Garden Progress

Well, we have been working our butts off trying to get our yard looking great and our raised beds finished and the results are starting to amaze even me! This week we did some serious mowing and weed eating (in places it had never been done)! My back is still sore from all of the pushing and bending over I have had to do but it is definitely worth it. We have also been mulching around our bushes and flowers (something else that had never been done) and we have had so many of our neighbors stop by and say how good it is looking! Our next door neighbors said that they have never seen it look this good! That made me feel really great because their yard is IMMACULATE! They are retired teachers and spend almost all of their time outdoors working on their gorgeous gardens! Anyway, I wanted to share some of the pictures of the garden that I took. I will show the before again as well as some during pictures and some current pictures. We are not yet finished and hope to get a lot done today and tomorrow too!

Garden Progress:

Before: It was a mess. The landlords kept their wood scraps here.

During: My husband and I cleaned up all the wood and piled it to the side. We were amazed at how deep the wood scraps were. It took us 4 hours to clean up! We discovered some amazing compost underneath so we decided to create a huge compost pile!

Current: This is what the garden area currently looks like. As you can see, the wood and compost are all piled to the side and Nick has built two raised beds. We are hoping to start out with one flower bed and one vegetable bed. Our next step is to pick up the dirt from our local nursery (it is super cheap there) along with some more plants and get everything planted in the ground! I am so excited!

Here is a close up shot of our compost pile. It is a work in progress!

Well, that’s all I have to share with you today! I will hopefully have more to share later! I have some other surprises to share with you all as well so stay tuned for those tomorrow!

It's a Rainy Day

And I was hoping to take some pictures of my newly opened iris but it has rained almost all day long so of course I couldn’t get out there! Instead I decided to show you some pictures of my handsome husband! I was bored last night and snapped a picture of him.

He obviously caught on to what I was doing.

Then he just started getting goofy.

I guess he was tired of the picture taking!

Well, that’s it for now! Did you know that, as of today, school is officially out for the summer? Yup! It’s quite exciting really. Now I can work on my crafting and gardening! Yippee!

A Stormy Evening

We got our first spring storm yesterday evening. The wind picked up around 3:45 and intensified until around 5:00. The sky looked really eerie and we got a couple of showers but not enough to wet the ground. It sure threatened though. Thunder was rumbling and the clouds were rolling. This is actually really typical of a storm here in the valley. We usually get threatened more than anything. Anyway, I wanted to share some pictures of the sky.

Crazy huh? My husband thought I was losing my mind when I stepped out on the front porch to snap some pictures. I don’t think he understands that I am sharing my life on a blog! Haha! Well, speaking of my life, tomorrow is the last day of school and I can’t wait! I am off to bed to get some much needed rest!

The Princess and the Goblen

For those of you who don’t know, I LOVE to read! I will read almost anything, as long as it is something that is not too violent, provocative, or against my faith. Now, I am not saying that I enjoy everything I read but I am the type of person who will usually just endure the book and finish it. However, not very often do I find a book that I struggle to finish. That being said, I want to be able to share my books with you as I finish them.

The most recent book that I finished was actually one that I read for my book club (which I will share more about later) and I did not enjoy it. It was way too provocative for my taste but I stuck it out so that I could actually participate in our group.

The book I do want to share today is one I read quite a while ago and decided to pick up again. This book is called “The Princess and the Goblin” and it was written by George MacDonald in 1872. The book is actually written as a children’s novel but it is one that adults can definitely enjoy as well!

The book is about a little princess who is protected by her friend Curdie from the goblin miners who live beneath the castle. What I love the most about it though is that although it is great for children and has a wonderful story, there are also some underlying themes and meanings that only an adult can truly pick up.

If I were to rate this book, I would definitely give it a 5 out of 5 stars! I love how well written this book is and how MacDonald was able to tell a lovely children’s story as well as include some hidden messages! His writing is very fluid and interesting. It was very easy to get swept up into this book!

