more yard photos

I took these photos this morning. If you look carefully in the second one, you can see the shadow of me in the car taking the picture.

instant shrubbery!

Well, I'm sure Brandon and his mom don't think it was instant :) They spent an entire day digging up shrubbery and flowers from B's parents' Forest Park house (which they'll be selling early next year) and transplanting them to our house. I hope they survive the cold weather and the watering ban! You can see the new shrubs in the left and right corners of the porch. Also check out our new rock flower bed borders!
Our existing camelia bush. It hasn't bloomed yet but it's covered in buds. Just to the right of it is one our newly transplanted Indian Hawthornes.

insulation: yet another view

I didn't take any photos after we were totally finished, because I was simply just too tired. Maybe one day I'll climb up there and take another photo. If you're that interested, next time you come over, just let me know and I'll get you the ladder ;)

attic insulation: before and during

This is a photo of the attic with the existing insulation. It was the blow-in kind, and once upon a time was probably fairly sufficient. Over the years, though, it looks like it has gotten compacted down into a layer that's only about 1-2" deep.
At this point, we'd hauled the insulation up into the attic (thank goodness for the way it comes bagged now--we never would have gotten the old roll-style though the tiny attic door!). You can see the boards on the floor that have probably been up there since the house was built. Some are nailed down and some aren't. You can see on the left where we've installed some of the new insulation...on the right is still the old fill insulation.
The project took us about 9 hours over two days. Probably about 8 hours of actual time spent in the attic. Lots of cutting and figuring in some places, and making sure that the old wires (some of which don't go anywhere but might be live!) didn't get covered up.

End of day 1.

attic insulation: part 1

Brandon getting ready to climb into the attic...and temporarily blinded by the camera flash. Oops.
Six bags of insulation. I took this photo thinking this was ALL of it...silly me, there were ten more packages in the garage!

We ended up spending about $650 for enough insulation to cover 1200-1500 square feet. I wasn't sure how to measure for it without getting up into the attic (the common-sense but more complicated approach), so I measured the outside of the house!
A closer look, anyone?

blog updates and changes

I've been looking at other blogging sites recently, trying to decide if I wanted to move the blog to another site. After looking at lots of cool features of several sites (including WordPress), I decided to leave the blog here, at least for now. The templates offered by other sites didn't have as much versatility, at least not for free, and not for the level of experience I have with writing my own code (very little).

I did manage to update the header with a more personalized title, complete with Craftsman font. I'm still trying to figure out how to arrange images with Blogger...they never seem to end up where they were intended. Any suggestions on this are welcome!

october / november update

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since we've posted. October was a busy month--at least socially--although we didn't spend much time working on the house. The first weekend in October was spent at B's parents' house on Lake Rabun. They held a bluegrass pickin' for B's dad's guitar friends, and my parents drove up to go with us. Mom wasn't feeling too well, and it was a three hour drive total for them, but Dad thoroughly enjoyed the visit, I think. It was their first trip to the former "cabin," now a huge and gorgeous lake house designed by B's sister, Brooke.

In mid-October, we headed south to Meriwether County, for B's grandfather's 80th birthday party. His grandparents have a big piece of land there, complete with pond and woods. B's grandfather seemed to enjoy the day, even though he got fussed at for stealing a piece of his birthday cake before anyone could even put candles on it. I got to meet lots of relatives that I hadn't met before, which was fun. The party ended with guitar playing and singing. We talked to some of the family that used to live our very own street in East Point many years ago. Turns out B's grandfather used to drive a cab in EP once upon a time. What a coincidence that we ended up on the same street after all these years, when we didn't even realize there was a family connection to EP. After the festivities, B and I took the golf cart down to the lake and gathered up cart-load after cart-load of rocks to take home for landscaping our flower beds. (Look for photos coming soon!)

Also in October, we got a visit from B's grandparents, along with his Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Dave from Florida. They got a tour of the house, and we had a nice little dinner at Fina Italian Bistro in College Park.

In late October, we managed to pull together a game night party for a few friends. Old-school style video games (Atari and Nintendo) and finished the night off by playing Cranium.

November began with a girls' weekend at the lake. Normally the weekend is just for B's mom, Patrice, and her sisters and cousins. No kids or menfolk allowed! Well, this once they made an exception (at our request)...of course, everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and I doubt we'll ever be invited back! Everyone's babysitter bailed, Brittney was in a car accident, Brooke ended up at the wrong restaurant to meet us (half an hour away in the mountains)...I can't even remember everything that went wrong. We had a lot of fun, though, took a looong walk with the kids, and even managed to relax a bit.