Gardening - Help!

I need ideas for our yard this year. It's looking pretty sad. The woman that lived here before us was a little eccentric and the majority of our first and second spring here was spent "taming" the jungle she left behind. I like this tree, but I don't know what it is or what to do with it . . . Are you supposed to trim the branches or just let it grow all willy-nilly?Maybe I'll post more pictures of my horrible looking yard tomorrow and ask for more advice. I'm very needy like that. In TTC news, we have decided to hold off on taking Clomid this cycle. Because of the hysteroscopy, I have no idea what cycle day I am on and I just didn't feel like this cycle was "it". Does that make sense? Probably not. We just felt that our timing this month isn't right and we want to wait another cycle. I'm trying to be patient, and now that I have had the hysteroscopy and physically have a script for Clomid in my hands, I don't feel as much pressure as I did when people were telling me to "just relax" and "not worry about it". So stay tuned for more boring posts about my boring life :-)

Painting, Prom, and I'm PR . . .

. . .etty sick of all this snow!!! HAHAHA! One of Mr. Joe's cousins gets to go to Disney World for work and I am stuck here in this crappy call center with all this crappy cold weather. Oh, the injustice of it all!!! Hopefully, my days in the call center are numbered - more on that later.

First, the painting: Mr. Joe has been hard at work while I was watching the Olympics busy doing other things, and we no longer have the hideous green bathroom which I wanted to show you all before we changed it. I'm sorry that you have to miss out on it, but imagine the color that Tinker Bell wears (kind of like the color of pixie dust) and you should have a good idea of what it looked like in there - like she exploded in our bathroom. The bathroom is not 100% finished yet, so I don't have any pictures. I know, I know, you are super disappointed. Mr. Joe is not too crazy about the color (he picked it out this time so I'm off the hook), called Cayman Blue by Behr- but as he says, it is way better than what we had (AMEN).

In addition to the bathroom, we also painted the hallway with a color called Butter Rum and I have pictures:

Initially, I picked this color because I love butter and rum. It just so happens that I really like how the color goes with the kitchen. I think we're coming close to the homeish feeling I'm looking for. My parents are coming over tomorrow to help finish up our kitchen remodel, so we are almost done. I cannot wait until I have the cabinets up and the island my brother made before he passed away in. Then we can get started on the rest of the house. Rest assured, that will involve my asking you what you think of our ideas and a desperate plea for design advice. You are in for a treat, my friends!

Next up: Prom! Mr. Joe's youngest sister is going to prom and asked me to go shopping with her. She's fairly quiet and soft spoken so I was SO EXCITED(!!!!!!) when she asked. It has been approx 500 years since I went to prom. She tried on so many dresses and they all looked great on her, but there was one which I think suited her perfectly. She doesn't know about my blog so I will cut her head off for privacy:

And here's the back:

I love it on her, and so did my MIL and most importantly, SisterJoe loved it too. Should be a no brainer right? Apparently, one of her friends told her she was not allowed to wear blue because her dress is going to be blue, so even though she loved it, she was worried about making one of her friends mad by wearing a blue dress. This friend hasn't even purchased a dress yet! Is this how it is in high school now? I tried to convince her that she should get the dress that she wants, because forbidding your friends to wear the same color as you is just silly. There is no way that this girl would be the ONLY girl with a BLUE dress at prom. You only get one prom!!! She is going to look around a little more and see if she can find a place to try on a dress that she found online, but I hope that she doesn't choose a dress because of what some "friend" thinks. She's such a nice, quiet girl, and she looked beautiful in that dress.

I was so jelly of all the girls trying on their prom dresses! I think I am going to ask one of the boys that I work with at the movie theater if they need a date for their prom. I would make an AWESOME DATE. At least I think so.

It's begining to look alot like . . . .

*ETA* My good work friend, Lisette says that she thinks it will look Christmasy at Christmas time and Watermelony during the summer. Do you agree?
Um, help!!



