Spring "fever"

Spring is one of the best times of the year...if only it lasted longer. We have continued to keep ourselves busy around the house. All of our new plants are getting accustomed to their new homes. The azalea blooms have come and gone. They were absolutely beautiful. For about a week, we worked at trimming the azaleas back and clearing some undergrowth. Well, about a week ago, Shawn had to be at work early and I decided to work on some of the trimming by myself after work...which is usually no biggie. While I was going to town hauling branches and leaves, chiggers were going to town on my arms and legs. I just thought they were mosquito bites until my legs began to swell. Insect bites have never really bothered me. I guess since I got so many bites so quickly, I had a huge reaction. To make a long story short, my legs swelled like crazy. I had to have a steroid shot, tripled up on antihistamines and slathered myself in ointment. Now I look like I just got over a case of chicken pox. Oh well!

Spring Projects

Now that the weather has begun to work in our favor, we have have been busy as bees. We have been doing small projects around the house. I "revamped" a breakfast cart by putting a mosaic on the top part of it. It was a bit tedious, but it turned out well. Shawn has thoroughly enjoyed using his chainsaw to clear out some of the Katrina debris closer to the pond. With plenty of begging, he finally let me try out the chainsaw. Don't get me wrong, I loved having the power to chop down trees, but I'll stick to clippers or a hand-saw for the smaller stuff. I was definitely overwhelmed. Chainsaw -- no more, for me.
As most of you know, our grass got about knee-high over a two-month span. One small problem...the old lawnmower wasn't very motivated to tackle the grass this year. Needless to say, we ended up buying a new riding lawn mower. Shawn has tackled the massive front yard and it is beautiful. I have only sat on the new addition, but have yet to attend Shawn's Mowers Ed seminar. I'm sure it won't be long before I am out there with my straw hat riding around the yard.

Gettin' Crafty

I made a jewelry box for Betsy yesterday with my new wood-burning tool. I've never used one before, but it turned out pretty good. This was actually my practice box, but once I got going, everything just started coming together. I'm beginning to wonder if this was even a good idea at all, because now I'm sure she'll be wanting some new jewelry to go in it!

Catching up

We hope everyone has enjoyed their February, Leap Year and Valentines Day. Shawn and I enjoyed our first Valentines Day as a married couple. Shawn sent me roses to work and bought me a purse. He can never go wrong with getting me a purse and the roses were beautiful. I bought him a fishing pole. He ran into a few snags, literally, with it at first, but things are going much better now!

On the home front...we are still painting. For those of you who haven't seen our freshly painted den, it has definitely made a significant difference. We are now working on painting the "border" under the patio. It used to be a blue tone and now we are going to a light greyish brown tone. It looks very nice. We are, also, putting a fresh coat of paint in the hall bathroom. We have definitely been keeping ourselves busy, but it has definitely been rewarding watching our progress. We will post progress pictures soon!

We hope all is well with everyone. Much love!

Snow? In Hattiesburg?

Our favorite Packers fans!

Happy New Year!

We hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! We were, thankfully, able to spend the holidays in both Hattiesburg and Jackson! We went to the Potin's early Christmas morning and afterwards we swung by and picked up Aunt Jean and headed to Jackson! It was so nice to spend such a special day with all of our family.

Santa brought us a Wii and Dance, Dance Revolution for Christmas. If you aren't familiar with a Wii...it is a gaming system that is VERY interactive. You are able to bowl, box, play tennis, baseball, ping pong, go fishing and many other games. Dance, Dance is a floor pad that has arrows on it (it looks like a Twister mat) and you have to step on the arrow that corresponds to the arrows moving on the screen to music. It all sounds kinda complicated, but I guarantee that we'll be in some kind of shape by this time next year. Shawn's parents bought us an awesome 32-inch LCD HD television and an entertainment center to house it! We absolutely love it! It makes all of our game-playing even more fun!

On New Year's Eve, I had to work, but we still brought in the New Year. We decided to take it low key, though. We ordered take-out from Outback and made two trips to the fireworks stand. Needless to say, we kept ourselves busy with the pyrotechnics!