruition and looks amazing!!! He has learned a lot and I know will continue to grow in this new love! Here are a few examples from this Spring and Summer. I can't believe how well things have held strong despite some crazy storms and crazy hot weather, but it all still looks great! We did loose a canopy that we had covering our porch which we were using as shade for many flowers, but other than that things are looking good. We are thinking vegetables next year!!! (All pictures taken by Sam also)

Kwanso Triple Petaled Lilies

We have a lot of these and they multiply ever year -

let us know if you want some, we have plenty to share!

Assorted CalladiumsLantana - this stuff can take over!!!

Elephant ears, red Petunias,and two types of Sweet Potato Vines

One of our many Crapemyrtle trees

Asparagus furn, purple/red Petunias, Sweet Potatoe Vine, Coleus,

and wispies (technical term unknown!)

Hardy Hibiscus

huge blooms that catch my eye every morning

Asparagus fern - aka: Clown Hair!

Grape Vines - recently all the grapes were eaten by birds!

Echinacea -

beautiful flowers that attract lots of butterflies and bees

Pansies from the springTulips

Sam planted ~75 bulbs, so we had quite the showing this spring!!!

Bradford Pear Tree - spring blooms

(down to only two of these after one fell on our house 2 years ago)

Not pictured: beautiful pink Hydrangea (having a hard time in this heat), Tea Rose bush, daisies, various herbs/garlic, Four O'Clocks, Bloodgood Japanese Maple tree, Carolina Jasmine, Snowball Bush (Viburnum), Some Hostas, and many more that I don't know the name of!!!

Project

Me and Pops built a little arbor for my grapevines, and just for fun as well. I found a picture of a prototype that I liked and modified it a bit. I cut cedar to the measurements that I wanted and then stained the wood. Then it worked out that my parents came into town a couple of weeks ago, so it was a perfect opportunity to have a project to do with my dad. Plus I was able to use "the master's skills" in case I screwed something up very badly. :)

PS we did hit a sprinkler line :/ That was fun...

Here is the picture I went by:

Cut to Size:

Stained and assembled:

Installed and braced until the concrete dries:

Yay!!

Next step is to add some flagstone underneath or some type of pavers.

The flowers are blooming in the garden as well. Makes it very enjoyable back there (I'm an old man).

GARAGE & BAKE SALE

We will be having a garage & bake sale at our house tomorrow, June 13th starting at 8am!!! All proceeds will be donated to a very deserving family. This is a multi-family sale with lots of fun stuff. We'll have furniture, clothes, kitchen items, golf clubs, TVs, home decor, etc...if you don't need anything, come for a fun homemade treat!! Who knows, if the tree is still laying on our house, we might be selling fire wood too. Just bring your own saw and cut away!!!

Electricity or no electricity (that's right, still no power) the SALE WILL GO ON!!!

Spring is officially here!!!

Spring has sprung at the Sessler House!!! We worked very hard this past week and weekend to get our gardens in shape!! I should really say that Sam worked REALLY hard and I just worked! Like I said in my previous post, he really was out there every single night last week preparing for the weekend so that we could get everything finished. Here are some of the final pictures. We still plan to line the beds with stone, but here it what it looks like now. It may not look like anything special, but you must see the last picture...that is what we started with. Sam shoveled all of the horrible lava rock out, tilled the beds, cleaned the beds, added good soul, trimmed the trees, trimmed the bushes, carried and layed the mulch, and planted all of the flowers. I helped pick out the flowers (50% at Lowe's!!), put the solar lights together, and potted the plants. I'd say that's pretty even!! Thanks to my garden man - your the best!!!

Night view

I was trying to get the lights, but you can't even tell they are on here!

I know this is horribly fuzzy, but this is the only

before picture that we had from Sam's phone.

Note: I promise it didn't always look this bad...winter was hard!!

Tour of Homes

BooMama is doing a Tour of Homes, and I have just recently figured out what it is and thought I would participate! What a cool idea and a great way to get some good decorating ideas!