I am not an interior decorator in any way shape or form. I play one in my mind, though. Ever read MckMama's blog? I love the colors of her home. There's something about her orangey - reddish walls that look so warm and inviting and homeish. I know, homeish is not a word - I'm not a linguist.




I just play one on my blog.




In an effort to give my almost remodeled kitchen a homeish look, Mr. Joe and I decided (read: I bullied Mr. Joe into seeing things my way) decided that we wanted to paint our kitchen a rusty, bricky, red color. We have deep chocolatey brown colored cabinets (thanks Mom and Dad for getting rid of your old kitchen and giving it to us!) and I thought that a rust color would make our kitchen look warm and rich - like melty fondue chocolate.




Question: is it sad that everything reminds me of fatty foods? What kind of freak wants to be reminded of chocolate when they walk into their kitchen while they are actively trying to lose weight?



Answer: a fat kid like myself.




We decided to go with Morocco red by Behr. I set Mr. Joe to work Mr. Joe and I got to it and painted the kitchen. This was the result:

I love it. The picture makes it look rosier than it actually is in person. It looks really warm and inviting homeish, just like we wanted . . .

But there's a little problem.

The kitchen has a window into our living room. We thought this was a great idea, because it keeps the open feel of the floor plan and allows me to watch my stories on tv while I do the dishes.

I should probably tell you that my favorite color is green. One day, before Mr. Joe repaints it, I will show you the hideousness that is our bathroom. Let's just say that you need sunglasses to go in there without going blind. I learned my lesson after that. We painted our living room a greeny, earthy- feeling color that I also loved.

Can you see where this is going?

Here is what my house looks like when you're standing in the living room:

Now, we intend to replace the furniture we have with brown leather stuff and making the room look warmer and homeisher (there I go again!) with other changes. Please be honest with me though (and ignore the three holes from our fire:

Does my house look too Christmasy?

I think Mr. Joe will strangle me if I decide we need to paint again. So maybe by "be honest with me" I meant, "lie through your teeth."

Help!!

So my house was on fire last night . . .

. . . but its not as bad as it sounds. Just an outlet, no other damage because thankfully I was right there when it happened and we got it under control right away. Sadly, we didn't need to call the fire department and invite delicious firemen into our home. I asked Mr. Joe if we could just let the whole house burn down and pretend that we weren't home, but it probably would have taken a long time to get going - it was a slow burn lol :-)

The best part of this is that I got to say I told you so to my hubby because when I was doing dishes the other day, I smelled something burning and searched until I discovered that the outlet was warm and smelled like burning rubber. The thing is, we had a cheap table/lamp combo from walmart plugged into the outlet, so we thought it was the lamp. We unplugged it, but for the rest of the night I was freaking out. Hubby laughed at me and told me I was overreacting, but I just knew that something was still not right.

The next night (last night) it was his turn to do the dishes, so he was at the sink with the dishwasher, garbage disposal and sink light on, and I started to smell the burning rubber again - even though the lamp was unplugged (sorry walmart, your products are not as shotty as I thought). I looked over at the outlet and SMOKE WAS BILLOWING OUT OF THE WALL!!!!!! I think I shouted "OMG! The house is on fire!!!" (I'm a total drama queen, I own that) and made him turn everything off. Then we had to shut off the breaker for that outlet, but we had no idea which one it was because the turds that owned the house before us mislabled everything, so we just kept shutting things off until we found it. At this point I called my dad, because, well duh - he knows everything (for really really).

when we finally pulled the outlet out of the wall, it looked like this (be ready to understand just how much I overreacted):

I KNOW RIGHT?? Those wires are supposed to be white, but they're brown/black. Totally burned because MY HOUSE WAS ON FIRE!!!!!!!

Also, we don't have smoke detectors, and this has just confirmed that we need to get on that. Nevermind that we have been living in the house for 2 years. I am the master of procrastination - I need to have a fire lit under my ass in my wall to get anything done. Consider it lit.