Here is a review I found on Amazon:

Amazon.com Review
As always with George MacDonald, everything here is more than meets the eye: this in fact is MacDonald’s grace-filled vision of the world. Said to be one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s childhood favorites, The Princess and the Goblin is the story of the young Princess Irene, her good friend Curdie–a minor’s son–and Irene’s mysterious and beautiful great great grandmother, who lives in a secret room at the top of the castle stairs. Filled with images of dungeons and goblins, mysterious fires, burning roses, and a thread so fine as to be invisible and yet–like prayer–strong enough to lead the Princess back home to her grandmother’s arms, this is a story of Curdie’s slow realization that sometimes, as the princess tells him, “you must believe without seeing.” Simple enough for reading aloud to a child (as I’ve done myself more than once with my daughter), it’s rich enough to repay endless delighted readings for the adult. –Doug Thorpe

Well, I hope that you enjoyed reading about this book. Please feel free to ask me any questions that you may have! I am an open book!

Baseball State Champions!

So can you tell what our weekend consisted of? Baseball games! I could not be more proud of these boys! Being youth pastors in a small town is so rewarding and it’s moments like these that really bring tears to my eyes! Don’t they just look overcome with joy? These are our boys after winning the Colorado 2A state championship! They had a 15 game winning streak. You can find a video about them here.

Here is the entire team! Don’t they look so handsome!

One of the very talented pitchers, Jason Frink. This boy is 6′5″! My 2nd graders love when he comes to visit!

Fun at the Zoo!

This past Wednesday we took our 2nd graders to the zoo. Now for those of you who don’t know me, you must know that I LOVE the zoo! I am worse than a kid when I get there! I get so excited about the animals that I literally get goose bumps. Now, what I didn’t realize is how much more I would love it when I actually got to take “real” kids there! Haha! I loved seeing their reactions to the animals! I ended up spending my day at the zoo with 2 different groups of giggly girls. I wasn’t supposed to have a group but I had some parents bail last minute. Anyway, here are some pictures that I took. I will walk you through the details as we go.

Here is one of the monkeys that let me actually get a picture of him! These little guys were so cute! Definitely my favorite of the monkeys!

The magnificent lion on Pride Rock. He is by far the best part of the zoo!

Some funny penguins.

Just a crazy Ostrich wanting to entertain us!

Well, that was a wrap up of our day! We all had so much fun even though some got sick and others were just plain ol’ tired! I hope you enjoyed the pictures from our trip! Have a great evening!

Developing My Green Thumb

This year Nick and I have been feeling very ambitious about growing our own plants. We thought we would give it a try and we were amazed at how great it felt to see our hard work pay off! Anyway, I say this because we are so excited to start a full garden this summer and even though it might not turn out as we hope, we will at least be able to say we attempted it! Haha!

As of right now, our yard is a disaster. I am not kidding. It’s gross. I can’t even stand to look at it sometimes and that’s AFTER I have spent a lot of time cleaning it up! We don’t own the house we are currently in so we have had a landlord (well his granddaughter actually) do most of the yard work. Now she lives an hour away so you can imagine how much things get done. Last year I think the grass got mowed three times…seriously. So this year we have asked the landlord if he would be willing to let us do most of it and he agreed, gratefully. He even said “do whatever you feel will make the yard look better”. He even told us that he would be willing to pay for the materials! Sa-weet!

Anyway, there is some hope for us because we are seeing things like this.

And we are growing things like these.Now imagine 12 big windowsills lined up just like that all over our house and you can get a picture of what we are dealing with!

Here is where our garden is going. It used to be the landlord’s wood pile (it’s a mess now). We plan on cleaning it up this week so that we can get a good start on our raised beds. We hope to have one flower bed and one vegetable bed. We hope that they will do well but, like I said, we haven’t quite developed our green thumbs yet! We are still working on it!

Well, that being said, it will be interesting to see how our yard looks at the end of the summer. I do know that something as simple as mulch can make a yard look a lot better so I am going to start there (after I pull the weeds and till the dirt beneath the plants).

Until later, have a great night!

Welcome to My Life!

I have started this blog in order to share a piece of my world. I live in beautiful Westcliffe, Colorado where we literally get sunshine 320 days a year (hints my blog title). I love the outdoors and am trying to live simply. I hope to share my love for Christ, everything crafty, gardening, the mountains, and the creatures around me! Since my husband and I are currently trying to conceive our first child, that will be something I continually blog about as well! :D I may also choose to share my passion for teaching with you. I teach 2nd grade and truly love every minute of it! Thanks so much for allowing me to my heart with you! I hope you will be as blessed as I am!