Spring in full swing!

One of my least favorite parts about blogging is having to come up with a title for each blog post. I walk a fine line of being informative and intriguing. A lot of the time, it just comes off corny. So there, I said it. Most of my blog titles are corny. Is there an online tutorial of how to title a blog post? Someone shoot me a link!

There's been a lack of projects around here lately...or a lack of completed ones anyway. It's been difficult to keep up with the cleaning side of the house, so I don't let myself do anything fun until stuff is clean. (Yikes! I may never get to do anything fun!)

One of the few downsides to having all hardwood floors is that there are dust bunnies everywhere. Another is that it shows other dirt much more easily. And another is that all our floors are scuffed up and worn and begging to be refinished. Another day, another dollar.

I have learned though, that some things left to themselves create wonderful results! I've had fun the past few weeks going out in our back yard and looking for newly sprouted plants and newly bloomed flowers.

Today I walked around the yard and took pictures of some of my favorite backyard surprises!

Remember the time I planted a mini herb garden? Well, here it is, almost completely maintenance free and thriving!

(Dill in front, Cilantro in the back!)

(Cilantro in front, Dill in the back!)

These aren't mature enough to use yet (I don't think, anyway,) but I'm looking forward to the day that I can use them!

I also planted some roma tomato plants...

I should probably thin these out to their own pots, but it just looks so cute all green and purple in this little pot. I don't think they want to be separated just yet.

Here's something amazing....I didn't plant anything in the next few pots pictured below. However, stuff still sprouted! I don't know if they're weeds, but I think they look kinda nice, so I'll keep them! (Am I the first person ever to keep potted weeds in her backyard?)

So then I have these things. I believe they are knockout roses. There are a couple of bushes on the side of the house. Currently they're being suffocated by some vines we cut down from the fence, but never pulled out from the ground. (That sounds horrible when I write it...I'll make Kennedy pull those vines all the way out this weekend...)

At any rate, the bush is still blooming! With no help from me. I can't wait for these little buds to finish blooming so I can quickly cut them off and bring them inside where I can see them all the time. (Like I said, side of the house....)

One day last week I pulled into the driveway and noticed this...

I was honestly planning on cutting this thing down soon. I never would have thought such sinful things if I had known it was a hydrangea bush!!! I've been wanting one of these things forever, and here I have a 4-5 ft tall one in my own backyard! I actually had 2 of them back in South Dakota, but I was young and naive, and didn't know that they needed to be in partial sun. They got fried and died.

These got on fine without me though. I like that kind of plant.

This is a pot full of "wandering jew", (I know it sounds offensive, but I didn't name them.) I planted clippings at the beginning of fall last year. Apparently they all took root and are growing back! I'm excited about these because they grow fast, with no upkeep, and produce a beautiful, deep purple plant with small pink flowers.

Not to be confused with these:

These are lining the fence in the back. They're so vibrant! The photo doesn't do it justice...

Now I'm tired of writing about every single plant, so here's some more photos of things in my backyard.

(Monkey grass)

(Banana leaves?)

(Banana leaf close-up)

An avocado seed I "planted" in December or January. FINALLY sprouted roots...

So that's it for my little backyard tour. I think I got that out of my system. Next on my list is to plant some grass seed here...

The other side of the yard still hasn't sprouted. I'm getting worried. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised soon....If so, then I can finally move on to the dirt patch pictured above.

For now, I'll just go cuddle some dogs.

Whoops!

So my herb garden is really really thriving. (Almost) everything has sprouted in my sunny kitchen window.

The problem is, I just kind of threw the whole packet of seeds into some kind of small pots, thinking only a few would grow.

Well, I'm pretty sure they all grew.

This afternoon, I spent a couple of hours "thinning" them out and transplanting them into several pots.

Another problem is that I ran out of pots.

And the final problem is, that it kind of took over my kitchen. I had to bring in a small folding table to hold all the pots.

But wait! I can still see some table top! Maybe I can track down some more pots, because I still have this to plant:

There are 10 plants in there...

Does anyone have some pots I can borrow?

Ever the neglectful blogger...

Cece and I are here to update this blog. How do people live life AND still have time to blog about it? I'm still trying to find that alleged balance between the two.

NO, the laundry room isn't done. But it's pretty darn close! In order to tide myself over until I can make a big reveal right here on this very blog, I will talk about some other fun things from the week!

Cece and Elvis are Valentines.

So far, these two are spending most of their time competing with one another (or Cece is laying in her kennel with the door wide open, sighing and acting depressed.)

You can see her back there, pissed that Elvis is in her room. You can see Elvis sitting there, oblivious, because he has spent his whole life getting everything he could ever want.

They're so cute.

I'm trying to pace myself so my blog posts aren't miles long with weeks between them. So, with that said, I will only talk about ONE of my recent projects.

I will call this "How I started my own herb garden."

How I Started My Own Herb Garden, by Sara.

Here are the goods.

I'm starting slow. I only chose 5 packets of seeds a couple of weeks ago to get myself started. I found a sunny window in my kitchen and got to work. I thought, I'll see if anything happens with these, I'll go from there! 

Here are the rest of the supplies. 

I left out a picture of water and sunlight, because DUH! Do you really not know that you need water and sunlight to grow a seed (or 500?)

500 is my estimate of how many seeds I planted, with about 100 being in each packet.  I tend to over-estimate, though.

Here is an aerial view (I did not care to rotate this photo, if you're wondering,) of the pots in a sunny window!

Let's take a quick side note to say it snowed a record amount this weekend in Dallas. 12'5"!!! It was glorious.

Even if all the trees along our backyard fence were bogged down with ice and laying on the ground. (Do you like the red cuff of my bathrobe on the side there? I didn't bother to crop it out, because I didn't bother to take the bathrobe off allllllll day long that day.)

Back to my herbs. Friday, aka snow day, I walked by the window to check on the little guys. For the past couple of weeks, they've just looked like little bowls of dirt. Friday, my friends, was the day that the Dill and Cilantro sprouted!!

See those green things that look like worms??? That's dill!

I'm hoping this photo doesn't get cut off, because these sprouts are still pretty tiny. But they're there. They're curly and they're there. (Say it 5 times fast.)

Now, if you will please excuse me, my husband is waiting on me so we can watch Couples Retreat.

Maybe the laundry room will be done tomorrow?