Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
gardening & landscaping

getting darker

This time of the year is always bittersweet. While there’s still plenty of time to garden (especially since I’m planting a fall garden this year), as it gets darker earlier, there’s less and less time each day that I can enjoy the outside.

The good news is that I can finally get some stuff done around the house. Not that I don’t get stuff done in the summer–it’s just a struggle. I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need to hire someone to clean my house. Because if there’s one thing I don’t like to do, it’s clean. Plus it takes a lot of time that could be better spent elsewhere. Unfortunately, with the dogs (not that I’m naming names–Buster!), I don’t see how that will happen. There’s just nowhere to put them when someone is here so that would probably be more trouble than it’s worth. Though Brian did take Buster to the shop a few times the other week and Buster was a little angel down there. This could work out on a number of levels–Buster would be out of everyone’s hair and Brian would have to work on woodworking projects. Hmm.

movies

red dawn

Brian thought Jake might like this movie (you know, because it had a lot of guns and stuff), so we gave it a watch last weekend. Despite the movie being popular when I was a teenager, I’d never seen it before (mostly because I wasn’t a teenage boy). It was ok, but Brian and Jake really liked it. I hear they’re doing a remake of it. Despite the fact that the remake stars Chris Hemsworth, I don’t think I’ll be watching it.

books

sail

This wasn’t bad for one of those co-authored James Patterson novels. It was a quick read (as are most Patterson novels) and sure, it had some ridiculous things going on in the plot, but I guess everything can’t be a literary masterpiece.

gardening & landscaping

the end

I started removing stuff from the garden today, so this officially marks the beginning of the end of summer. And, quite a bit earlier than usual, at that. This was a weird gardening season–the spring was so warm and the summer started off so hot, but now the weather is getting cooler (at night, anyway) and the plants are dying. That said, it was a pretty good year. I’m pretty happy with my vegetable yields this year. Sure, there are always things that could go better, but overall, it was pretty good. I picked quite a few tomatoes this evening, and they will be getting canned in one form or another this weekend. And I have a lot more out there, so I’m hoping to do a few batches of sauce and maybe even some straight-up canned tomatoes.

I already have some plants growing for this year’s fall gardening experiment. And, I’m going to put in a mini hoop house and plant even more stuff once I clear out the raised beds. My hope is to be harvesting veggies into November. We’ll see…

small business ownership

bathroom project: done

As promised, here’s the photo of the completed tub surround. Unfortunately, I do not have a ‘before’ shot, but everything was tiled previously and the window ledge ran the whole way to the right wall of the shower.

The biggest challenge of this project was the window ledge. While they do sell window ledge kits for showers, none would fit in this one because it was too deep. So, the guy at Home Depot suggested using plastic lumber. It seems to have worked out pretty well. We used the same type of molding for around the edges of the surround.

This project has inspired me to schedule the 3rd and final bathroom remodel of our house. Well, that, and the fact that it’s awfully crowded in our tiny bathroom when everyone’s getting ready in the morning.

On the top floor of our house, we have a powder room. The room is pretty large for just a powder room so I think we can squeeze in a shower up there. One issue is that we will have to hire a plumber to rough in all of the plumbing since stuff will need to be moved and added. We shall do a feasibility study on this soon (i.e. get an estimate). Another issue is that we have a slanted ceiling up there so we’re going to have to get a custom shower door made. The rest of the work we can do ourselves, though.