Party Crashing ...

Over Labor Day weekend, I was lonely and pathetic, and knew my sister and her husband were camping nearby at Kanopolis Lake. They were also with her in-laws. I felt a little bad about inviting myself, but they were good sports about it.


I helped by toasting the marshmellows on a retractable rod.


Honestly, I can't remember ever actually eating S'Mores before, but they were yuuuuummie. :)

Hangin' out in the backyard.....

Remember this unique idea for gardening?


Well, I finally got it going in OUR backyard.

BEFORE:


AFTER:




I've got some lettuce growing in the top.


And some flowers in the bottom. I think next year that I'll put in pansies so we have a completely edible hanging garden. :)


I drilled some holes in the bottom for draining, and Erik is the designated watering boy. :)

I want to put this in our lattice portion of our patio, too. I have shorter ones for pretty flowers (or pansies, because I can put those in a salad!). So stay tuned to see the rest of this idea come to fruition!

Also, I think this qualifies as a "green" project. How? The gutters are from my buddy, Coop. He had them and was going to scrap them, so I rescued them from his house and repurposed them for our backyard! :)

R3 — Milk

It's probably the longest I've ever stood and stared intently at the dairy case. I stood, eyeing the glass bottles through the doors. To buy or not to buy locally produced milk? That was the question ... I just couldn't decide. For 1/2 a gallon, it's about $1 more, but .... I believe in supporting the local economy (Junction City, but close enough). Oh, what to do?

Seriously, I stood there for more than a full minute debating the issue.


In the end, I decided to just go for it. Honestly, I don't think I've ever had milk from a glass bottle before. There is a grippy part that serves as a handle, which is fantastically easy to use! One of the big bonuses for the glass bottles is the milk is supposed to taste better. I guess I'm not a milk snob, because neither Erik nor I can tell the difference. So does it justify forking over more moo-lah for the milk?


For the time being, with just the two of us consuming barely a half a gallon of milk per week, I suppose the $1 isn't going to break the bank. We'll have to see.

Any thoughts on getting local milk from our blog readers? Is it worth it? Not?

For anyone curious, here's a few articles I found about the dairy: HERE and HERE.

One item mentioned in one of the articles, the bottles are completely reused ... which is nice. We recycle our plastic bottles, but how much of that is truly reused? Who knows?!!?!? I guess it doesn't have to travel so far and takes less gas .... which is positive, right?

Crossover — Ian's Sr. Portraits

Ok, so I haven't yet posted this on the the Heartland Blog, but I'm crazy about this top photo!


A little more traditional, but with my buttery 1.4 lens, it just makes it pop. :)

I'll get my slideshow rockin' out on this and posted on the bizzzzness blog (hopefully by tomorrow).

Patio Process X

The fallout of the project ....

My fingers ended up with GOBS of blisters. ;(


AND YES, ROBIN......I DID WEAR GLOVES!!!!!!!! ;)


My favorite pair of jeans, however, didn't fare so well. :(




Anyone know how to get creosote out of jeans? I ended up with it after moving railroad ties to line the garden ... and have used the heck out of oxi clean, but to no avail!


I luckily had knee pads for my knees ... but Erik didn't ...


Ugh. But his jeans are better and mine are not. :(

Patio Process IX

The first bit.

It was not exactly easy to put the stones in. I wanted it to be sort of random looking. I didn't want them to be orderly looking. Ya know?


And they're all in!

Patio Process VIII

AND THE PAVERS GO IN!!!!!!!!!!!

I decided we'd opt to ring the patio with these red pavers to nicely frame the limestone. It'd also help to take up the space, since I wasn't convinced we'd have enough limestone for the large area I wanted to cover (150 square feet, yo!).


THRILLING!!!!!! :)


I probably should have built up more sand under them, but .... yeah. With the extra AB3 rock, we decided to get less sand. Good in theory, but ... well ... we needed MORE sand. So, Coop's truck comes to the resue!


We ended up with three more times. Easy going in, but coming out .... well, it was a bit more exhausting.

Patio Process VII

After the last post, we had the sand delivered. :)

BEFORE:


DURING:


AFTER:


What do we do with all the sand, you ask? :)


We then compacted it like good llamas. :)

Patio Process VI

After we got the rock put in for under the patio project (in THIS post), there was a bit of rock left .....


Well, we then were able to give it to our neighbor! It even fit into the back of the truck. :)

Hey — I'm busy!

Doing some globetrotting! Stopping in to share a photo. See the Heartland Blog for a *few* more details.