My Beautiful Singing Yard

My yard sings to me.

All day. All night. The most lovely, natural song.

At night there is a magical combination of sounds. There is usually rain. The rustling of the leaves in the breeze. Frogs and crickets and cicadas. Its an all encompassing sound. It covers me like a blanket, drowns out the world around me. I sleep so well surrounded by my yard's song.

In the mornings a different song is played. The birds are awake. Sometimes there are just some light chirps from little cardinals and sparrows, other times a crow moves in and squawks his head off. This is also the time the cicadas really go off. They love the mornings. Loud, beautiful, melodic buzzing. They fade in and out, dominating the song when they're on, and allowing other sounds to shine when they're off.

I love to have my coffee and a book with me in the mornings, sitting in my chair, enjoying the cool morning breeze and listening to my yard greet the new day.

The Sweetwater Song.

Simple Morning Update

This morning I had energy!!

Not enough energy to... you know... workout or anything, but enough that I couldn't just sit around and not accomplish something.

So, I finally completed one of the small little updates I wanted to make to our entertainment center.

Ok... I'll admit... entertainment center is a BIT of an overstatement... its more of a bookshelf, turned dresser, re-purposed to entertainment center...

Which means, it was an eye sore. There was nowhere to hide the cords! It looked horrible!! And it was in the center of our tiny living room!

Lucky for Chad, I had an idea. A $12 idea. Not a $200 replace my entertainment center idea!

All it took was a bit of black poster board, some fun contact paper and a little tape.

Very simple: Carefully peel contact paper to expose its sticky background and carefully apply it to the poster board. Then connect the poster boards together with some tape, and apply another line of contact paper (perfectly lined up with no bubbles! Easily done with a cheapy plastic ruler and the paper is re-positional!)

Lastly, tape the board to the back of the entertainment center! If you need cable holes just drill some through the poster board. or cut some slits and feed through the side.

One hour later our entertainment center is cured of all that was ugly and will now happily live in our living room for years to come!

Now to paint our bedroom... and finish our closet remodel... and... and...

Hall-WOW!

Finally! The midnight blue is gone! Every little bit of it has finally been peeled away and replaced by a warm, room opening color!

 Before!

 During... the paint peeled off in huge sheets...

After! Look at how bright it is!!

Also! We finally got our carpet installed! Which means we've, after a long.. cluttered month, have been able to move in! Which means we finally get to experience the immensity of our eat-in dining room!

 New fancy carpet! Made from 100% recycled plastic bottles!

 What our dining room has been for the past month...

Our dining room now!! SO MUCH SPACE!

Obviously painting the kitchen/dining room is on the list... however.. its really low on it... up next is getting our guest room and master up and running! 

Took Us Long Enough

I knew Chad was getting off REALLY early on Friday, so I had a whole list of goodies for us to do! You know, things like: remove all the little closet hooks from the shelves we removed in the closet, give Milli a bath, paint the accent wall in our bedroom... you know "fun" things.

Luckily, he came home with another plan. Instead of my list, we did his: go to Wilmington to shop a bit, then visit the Sea Turtle Hospital (you know, the one I've been talking about since months BEFORE we left San Diego!).

His idea won (as it usually does).

We just did a little shopping: Joann Fabric and Costco. See Jacksonville isn't awesome enough to have either of them...

Then we headed to The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center!

We had been to quite a few of these type of places around the country, so we thought we knew what to expect: donate a little money, wait around a minute till they gather enough people to justify a tour, then walk around leisurely listening to all the stories about the resident sea turtles.

Ummmm.... not exactly. This place was PACKED! There were lines! And lines to wait in lines! And to think it was a random Friday early in the afternoon. It was AMAZING! Seeing people come out in such mass to help such an amazing cause! It was phenomenal!

I mentioned to the volunteer holding the door open for us "wow! busy day huh?" He came back with "Actually, its a little slow today, usually the line is out the door. You came on a good day." Excuse me...?! I was stoked for them. This was great. And the way they conducted the tour was great. While waiting in line to get into the actual turtle pond area, they had various tables and stations set up with a vounteer at each of them. Each table had a different focus and each volunteer told a different spiel, one about turtle anatomy, one about how our trash affects them and another about nesting habits. It was so well done.

By the time you actually saw the turtles, you honestly hadn't realized you'd been waiting in the lobby for almost an hour. Once inside, it was wonderful, between each tank there was yet another volunteer, each one responsible for telling you about the turtles in each tank, their story, their age, how long they've been there, how long till they are released and answer any questions we had. Then our little group of people would walk a little further and there would be another volunteer and a couple more turtles. 

 This guy is their only resident: he got hit by a boat, suffered massive head trauma and is completely blind.

Honestly, one of the best $5 we've ever spent.

