Our Garden Gnome

About a month ago, Curt came home from work with a gift for me (he's such a great husband, right?!?!).

He bought me my very own 'Travelocity Roaming Gnome'.....

 Does he look familiar?  He's the star of Travelocity commercials, and also makes special guest appearances on 'The Amazing Race' (my favourite reality TV show).

I actually first 'met' the gnome back in 2008 at the Venetian, in Las Vegas...

 Random story - as I stood looking at Curt while he took this picture, I noticed that the person standing right beside him was someone I knew (a member from the golf course I was working at, at that time)...neither one of us knew the other was going to be there...but, we happened to 'bump into each other' on the Vegas Strip!

Anyway, Curt brought this guy home, and he found a home in our front garden....

...right among the hens and chickens, and some weeds!

 But, he's a roaming gnome, so he obviously hasn't stayed put!  Every few days, I come home and notice that Curt has moved him he has roamed to a new spot.  Here are a few of the other places he has called 'home' over the last few weeks...

...with the roses...

....and, with the irises and a hosta...

Seeing where the gnome is located is now one of the many reasons I look forward to coming home at the end of the day!  And, it seems that it will never grow old, I still get a good laugh when I see that he has moved.

Celebrating Dad!

This past weekend was another three day weekend for me (loving my Friday CWW!), so I decided to go to Acton to visit family and celebrate my dad - his birthday was on Thursday (June 14th), and of course, Father's Day was Sunday. 

Curt stayed in Belleville for the weekend because he had his own plans - he played in a golf tournament on Friday and again on Sunday.  The tournament on Friday was an Engineering Tournament, and he played with his friend Matt, his brother Mark, and Mark's friend Matt.  The four of them won, with a score of -13!  And Sunday's round was a qualifying event for a yearly tournament at Bay of Quinte, the Pell Cup - Curt played another great round, shooting 86!

Friday's winning team...Matt W, Mark, Matt L and Curt!  First place was Callaway sunglasses, which the guys are modelling in this picture.  Notice that Matt W and Curt have white sunglasses - what you can't see is that they had rhinestones :)  Thankfully, they were able to exchange those in the Pro Shop.

So, when Curt left for the course on Friday, I left for Acton.  It was nice to have the morning at home, and I thought leaving mid-day would mean a quick drive...unfortunately that didn't happen, traffic was pretty bad and it was really slow across Toronto.  Oh well, I still arrived in time to visit with my mom and the kids for awhile.  I was hoping I would get to see Nolan get off the school bus, but my mom had actually picked him up early for the day.

Friday evening was spent visiting with my parents, enjoying the dinner my mom prepared for us - thanks mom!  And, after dinner it was back to Tom and Krystle's to visit with them and play some games. 

Because Curt wasn't with me this time, I decided to stay at my parents...but, Saturday morning I got a call from Nolan and he said 'Auntie Boo, do you want to come and watch me play lacrosse?'  I obviously couldn't say no to that, so it was off to the arena.  It was fun to watch - each team had a little superstar, and no, it wasn't Nolan :)  Apparently Nolan usually gets a few assists per game, but not this game.  He wasn't really into running during this particular game, but he still broke a sweat?!?  I took pictures during the game, but none of them turned out :( 

Here is one from the drive home, look past the silly face he made, and notice the sweaty hair....

After lacrosse and lunch, I went to spend some time with my mom (my dad was working) while the kids had a nap.  One of the things we did was set up a kiddie pool in my parents backyard!  Curt and I actually got this pool as a wedding gift (from a friend with a unique sense of humour?), and it hasn't left the box in the seven years since we received it.  We pulled it out of the crawl space for our yard sale a few weeks ago, and I asked my mom if she would be interested in having it - and, she was. 

Even though the water was FREEZING, Nolan and Abby had a great time playing in it before dinner on Saturday.

I think Abby was making a funny face because the water was so cold, and, as you can see, Nolan thought it was hilarious...

And, after another great dinner and dessert (thanks mom!) it was time for dad to open his gifts!

Here, Abby is helping Papa open his gift from the kids and grandkids, a GPS...

My dad knew what this was as soon as he saw the word 'Garmin' on the box; Abby thought she knew what this was when she saw the picture on the box, she exclaimed 'iPad'!

And here, Nolan gets in on the presents, helping Papa open his gift from Aunt Mary...

So, Saturday was a busy, but fun day!  And, this post has gotten a little long...but, stick with me, I can sum up Sunday quickly ;)

Sunday, after church and a chicken BBQ, dad and I had the chance to play golf at Blue Springs.  Our tee time was supposed to be 3:21pm, so we would have only been able to play nine holes, but because it was a cloudy day, there were a lot of cancellations and we were able to get off at 1:39pm instead.  And, we got to play a full 18 holes, and only got a little wet on the 16th hole.

A Blue Springs view I will never get tired of; from the 17th tee, looking down to 17 green and the pond...

 Unfortunately, neither dad or I were playing very well...but, I was just thankful to have the chance to play and spend time on the golf course with my dad. 

After our round, and a quick dinner at Tom and Krytle's, it was time to hit the road.  

Thanks to the family for another great weekend!

Another First

In my last post, I talked about a summer first...Curt and I had a garage sale.