WELCOME TO OUR CHRISTMAS HOME!!!

THE TREE

This is the first year for us to have a real Christmas tree! (by real I do not mean alive, but just not a tiny one in our apartment) Yes, it's a fake, but a pre-lit, easy to assemble fake - the best kind! Thanks mom for helping me put it up!

Here's the top. It took me forever to find a tree topper that wasn't weird! I don't love this one, but it will do!

MANTLE

I wanted to take a fun picture with the fire place lit because it is so cozy, but Sam wasn't home and I don't play with fire!!

DINNING ROOM

(sorry these pics are a bit dark!)



THE KITCHEN
There aren't too many decorations in the kitchen (beside all my Christmas serving pieces), but this little area brings in some Christmas cheer! (Fishing Santa = Sam, Baking Santa = Mandy). I keep my Christmas card holder to the right on the wall. They seem to be coming in slower this year!!!


MINI TREE
I don't have a picture of the entire tree, but this mini tree sits in the hall way when you first come in the door. We have made it a tradition to get an ornament everywhere we travel, so this is our "travel" tree! Here's a look at a few ornaments!

CHRISTMAS VILLAGE

Sammy Christmas set this up, and I think it turned out really cute! Our fake "snow" wasn't working for him, so he ended up using the Halloween cobwebs!!

Maybe I'll get some pictures of the outside of the house. Sammy Christmas did a great job putting out the lights. We started out small this year, but hopefully we'll be able to add more each year. (I'm thinking the after Christmas sales!)

I hope you enjoyed our tour! I suggest you now visit BooMama's website, and then do a tour of your own home!

DO NOT ENTER

I mentioned on my last post that we decided to have our kitchen cabinets painted. Based on the poll that I put up when we very first moved in, the majority decided that we should paint our cabinets white. Well many months later we are actually getting around to this. In the mean time we have no access to our kitchen, and everything that belongs in the kitchen is all over the house. The painters said they would be done today, but I still can't put anything in the cabinets until tomorrow to allow them to fully dry. I sure hope I don't go insane before then!!! Last night I had to study at our kitchen table which is currently in the hallway! I need normalcy, I am too much of a structured person for this!! I don't see how people do major renovations - richard and jennifer I have so much more respect for what yall had to endure during your remodel!!!

I thought I would share a few pictures of what things look like currently. Sam said we should just invite the neighbors over for our haunted house while all the plastic is up!

Family Time

My mom came to visit this past weekend and we had such a good time visiting. Usually when our parents come to visit we pack so much into the weekend that we feel like we don't really get to "see" them. This weekend was the complete opposite! All weekend Richard, Jennifer, my mom, and I just hung out and spent some quality time together. We didn't really do anything too exciting, but it was such a great weekend! With all my studying, non-exciting, restful weekends are the best. Then add family to that, and it just doesn't get any better. The only bad part was that Sam was out of town all of last week and didn't get to spend time with us except for about two hours on Sunday before my mom left. As you can tell from the picture below, it seems as though he was having plenty of fun in Orlando!! It was for work, but it seems as though he got to have some fun with Mickey and friends!!! Let me just say that I am SO happy to have him safe at home! (I love this picture; I think I am going to frame it and put it on my desk!)

I also promised that I would post more fun fall desserts. I have a few more, but only have time to post one right now! A lady in my women's bible study group brought this a few weeks ago for us to snack on and I loved it! I then mentioned it to my mom, and she made it for her bible study last week and got great reviews also! I hope at least one person tries this because I promise, it will not be a let down. I might also mention that this recipe makes a lot, so you might consider cutting it in half.

Pumpkin Dip

1 can pumpkin (the smaller can)

2 8 oz cream cheese - softened

4 cups powdered sugar

2 Tbsp cinnamon

Simply mix all the ingredients together and you're done! Serve with ginger snaps. It was also recommended that you serve the dip in a small carved out pumpkin, but if you don't have that much time on your hands just throw it all in a bowl!

