Thankful for Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend with Katie, Alec, Luke, Beth and Bob. The weather was nice enough for us to have one day downtown at the Museum of Art and we ate our sandwiches out on the mall. We enjoyed all of Luke's new skills and tricks and of course he made us laugh with all his animal sounds and jabbering. He does an awesome pirate sound which Grandpa caught on a video clip. He still enjoys books and entertains himself for long periods of time "reading" his favorite stories. You can tell what page he's on by listening to his sounds and words. I ended up with a dandy sinus cold thanks to the hackers and sneezers on the airplanes, but other than that we had a healthy and safe trip. Rob has more pictures than I do - I'll include some now and he can add more later. I made Luke a little colorful fleece vest and he enjoyed wearing it - even when it didn't coordinate too well with the rest of his outfit!

Complete

Here's my finished project -- rather nice, I think! The variegated tree type bush in the middle is a duranta repens. It has blue flowers and gets orange 1/4 inch fruit. The 3 variegated low plants along the water channel are dianella, and the 4 yellow bushes are called gold mound. The green along the stepping stones are dwarf mondo grass. Near the duranta I put a croton, transplanted from the back corner of the yard. It was getting crowded out by the pampas grass. I think I've found enough color variety to offset the eternal green of Florida! I did undercut the hibiscus and bougainvillea by the house so I could stick some pots of my bromeliads under the large bushes.

Next project is painting the house exterior during Christmas vacation. Gayle and I have agreed on the colors -- a soft, fairly light and mossy green for the walls (called Hazy Jade); a cream color (La Fonda Ecru) for the trim; and a darker green called Blanched Thyme for the accents. I have some power washing to do first, and a few stucco repairs, and I need to adjust the corner of the deck...it's too close to the house and I need to cut out a corner so we can paint. We look forward to getting rid of the Florida pink.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!

A Fine Weekend

Our backyard bougainvilla looks like its ready for Christmas!

We had a very nice weekend - plenty of sunshine and outdoor work to do - windows open to the cool breeze and time for a walk around the neighborhood to look at house colors and try to decide on what we'd like when we paint at Christmas break. I think we've come to an agreement - not too dark for me, and plenty of color for Rob. The houses all around us are various shades of tan, brown, and putty so we're thinking a nice green with a cream color for trim.
Rob spent most of Saturday with his fix up the back yard project and I worked on school work with a nice break to explore a quilt shop I discovered not too far from here. I was looking for a particular piece of fabric for this year's quilt for the school auction. I figured I should get going on it as the auction is the first Saturday in March --coming soon enough.