Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

Lee and I have known ever since we bought our house that we wanted to start a garden. Our back yard is pretty big (and private) compared to other homes in this neck of the woods, and that was one of the biggest things that sold us on the house. Ever since then, we've been thinking about where our little garden will go. As spring rolled around, we started to take note of which areas of the yard get full sunlight, and decided on the left sideyard, which until now had pretty much been unused space.

First and foremost, Lee wanted a salsa garden, with all the fixins to make homemade salsa - tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, etc. But as we were shopping for our seedlings, we also picked up cucumbers, squash, and basil. Lee used timbers to create a garden bed, we dug up the existing dirt (by far the hardest part), added a mixture of garden soil and top soil, and voila! Here's the empty garden bed:

Sugar was a big help. Not. She just sat there looking cute, you know, for moral support.

And here's the bed with the first seedlings and seeds planted:

Please note, this is not a very big space. Although we could've made the bed much bigger, this was the wood Lee had laying around so this became the size of the garden. But we bought way too many plants and seeds and so everything is planted much closer together than the packets call for. So everything will probably grow together in one big jumble. We did add the stepping stones so that hopefully we'll be able to get to the middle of the garden to pick things once everything has grown up big and tall. This is assuming though that we'll be able to keep all of this hard work alive and growing, which I'm thinking is probably about a 50/50 chance at best.

Here's the garden about a week later:

The only things we bought as seed were the cucumbers and squash, and it was exciting when those first started poking up. We had planted them in mounds, then once they came up we thinned them out and planted in a row:

The idea is to put a trellis behind them once they start to grow tall, to free up some space in the garden. Other than the seeds popping up, not much else has happened. We've been diligent about watering, and we've been lucky to get a lot of rain lately. I think our main problem though will be critters. We live in a neighborhood, but our yard backs up to woods and we've had no shortage of deer, rabbits, and even foxes. I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that just as our veggies start to develop, a deer will come and eat them all. I'm trying to prepare myself now so I'm not too disappointed later. We did do some research on deer repellant though and installed a super high-tech repellant device:

Yep, that's soap on a rope. Evidently the smell of the soap is supposed to deter deer. We also read that sprinkling human hair clippings around the garden helps keep critters away. We didn't have any human hair handy, but our dog is shedding like crazy so after we brushed her we sprinkled some of her hair around. I'm pretty sure that counts. 

Speaking of Sugar, you'd think that having a dog in the yard would help keep the animals away, and maybe it will, but Sugar's not exactly a guard dog. She doesn't even bark, she just whines every once in a while. And it's mostly because she wants to come in the house, not because she's protecting the homefront. I think if she saw a deer in the yard she'd try be friends and play with it, not attack it.

Anyway, hopefully our little garden will grow and prosper. And some day soon Lee will get his salsa.

Potluck Throwdown

We have a wonderful tradition in the Interactive Department at McKinney - the potluck. Seriously, we rock at having potlucks. Our team is full of great cooks, and the not-so-great cooks buy yummy things from the grocery store.

But you see, all the other departments starting getting jealous. As they should. Some tried to hold their own potlucks with varying degrees of success. Then the creative department had an Iron Chef themed potluck, with the secret ingredients being cheese and chocolate. They got confident and issued a challenge to all the other departments. Being the potluck gurus that we are, the Interactive team was the first to take them on. 

And let me tell you, we came with our game faces on. The secret ingredient? Lemon.

The judging criteria was as follows: 85% taste, 15% presentation. I didn't have a great lemon recipe, so I decided to put myself in charge of presentation: name tags, lemon/lime decor, pretty flowers from Trader Joe's, and more. Here are some pics of the spread:

Yummy desserts: 

And here are the judges, hard at work. They were "required" to taste all of the beverages too, two of them being Corona and Firefly Iced Tea Vodka Lemonade. They had it tough.

It was a clean sweep. Every one of the awards went to Interactive dishes. My favorite? Beth's lemon shrimp dip, which tied for first place. Super yummy. Kristin's lemon spaghetti was also a hit. Best dessert was Carmen's lemon poundcake with Chambord glaze:

I also loved Ben's fresh watermelon lemonade. Mmmmm. Great summer drink. He tried to keep the recipe top secret, but I'm pretty sure this is it.

Our next challengers? Account management. They're mighty brave to take us on while we're at the top of our game. Bring it!

Sick Puppy

We've got a sick puppy. Well, not sick exactly, more like injured. Maybe not injured really. Afflicted. Yes, afflicted. Our sweet puppy is afflicted with hotspots.

Sugar loved the river, but I'm not sure the river loved her. Because now she's developed hotspots. Don't know what a hotspot is? I didn't either. It's when a dog's skin becomes irritated and they bite or scratch at the itchy skin so much that it becomes inflamed and yucky. We don't know exactly what has caused them, but it's likely her being in the water and wet so much, or some type of bug or fly bites or the heat/humidity or some other change in her environment that we haven't put our finger on. 