Also I wanted to mention that our house is currently in shambles because we finally decided to paint the kitchen cabinets! We decided to bring in the professionals though, so we just get to kick back and wait for the results! It looks like we are having a garage sale throughout our house because we had to clean out everything in the kitchen to allow them to do their thing. Hopefully we are happy with the outcome and that this was all worth it. I'll post pictures soon! I am SO excited!

Holes, Trenches, French Drains!!!

As I am approaching my house after my women's bible study on Monday night I realize that my husband is outside working on the yard. This is not surprising considering, like I have mentioned before, that he is OBSESSED with our yard right now. We are having some problems with weeds this year because it seems that the previous owns did not do what they were suppose to do during winter right before they moved (something about a winterizing the yard, beats me!). Due to their irresponsibility, Sam has been outside working every day and every night. Most nights though he ends up working until dark, but not on Monday night. NOPE, he decided that the darkness was not going to stop him!!! He got his work light out there and just kept working. I can't imagine what the neighbors must me thinking - dumb kids!!!! As I get closer though I realize that Sam is just not working on the weeds, he is digging HOLES in our front yard!!!! We have noticed some major drainage problems with these past storms, so he was going to put an end to this. Back to the HOLES: Sam would say they are "trenches" and that they are for a "french drain" that he is making (I have NO idea what that means). But these "trenches" start in my flowerbed next to the front door, go out to the middle of the yard, and then turn to go toward the side of the house. So a pretty big "TRENCH". I am slightly in panic mode because they are predicting rain in the next few days, and even worse, I am having a shower at my house on Saturday night. I can just see it, "Hello, welcome to my house. Watch out for the huge piles of dirt, oh don't trip crawling to my front door in your high heels!!!"

Well my husband knew all this, so he did what any normal husband would do...stayed up until the middle of the night last night to finish!!!! I feel horrible for him because he got no sleep last night, but by the looks of things this morning, we are almost back to normal. Thanks Sam. I was worried, but when I really started thinking about it I thought - I really have nothing to worry about b/c of the simple fact that he is so obsessed with yard; there is no way he would do anything to ruin it. So lets just cross our fingers that this "french drain" works and that our grass grows back to normal and that the mountainous mounds of mud will be gone from my front porch before Saturday evening!!!

My Faithful Digger

(sorry about the quality of the picture. Keep in mind that it was night time and I had a huge work light shinning at me)

Happy late Birthday Sam!

So, Sam got patio furniture for his birthday! That's right - welcome to married life!!! He likes to put the blame on me, but here's how the story really goes. (IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: I think it is important to remember that right now my husband is OBSESSED with our yard and wants to spend all his waking hours helping it to become the best yard on the block.)
Our parents were asking Sam what he wanted for his birthday. He couldn't really think of anything, but a new mac or a PS3. Well needless to say, those were all too expensive for all of us to get him. So I say, well I actually have already made my birthday wish list (for my June birthday, sad I know), that I actually want to ask for patio furniture so that we can eat and entertain outside. To that Sam says, that's a great idea (probably thinking about how we can spend time outside enjoying his great year). So I get this great idea of how we can get this new furniture without too much money out of pocket and say, let's both ask for patio furniture for our birthdays, but we'll just get it now so we can start enjoying it!!! He said that sounded great, so it was a done deal and I was off to deliver the great news. So yes, I must admit that I might have been a bit selfish, but in the end we all went in to buy patio furniture for just Sam for his birthday. He got to pick out what he wanted and even the color of umbrella he wanted!
We got to have our first cookout this past weekend with some friends, so I thought I would share with our parents (who still have not seen what they got Sam for his birthday) what Sam's table looked like. He spent the WHOLE day working in the yard and getting everything ready for spring, and it was a gret night for a cookout!
UPDATE: I think Sam is really enjoying his table and glad that it is what he got for his birthday, although he still blames it on me! Thanks parents for our great furniture; we are too blessed by each of you!

Anyone up for a cookout???