It's been a crazy spring/summer over here and that's why I've been absent yet again for a longer period of time. It's hard to concentrate on enjoyable and seemingly unimportant things as crafting and decorating when your teeth are breaking on you one by one. Things are looking up for us, though, as the temperature is climbing over here.
Brief recap for those of you who don't recall. Daughter with broken arm in February that required surgery and an overnight stay at the hospital (she's fine now), then in March I noticed the first of a total of 7 cracked teeth in my mouth. They've all been crowned by now and we're just working on adjusting my bite now but this has been far too long in the making - 4 months! Don't know if that's normal in dentist circles but it doesn't seem normal to me and I'm seriously eyeing a new dentist for my next cleaning.
And while my dentist doesn't know exactly why this happened it seems like the stress of anticipation of that hospital bill combined with nightly teeth grinding and slightly crooked teeth is what did it. I'm now wearing a night guard so things should be fine from now on. Ironically, the hospital bill (after a generous discount by the hospital) turned out to be smaller than my dental bill. Learn from me, guys. Don't worry about bills to come or they might get worse... :/
Through it all God has been faithful and kept us up. As I mentioned the hospital discounted our bill by about $3000 which was a relief. My teeth have been about $1100 per crown so that credit card bill is not pretty. Needless to say my crafting budget is now zero and I'm also looking for a part time job to try to help pay for things. With both kids going to school full time starting this fall it's probably going to work out just fine. I've been on a few interviews already and I guess sooner or later someone's going to realize what a gem I am and hire me :)
Which leads me to my garden. Someone left a comment during the spring wanting to know how my garden was doing. Here's a few pics of the front (which looks a lot nicer than the backyard) that were taken about two months ago. Gardening is not my forte and I'm trying to find plants that can stand little water, intense heat and pretty much take care of themselves despite the harsh conditions. It's kind of one step forward, two steps backwards. But I must say things are looking better than when I started so I guess things are going in the right direction.
I have no recent pic of this but both vines on the lamp posts are now in bloom (and much larger), they're trumpet vines. Large orange trumpets, gorgeous! This is the first year they're blooming.
So the yard isn't beautiful exactly, but I still have wildflowers coming up on their own that I planted a few years ago.
That tuft of grass is pampas grass that I rescued off the curb when someone was remodeling their yard, I have one in the previous picture as well. I wasn't sure it would survive but they're doing great and now I wish I would have grabbed a few more since they were free.
I won't make any promises about how often you'll see me on here in the near future but I intend to keep going, if I have anything to share I will. There's always little straggling projects I could finish (from my huge pile of procrastinated projects I should have finished a year ago) and when I do get a job I should have my meager crafting budget back. But less time to play with.This area is kind of messy since I'm always propagating new stuff and I'm keeping the babies here so I'll remember to water them now and then. I did manage to get my cinder block planter painted white this spring and I now have ice plants growing in the little compartments.
The yellow flowers are one of the wildflowers that keep coming back on their own but the pinks are my rose collection which I'm very happy with. These roses don't get any care beyond a trim once or twice a year. I plan on propagating/buying more roses, they're so easy to care for!
Throughout these months of unknowns my therapy has been Pinterest :) Nothing like pretty pictures to cheer you up when things are tough. So, because I've been on there pretty much constantly I've managed to collect and curate quite an amount of pictures, ideas and inspirations. You might find something you like on there if you care to join me?The trailing ice plants in the planters are going strong. I give them a drink every few weeks if there's no rain and some slow release fertilizer if they stop blooming, and that's about it. All my other container plants just die on me as soon as it gets hot so I'm looking for other pretty succulents to fill those containers with as well.
You can find more pics of the front yard in it's previous stages over here, here and here. Hope you're having a great summer, we're staying busy with swim lessons etc over here! Almost time for back to school crunch...