What we do know is that she's pitiful. She's got four major hotspots, one on either side of her head, the top of her head, and on her front leg. I'll spare you pictures of the actual hotspots, as they're pretty gross. The vet did have to shave all the hair around them though, and it's pretty weird looking. She's on an oral antibiotic, a powder antibiotic, Benadryl and she has to wear one of those cones around her neck. YES, those cones. The ones you thought only dogs in the movies wore. Nope, here's our real-life dog sporting a crazy cone:

Needless to say, she hates it. Our normally bouncing-off-the-walls puppy has become pretty much despondent. She keeps looking at me with this "what have you done to me?" look on her face:

Then she starts scratching it ferociously. We can't tell if she's itching and wants to scratch or is just trying to get that crazy thing off her neck. 

For the most part though, she's milking it. We never give her people food and we decided we needed to give her hotdogs for dinner. We never let her on the porch and Lee slept with her there for 2 hours tonight:

I'm actually glad she has the cone though. Because instead of just being pitiful, the situation is a combination of hilarious and pitiful. And I don't think I could handle just the pitiful part. I need the hilarious in my life.

We'll keep you updated.

Dog Days of Spring

We just got back from a wonderful weekend at the river.

Before heading down on Friday night, we stopped in LaGrange for our niece's dance recital. The recital was very well done, the dancers put on a great show, and Leah did a wonderful job. Congrats Leah!

As usual, the river was wonderfully relaxing. Just what the doctor ordered. The weather was great and there was no shortage of good food.

It was Sugar's first trip to the river, and she had a ball. She was the first one into the water Saturday morning and we got to see her swimming skills for the first time.

She LOVES hanging out with Maddie (my parents' dog), although I'm not sure Maddie is quite as happy to see Sugar. Sugar pretty much jumps all over her the whole time and follows her around like a lost puppy .... ohhhh, wait. But Maddie is always patient with

Sugar and showed her the ropes of the river.

Sugar watching Maddie and Astro (the neighbor's dog) fetch:

Too cute:

She belongs at the river:

Pretty ducks:

Lee tried to ruin it by getting Astro to attack them. He was more interested in the tennis ball than the ducks though.

Dirty, dirty doggies:

Worn out. After playing hard all day on Saturday, they did nothing but lay around on Sunday.

When we got home, Sugar told me she missed her new doggie friends and couldn't wait to go back to the river.

Recycled Decor

I'm loving having some of the leftover shower decorations sitting around the house. They make the house seem so much more fresh and summer-like. I wish they could stay around forever.

How to Make a Baby

I thought this fun stop-motion video was so clever and cute. Enjoy:

You can read more about how it was made here.

Shower Time

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We've been super busy preparing for and hosting the big PAR-TAY. We hosted a His & Hers shower at our house on Saturday night for our dear friends, Chrissy and Mike. Getting  ready for the shower was a lot of work - mostly because I make things more complicated than they need to be and am super picky over everything - but I am a planner at heart and enjoyed pulling everything together.

I think the shower turned out so well - the weather couldn't have been better, we had a great turnout, Chrissy & Mike got some great gifts, and I think everyone had a good time.

First things first, the invitations:

Here's a shot of my dining room beforehand. This isn't nearly all of the supplies but I love how colorful this pic is:

I picked a color scheme of yellow, blue and lime green. We used lemons and limes as decor and I grew trays of wheatgrass from seed using these instructions from Design Mom (one of my new favorite blogs). I LOVE how the wheatgrass turned out. It grew this thick and tall from seed in just 10 days. What a cheap and easy centerpiece. I was also happy to put the glass cylinders and square votive holders from our wedding to good use again. 

We served beef and chicken kabobs. Although they were somewhat labor-intensive (marinating the meat, cutting up the veggies, and assembling the kabobs) they were beautifully colorful and yummy.

I'm sad I didn't get any shots of the drink table, food table or dessert table (my first attempt at Grandmama Harrison's pound cake was a success!), but at least I got the pics that I did in the midst of the madness. Here's a shot of people mingling:

Now, present time. Lee is jealous of Mike's drill:

Of course, Sugar wanted to help:

Overall, a great night!

A lot of the work we've been doing on our house (installing the patio, yardwork, porch, etc.) we were trying to get done in time for the shower. It was great motivation and we're so happy and relieved that those projects are done now and ready just in time for us to enjoy all summer long.

Lee and I spend a lot of time talking about what we don't have, what furniture we're missing, what we want, what we still have left to do on our house - but sharing our home this weekend really put things into perspective for me and made me thankful for what we have and what we've accomplished so far. Of course it will always be a bit of a work-in-progress and there will always be new projects to complete, but this weekend I couldn't have been more proud of our home, our yard and even our dog (and my husband too!)

This weekend was great and now we can't wait for the wedding! Love you Chrissy and Mike!