Fun in the Sun

I think I may be getting sick...but can you get sick from too much sun and mosquito bites?  I think I have about 20 mosquito bites yuck!  I love the weather right now but hate hate hate mosquitoes.  When I lived in Las Vegas that was the BEST thing about being there, hardly any bugs and especially no mosquitoes.  Those bugs were totally designed by satan himself, evil little creatures.  

In between swatting at mosquitoes and basking in the sun we (and I mean my husband) were able to get our yard looking like spring has sprung!  We planted an Orange tree that smells heavenly.  Did you know Orange trees have flowers, and those flowers smell an awful lot like jasmine?  I was so happy I had to get one, and BONUS...it will bear fruit one of these days!  So you cant really see it but the picture below is the Orange tree, its pretty small but dont worry it will get bigger!

 The best thing about spring is it tells you if a plant has lived through the drought and the winter.  My pecan tree was my biggest worry through the whole mess last year, and see above there is a green bud!  I have been watering it like crazy (see the water gator below, its a 10 gallon sack you fill with water and it drips out to water the tree), gave it miracle grow citrus tree food stakes and talk nice to it (totally works) and look its coming back!  I knew it loved me and wanted me to be happy :)

 Even the herbs are sprouting up, and we planted 2 tomato plants because they smell good too and you can always use some tomatoes around the house!  We also make salsa and home made pasta sauce so it will come in handy fo' sho'!

 See the basil!  It was the fastest to come up and there is a lot of it there...I cant wait for it to get more mature.

 Another big YAY from last year is my strawberry patch.  Its a little overgrown because Joe thought these were weeds, thank goodness i stopped him before he started yanking because I have strawberries growing!!  We planted these from little seedlings we got from walmart and I really only expected like 1/2 to survive, but all of them are flowering and have fruit growing.  Really surprised and happy about that!

 See this strawberry plant has some baby strawberries and the pretty flowers growing, so happy to have my own strawberries, they are so tasty.

 And who could forget the front of the house!  We planted 2 yellow rose bushes (yellow rose of Texas anyone?!) and white plant that I dont know what it is but hey it was pretty and a smller multi colored flower thing.  Yes thats the technical name, you can google it! (please dont its not really real I was just kidding!).

All in all I only had 5 plants die from the drought, 3 of which were $5 berry plants from walmart that I kinda thought would die anyway.  The other 2 were a tragedy because they were pretty and purple but I cant find them this spring so we replaced them with a bottle brush plant which I will share pictures of tomorrow.

Im so happy spring is here and even more happy that I can now sit under this beautiful umbrella more now that its a little warmer.  It was dusk and hard to get a great picture but the shape of this umbrella caught my eye and cherry on top the pattern is amazing.  It makes me do a happy dance whenever I see it open :)

Project Housewife Out!

Family Tree

I have this blank wall in my bedroom that I wanted to do something with but couldnt figure out what.  We toyed with shelved that we put pictures on, but the door would hit it so that was thrown out.  Then I saw an article in a home design magazine (I cant remember which one it was a while ago) that had a girl sitting in a chair and a tree wall decal was next to her.  Well I started thinking it would be cool to have  BIG tree on the wall that I would hang pictures from (hense the title family tree).  So I was on the hunt for the best tree I could find.  I went to a bunch of websites with no great success until I went to Etsy.com and of course I had countless pages of great trees to choose from.  Here is a link to the tree I bought.  Great price, awesome product.  I wish they had a few more colors to choose from but oh well, the tree was worth it.  So I get the tree in the mail, and since I ordered different colors it came in seperate pieces.  Like, the leaves all had to be put on individually...wow that took 6 hours.  No joke it was a chore.  Below is a picture of the finished product and I think it was well worth the 8 total hours it took to do this.

I havent added the pictures yet because I want to just enjoy the tree right now.  Although I have a confession, I want to change my wall color to a slate gray, like the leaves in this picture.  Dont know how Im going to do that since I dont want to get rid of the tree, sounds like a project for late 2012 :)  Anyway, this tree, the seller was great they sent instructions and a video link showing you how to do it.  Putting up the base was pretty easy, you just have to go slow and be careful not to rip it.  Patience is a key with this since it does take a long time.  I love my tree, but what do you think?!  Should I add pictures to it or leave it alone?  If you had a big empty wall what would you put on it?  I want to hear from you!!

Project Housewife Out!