Guest Bathroom Work

I am overdo on some posts but there will be 3-4 this week for all the stuff I have missed.  

Several weeks ago we got to work on our upstairs bathroom.  There was a leak from the toilet that had to be fixed and the bathtub faucet dripped.  We ended up having to take part of the shower wall off in order to stop the drip so it was much more involved than we thought it would be but it all got done in the end.  We want to do more in that bathroom eventually so we ended up  just getting a new toilet.  But we only got new (kinda ugly) handles for the bathtub because to get something nice looking we will have to redo the pipes and we just weren't ready for that.  

I helped, There was one point when Barrett couldn't get a bolt off and I did :) 

Old cream colored toilet gone, now there is a nice new white one but I didn't get an after picture

Dora the Educator

Today Dora (and I) went to the Library to teach pre-schoolers about dog safety.

Weekend in the World (Disney World)

Disney World is the best.  I went down for a 3 day weekend to see my mom and Pat while they were there.  It was great and I also got to see Andrew and Lorri!  Take a look to follow out adventures.  Saturday we went to Epcot for the Food and Wine Festival and Sunday we went to a special brunch and then went to the Magic Kingdom for "Mickey's no-so-scary Halloween Party"

Epcot's Food and Wine Festival 

Yum - At "Greece" I got Grilled Greek cheese with honey and pistachios

Cranberry Bog 

Decorations for the Halloween Party 

I dressed up! 

 So Did most of the characters 

Trips with Mommy are so fun

Best Friends Visit

Oh my goodness, I almost forgot to blog this week.  Really I just hardly had time to look at my computer.  Work has been so busy with the craziest people.  But I digress - This past weekend was full of fun when Kathy and Walker AND Natalie and Brian came to visit.  I was bad and didn't really take pictures but I'll give you the run down of our festivities and mostly of all the delicious meals I cooked.

Friday Kathy and Walker arrived!
Dinner:  Creamy tomato and crab pasta
Dessert: Nutella stuffed, brown butter chocolate chip cookies with sea salt

Saturday we went apple picking.  We loaded up on Cameo, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, and Jona Prince apples.  We also got apple butter, cinnamon pear preserves and blackberry preserves, apple dumplings, apple fritters, fried apple pies, and a cup of apple cider.

Breakfast: Banana bread pancakes
Lunch: Apples
Dinner: Lemon Chicken Gyros and Italian potatoes

Sunday we went to church and after this is when we met up with Natalie and Brian

Breakfast: Bisquits and sausage gravy
Lunch:  Fat Matt's BBQ
Dinner: ?  I don't remember

Monday I went shopping and hung out with Natalie before they had to go home

Breakfast:  Pumpkin Muffins
Dinner:  Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup

My Cookies from Friday night 

Braves Baseball

We love Braves Baseball, that is all.

We won!  And think about this for a minute - Kimbrel struck out 4 batters in the 9th inning.  Pretty unusual

There is no passion to be found in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living

 - Nelson Mandela

Gardening

Last weekend Barrett finally got some of the nasty weeks and monkey grass pulled out of our biggest flower bed and we put mulch down to make it look nice and crisp.  This weekend I got some plants on sale and put them down.  I'm so happy with how it looks!  I wish I had a picture of the before, it was awful! Right now this first bed has hydrangeas and asters.  There are still some big open spaces that we'll fill as time goes on.  The bed behind this one that you can just get a peak at has roses but it is overgrown with monkey grass also.  Once all the monkey grass is pulled up we plan to ad more roses and extend the bed to the driveway.  We might spread out (replant) some of the roses that are there and mix in Double Knockout roses with them because we think those look so much prettier.  

These bed in front of the house had some really big, gnarly bushes that we pulled out.  On the right side of the steps there are several gardenias but we are going to move them back closer to the railing and put edgers in so that the bed ends at the edge of the steps.  Right now it comes out really far and it'll look better with clean lines.  We also need to trim back the huge rhododendron on the right and on the left side we have gardenias and azaleas.  The little box sitting onto of the railing will be mounted to the front like a window box.  It has dianthus in it right now.
I could use some help on this - I am also thinking about staining the front porch a fun color so that we can give the front of our house some color.  If I do that I think I'll paint the door a complimentary color.  What do you guys think about this?  I am thinking a dark blue stain on the porch and a lighter blue for the door.  This might be a project for early spring but I want it done now!

And just for good measure a picture of my lovely pups.  And don't you love my Mississippi State Door Hanger?!?!?!