Balloon Party

We had a great time at Balloon Fiesta today. It was much better than the last time we went. We went for an evening glow-deo. Today, we got up at the crack of dawn and saw all the special shape balloons launch. Then the normal looking balloons came in for a competition. There had to be hundreds of balloons, like right infront of us. It was really cool. I could only get 350 pictures, though. This was so cool, we may do it again next year. The plan was kinda to get this done while we are more mobile, but it was pretty easy getting, staying, and leaving... So for next year, who knows!

Baby's Room

Finally got the baby's room complete a few weeks ago. The painting was really easy, once we found a tick to paint a straight line. We have bullnose corners in the house and couldn't decide where to end the paint near the window. We decided to leave the window sill white and paint the flat surface of the wall, ending it where the bull nose curve started. To get the perfectly straight line, we masked painters tape on the bull nose curve. Then we painted the tape edge where we wanted the final color to be with the same white paint that window sill was. This way, the white paint oozed under the tape, filling the tape to wall gaps. So, when we painted our wall color, there was no where for the wall color to go between tape and wall, so it stayed out. Then when we removed the tape, perfectly straight line. Too bad we didn't do this for the baseboard. I had to go back over that with one of my plastic model paint brushes, razor blades, etc.

We put in a chair rail. Not too bad cutting and installing with my trusty table saw. Caulking it was a chore. I finally figured out how to do it quickly, neatly, and with minimal caulk. The secret is water-based/soluble caulk. This stuff rinses off, as opposed the permanent silicon stuff. For doing stuff in the house, on textured walls with baseboards, etc, nothing beats old-fashioned water soluble caulk. Now that it has been 3-5 weeks I'm fuzzy on what I did. I put down caulk with the tip of the tube. Then I may have used my finger to push the caulk in the crack and simultaneously wipe excess. Then I used a damp sponge, pressing into the crack hard, wiping along the seam. Do about 3-5 ft at a time, then rinse your sponge. I learned the sponge thing from watching a plumber, it is really the ONLY to apply caulk. I am totally against silicon. I don't care how much better it is against cracking, shrinking, and mold. All of that is useless to me if I can't apply it neatly. Unless I have a fish tank, with glass on glass seams, silicon is junk. For anything textured I need to have my sponge.

Of course all of this is the construction details. For the prettiness and proof of final result, I refer you to the pictures.

Sod FINALLY complete

I've been too busy to sit down and blog lately. But after week #8, the backyard was finally ready for sod. Sod was delivered Tuesday Sept 22nd. I spend from 2:30pm until 10 pm laying 2.5 pallets of sod. Most of the the sod laying went fast. I probably did 80 sq ft in 10 min. So, in two hours I had most of it done. But it seems like the last 1/3, near the patio, took half of the time. I had to specially cut most of those pieces to fit. Perhaps my back was getting tired at that point, too. But the sod has be in for almost two weeks. It has started rooting and I'm getting ready to cut back on watering. I will cut it for the first time today.

I have a reel mower (no motor, like the old-fashioned blades of fury) because I started with 168 sq feet of grass. Coming from Oklahoma, I thought scissors or a weed-eater is plenty to cut that amount of grass. So the reel seemed like a great option. It cuts grass more evenly than scissors or weed-eater. No oil/gas mix. No changing oil. No gas can of old gas lying around. And I can hang it on the wall, so it doesn't take up much space in the garage.

Now that I have 1000 sq ft, (being from Oklahoma) I still think that a power mower is overkill for this little piece of grass. We'll see if I still say this a year from now. But the cheap price of the reel, with low-maintenance, and small footprint will make me think 8 times before getting a power mower. Plus with the rock landscaping around here, rocks get into grass, and the mower could suck up the rock and spit it out at someone or something - dangerous.

On the #8 weekend (approx two weeks before laying sod, I think), I hired some help to remove the front yard dead grass. It all had died last winter from lack of watering (being from Oklahoma, not used to watering grass in winter, but now I know that if it looks dead, water it anyways). We put in 3 shrubs and a catcus. Are these plants approved by the homeowner's association? No. We took the list to the local Nursery (not home depot, etc.) and asked for some help to pick plants. The gardner took a short look at the list and said, "80% of this stuff won't grow in this climate." He went on to say that the rest of the choices are ugly. (We had looked up several of the plant on the internet, and almost everyone of them were ugly. We couldn't match the plants that are in our front yard to the 'list'. And some of the ones we looked up, like the century yucca, don't grow in the high desert. They are Phoenix desert plants (and they have palms, we can't grow them here)). So we believed him, and he helped up pick some nice xeric native plants. One is bright blue flowers all summer, another is soft with purple flowers, and we got a cherry sage (it's got red flowers most of the year). The cactus is called 'Cow's Tongue', it is similar to a prickly pear in how it grows and blooms. But it is a different color. The spikes on it are really nasty, so I may have to pull them when it gets established.