Wordless Wednesday: It was a good night!

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Before & After

Back in August my husband and I did a little yard makeover. I'm just now getting around to posting the before and after pictures.

This is the front door area before. (Don't know why I took a crooked picture!)

This is after. We added dirt around the border so the grass hasn't all come it yet. This will be the case in spaces in the backyard too.

This next area is one of the main areas we did. Our backdoor is on the side of our house so we have to walk along the side to get to the backyard. There was a big slope and when it rained water would stand by the fence. We wanted to level it off and make it look a little better. Claire's window faces this part of the yard and she wanted to look at pretty flowers!

Before...

After...

We leveled it off with rocks and moved the plants from the back porch to that area. Now my back porch is not cluttered and Claire has pretty flowers to look at! We also added stepping stones so we have an easier walk to the back. We have grass planted around the stepping stones, but its not all in yet so just image green grass where you see the dirt!

At the end we added a little birdbath area. Eventually we plan to put up a bird house or bird feeder here too. Again, imagine green grass around it!

This is the back corner of the backyard.

Before...

After...

This is the other side of the house. It had pretty much become a place where old things of my husbands would go to die! The before picture was taken after he cleaned out the old grill and lawnmower and play toys and mowed all the weeds down.

Before...

After....

We added a little raised bed garden. I have onions, lettuce, squash, tomatoes and peppers planted. I'm not much of a farmer, but I hope to grow some fresh vegetables for us to enjoy. (On the other side of the house I have a planter with herbs. They are doing well...apparantly I can grow herbs!)


So, there it is, our little project that took a lot of work!

Monday Medicine

I was in the store the day before Halloween and they were already removing all of the Halloween stuff from the shelves. The day after Halloween they had the Christmas stuff out already!

Found this comic on: http://www.arcamax.com/familycircus

Homeschool Talk: All Saints Day

Our Homeschool group has an All Saints Party every year. One of the things is a Holy Lantern Carving Contest. These are my kids' entries for this year...

Nathan's is a rosary and Claire's is a church. Claire came up with hers all by herself so she is very proud!

This is Nathan's entry from last year. He won first place with it. Claire didn't do one last year.

Here are the kids in their costumes last year. Claire is St. Clare and Nathan is St. Ignatious Loyola. My mom made Claire's costume and when I sent her the picture she said, "you forgot to wrap the white part around her face!" So, being the perfectionist that I am, I've been bothered by that for a whole year now!

This year we modified Claire's costume and she is going as St. Therese. (We took the white part off all together so hopefully I won't forget anything this year!) Nathan is going to be St. Luke. We put his costume together last minute. I bought a navy graduation gown at a thrift store for 3.50 and I had a curtain tie back rope that we've used before that we are using as a belt. A friend of mine gave us a pirate costume for my husband and we used the belt from it as a sash over the robe. It looks good and only cost 3.50!

If anyone else out there has any other costume or pumpkin carving ideas I'd love to hear them!

Postcard Friendship Friday #30

Welcome to another Postcard Friendship Friday hosted by Marie at Cpaphil Vintage Postcards . Stop by her site to join in or see other postcards.



Just in time for Halloween...This postcard is the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World. It is a really cool attraction. Its not a roller coaster and its not really scary, its just really cool! I have no idea how Disney makes the ghosts that appear inside it, but they look real! If you ever go to Disneyland or Disney World be sure to visit the Haunted Mansion!



Here is a link to the Disneyland site and the Haunted Mansion if you want to see more of it: http://disneyland.disney.go.com/disneyland/en_US/parks/attractions/detail?name=HauntedMansionAttractionPage

Our Return Visit to Chilis

Last week I blogged about the really bad experience we had at Chilis on my daughter's birthday. Well, I complained on their website and I was contacted by the area director She was very nice and apologetic and wanted us to come in again so they could make it up to us. I thought, ok, they are going to give us dinner on them and that would be that. But they really went all out!

They wanted to redo Claire's birthday dinner so they had the table decorated with a princess table cloth and confetti and balloons. They also gave her a tiara, sash and a princess lunchbox with a build a bear gift card inside! They even had princess pencils and a notebook on the table for her. Can you believe that? They also sang her happy birthday again and gave the kids a tour of where the food comes out. Claire even got to help bring it to the table.

Claire was very excited and said dinner at Chilis was her favorite part of the day! We had decided after our visit last week that we wouldn't go back to that location, but after last night we changed our minds. The managers both spoke with us and thanked us for bringing it to their attention and said they'd use it as a teaching tool. They were very nice and really seemed to care if we had a good experience, which was all I ever wanted in the beginning anyway.

Since I blogged my complaint last week, I thought it was only fair to blog about the good experience we had. So, there you have it!

Wordless Wednesday: Halloween Fun

(sorry, don't know what happened here!)

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