Well, this post is about another summer first...I've planted a small vegetable garden.  To my family, stop laughing!

I think it was about three years ago when Curt created the space for a vegetable garden.  He found some railroad ties on Kijiji, and they were sitting in the backyard waiting for a purpose.  So, we used those to create the border of our garden, and then filled it with a load (or two) of topsoil.  The year we did all that, it was too late to plant veggies, so we just put some extra plants in there with plans to transplant them the following season. 

Unfortunately, we made it too big and the topsoil we put in wasn't great...and, the plants that we put in there were randomly placed and hard to identify the next season.  So, we kinda ignored the garden and it ended up looking like this...

(please don't judge, it's in the backyard, no one really sees it)...

This picture is actually from May 2010 (I thought I had a more current picture, but can't find it)...so, it wasn't that bad last year, but it was still very much a work in progress!

So, early this season I decided that this was the year to get the garden back in control!  I knew that in order to achieve that goal, I had to practically start fresh...so, I got rid of almost everything in there, including the plants!  I transplanted a few things, but some stuff ended up in the compost pile with the weeds - random ground cover plants that we don't have a place for, and a few annuals that weren't doing all that well.

Once that was done, we borrowed a rototiller and put it to work.

And finally, I was ready to plant.

This is what it looked like by Sunday evening...

That's just half the garden, the other half is still mostly bare.  There are a few hostas and another plant (some type of iris, maybe) that was too big/healthy to pull out.

So, at this point, I felt like the size of the garden was still going to be a problem - I would have to walk through the dirt to get to the plants in the middle.

Solution, buy a few limestone patio stones to create a little walkway...

Ooops, the bottom left corner of the garden is still full of weeds ;)  I guess I'm so pleased with the rest of the garden, I don't even see those!

And now, a few 'portraits'...

 

 Cucumbers, peas and beef steak tomatoes.  I also planted green peppers and cherry tomatoes.

Those 'garden stakes' labeling each plant, an idea from Pinterest.  I went to a few stores and asked for stir sticks in the paint department...harder than it sounds; the person at the first store would only give me ONE, and the guy at the second store, told me he wasn't supposed to give them away, and then winked at me as he handed me TWO?!?!  ha!

So, now we'll have to see if I can keep up with the weeding and watering...and whether or not these plants actually yield any vegetables!

Garage Sale Fail

Last weekend, Curt and I had a garage sale...a first for us...and, perhaps our last!

It was a multi-family garage sale; the lady across the street, Bonnie, and our next door neighbour, Len, both had stuff out as well.  I think Bonnie probably had the most success - she had a lot of 'bigger' items, and got rid of most of them.  Len, like us, had mostly smaller stuff and I don't think he did too well.

The forecast for Saturday wasn't great, but Bonnie was determined to go ahead with things anyway, so we just went along with it.  And, when we woke up at 6:30am, it was looking pretty grey and it was pretty chilly.  But, we set to work and got all set up.  We had decided not to price each item individually, instead, we set up four separate tables...we had a $0.50 table, a $1 table, a $2 table and a $5 table.  Oh, and we had a book table too.  So, as we were taking things out of boxes, we just placed it on the appropriate table...it made setting up pretty quick and easy!  We had a few other items that we priced individually, but they were larger, so we could place them on the driveway or the garden wall on their own.

A picture of our set up - from the garage, looking down the driveway...

Notice the redneck tables we used!  Old pails served as the legs, and sheets of plywood created the table tops.  The table we used for the books, borrowed from another neighbour.

We had advertised that the sale would start at 8am, and people started arriving right around that time...which was a relief because we weren't ready for any 'early bird' shoppers.

After we got things set up, Curt puttered around in the garage and ended up pulling out a few more items to add.  As he was doing that, he priced a few items by sticking a piece of duct tape on the piece and writing the price on the duct tape.  At one point, he placed the half roll of duct tape on the $0.50 table and walked away...well, one of the 'shoppers' spotted it and bought it!  Ha!  So then, Curt remembered that he had a case of duct tape in the garage (courtesy of my Aunt Mary!), so he pulled out a few more rolls, just to see if they would sell....and they did!  Overall, I think the duct tape was the best seller of the day!  And the second best seller of the day, golf balls!  Curt had made bags of a dozen mixed golf balls...just old scuffed balls that we aren't likely to use...and I think all but one of those sold.

Unfortunately, the dark clouds rolled in around 10am or 10:30am...

Once these clouds rolled in, we started getting nervous!  We made room in the garage so we were prepared to just pull the tables inside if we needed to.

About half an hour later, the rain started, so we quickly pulled some plastic over the tables to see how long it would last...

The rain got pretty heavy for awhile, so we figured anyone that had been out for garage sales, had probably gone home for the day.  So, when the rain slowed down a bit, we started pulling things into the garage and called it a day.

At that point, the plan was to pull everything back out today to try again.  But, the weather forecast wasn't great...they were calling for more rain!  And, it's 5pm now and it still hasn't rained?!?!  Oh well, it was dry, but it wasn't really that nice out either.

Now we have to decide if we leave the tables set up in the garage (making it impossible to get in and out of the garage or to access anything inside) and try again in a few weeks...or, if we should just box everything up and donate it somewhere.