Upon leaving, I was on a "wow I love our planet" high. And oooohhhhh! The beach was JUST around the corner!

SO WE WENT!

 

FINALLY! We've lived here for a month now and we just NOW found the ocean. And its only like 20 minutes from our house! And it was great! There were shells on the beach. Free parking everywhere. It wasn't crowded. The water was warm! 

What a fantastic day off! Now tomorrow BACK TO THE GRIND CHAD! No excuses! HA!

Lovely Progress!

It has been a mess of a week or so - but a lovely mess indeed!

We've done SO MUCH around the house. Mostly little things, but little things that are adding up to make this home feel homey!

We had some amazing weather (read: low humidity) so we were able to get our backyard mowed. We had to hire someone. It was jungly crazy! The "grass" was up to a foot in some places. We came home to piles and piles of grass laying all around.

 The gray hue is all dead, cut grass.

Once we got some of it raked up (something we elected to do, the grass man told us we could just leave it... but I thought it was ugly...) oh my goodness! Our backyard is awesome.

Then I decided to tackle the garage's back door. It was so gross.. almost impassible between the spiderwebs and the overgrown bush thing.

 Before.

After!

Then we got the hammock hung!!!!

Next things on the list include: getting rid of the weird dog house... Putting another level on the compost pile... building the raised bed garden (for our fall plantings!) and planting a few fruit bushes!

Grocery Shopping - Best Pastime Ever!

If you travel, even a little, you've probably been to your fair share of regional markets. You know, those chains just a *little* out of the norm from what you are used to...

Well here in the South... goodness they have some fun markets. Here are the 4 most common ones around us:

First you have your Piggly Wiggly. These are the sad, underprivileged spawn of the 99 Cent Store and Major Market. You know, its the store that's a little dirty... the produce is so much less than fresh, you always check the sell by date and you just might second guess buying meat there.

Then you have your Food Lion. Not gonna lie, depending on where you are, these can be just larger, slightly nicer P.W.s, but generally these are the vastly better option. They are kinda like your neighborhood Stater Brothers. This is our closest market and luckily ours is one of the nicer ones. The produce is nice, they have a deli counter and their mexican/asian food isle is wonderful! (They even have fresh tomatillos!) 

Next up, would be Lowe's. No, no, I'm not talking the hardware store (though annoyingly there is one across the street from it...)... I'm talking your, beautiful, fairly overpriced, offers somewhat local produce, Sprouts/Ralphs type store. This is where Chad and I thought we would be doing most of our shopping. They have a fresh sausage counter. An actual seafood counter (which is odd, I'll get to that). A nice deli, etc. However, they are PRICEY, 20 minutes away and when you really look, they don't have items that you would expect them to have, like fresh almond butter or unsweetened coconut.... so why not just go somewhere closer and less expensive...

Lastly (and bestly) there is Harris Teeter. This place is awesome. Its like a big, less hoity-toity, affordable, Whole Foods/Vons. It's wonderful! The best of all worlds, even having some of the harder to find items... not all of them... but some! However.... the closest one is an hour from us.... of course.

So the winner is: Food Lion!

Supplemented by the local farmers market. And I'm not just talking produce here, I'm talking sea food and local meats. Its amazing. The shrimps and fresh sausages and eggs and boiled peanuts! Its amazing. The farmers market and local docks is actually why there aren't seafood counters at any of the stores. People just go down to the docks or on a random corner out of the back of a pickup or to the farmers market to get fish and shrimps that were pulled out of the water that morning for awesome prices!

Plus!!! Food Lion has some CRAZY fun foods in it! Very regional. I love it.

 In case you are new to cooking Soul Food... or white.

 Not exactly sure what this is...

 Turnip AND Mustard greens in CANS!

 Yes. Pickled meat. Specifically Pig Feet.

C-Loaf. Cause who doesn't want a slice of that!

I can't wait to make Chad try a bunch of these things!

Humidity... who knew?

So...

Fine.

Everyone was right.

Yes, everyone.

Humidity. Sucks.

As in, its 80 degrees almost constantly here - which ANYWHERE else would be awesome weather! But here... ohhhh here, there is humidity. Not just any humidity, but HIGH humidity. So, my lovely 80 degrees, feels like 103. A 103 degree bowl of soup. I get my clothes wet just sitting on our porch. In the shade. At 6pm. Ughhhhh.

Luckily, the house came with air conditioning. Which I keep on. All. The. Time,

So, this latest project was a bit of an undertaking. A miracle of sorts.

I made a path AND removed the nasty old grass collection/fire pit/ant nest thing that was going on where Chad and I wanted to have our compost pile.

 Before

My new path!!

 Best picture I took of the gross pit...

 I know, you're gonna give him all the credit cause he raked...

 Going, going...

Gone! Erased from the earth!

WOOT!