Monday, March 31, 2008

Spring has sprung

Spring has been here in our part of California for awhile. I thought I'd share some photos of the neighborhood from our morning walks. Seth and I try to walk every morning but realize that life does get in the way occasionally especially on Tuesday mornings when they have to be at science class at 7:45 a.m. I'm not much of a really early morning person except when June, July and August hit around here. Then if what you want to do outside is not done by 8 a.m. just give it up. It will be way too hot for anything after that. Seth and I have been walking for a little while now. We're up to about a mile. I realize that for some that is not much of an accomplishment but I have a lot of weight to lose and I figure I'm doing pretty good for me. Now my walking partner tries to heckle me into, you know, running an extra mile but I just ignore him.
This little cutie is right on our street. A very nice couple bought it about 2 years ago. They've been doing quite a lot to it.
This one is also on our street and she has the greenest yard, which is quite an accomplishment out here.
This is one of the "main" streets we walk on. All the way to the end and there are days that seems a long way down there.
This is one of my favorite houses. The picture really doesn't do it justice. They even have an adorable pond in the front yard.
This is a side picture of my most favorite house. The backyard is so cute. It recently sold so I'm kinda anxious to see how they take care of it.
Here's the front of it.
Here's my two walking partners. Seth and Rascal. You can barely see the four legged partner though.
This little backyard is so cute. The house isn't much though. Hopefully if you click on the photo and get a larger view you can see how cute it is. I was being carefully so that people wouldn't think I was scoping out their house for robbery or something.
This craftsman's beauty is at the loop where we take the last "main" street home. This end of the neighborhood was built up in the 1920's. So the homes are pretty awesome and this particular house probably sits on at least a 1/2 acre lot. The sidewalks have the dates they were poured stamped into them.
Here's another cutie. I didn't get too close because they have dogs and Rascal hates competition.
This beauty was bought a couple of years ago and they have worked tirelessly on it to make it shine. Our neighborhood was built from the 20's to the 40's and even a few newer than that. We live in a county area even though we're city. Go figure.
Hopefully you've enjoyed your "walk" with us.
Till next time, Amanda

Friday, March 28, 2008

Catching up

I just can't believe that a month has gone by since I last posted. At least I have a good excuse, if there is such a thing. I've gotten tons done to include painting the new closet in the guesthouse, getting my father-in-law moved in. I even put spring break to good use by painting the living room, going through the closets and drawers, cleaning out my 3 filing cabinets and I managed to help a friend clean out her sewing room. I hope everyone has been doing well and had a great Easter celebration. We had the hubby's family here so I was glad I did get the living room painted. I've even worked in the yard. We pretty much have to get things done before June because it just gets too hot after that. We average a lot of triple digit days here in the summer. Way too hot to do much of anything.
I've certainly got a lot to share with everyone. Where to start? I'd also like to do several posts chronicling our remodel that we did two years ago today. I can't believe that it's been 2 years already.
Here's the guest house closet being built. We now have a glorified laundry room instead of a garage.
A small painting job that I got done. I've been wanting to do this for awhile now. This little phone niche is in our hallway. The niche is there but the phone line is long gone.
Here's the tables set for Easter. It looked so pretty. While I was finishing up painting the living room I got an epiphany. Hey, no one says we have to use this as a living room! Why not use the dining room as a keeping room (you can see it in the back of the photo) and use the living room as the dining room. All we had in here was one large couch. Our dining room is small (9x12) and whenever we have someone over or host family game night there's just not enough room to accommodate everyone in there. Someone always has to sit at the bottle neck of the dining room entrance. Everyone liked the idea so we made the switch. We've not made anything permanent yet. Just living with it to see if we like it. So far we do.
Here's Tina waiting for dinner.
Here she is in the backyard after the Easter egg hunt. You can see in the background that we did manage to get to our flower beds.
I'm so glad spring is here. Happy blogging everyone!