Hydrangeas

I am in love with hydrangeas and have been waiting for our landscaping project to add them. Fortunately for me I didn't have to wait any longer. Nick's mom and step-dad came for a day of swimming and BBQ bearing gifts - hydrangeas and a vase to put them in.

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Tomatoes!

We finally have some tomatoes from the garden. Apparently there's been a ripe cherry tomato each day and hubby has been eating them right off the vine (sneaky). Today he had a handful to share, even Leia was curious.

Swimming Pool Fun

Today my brother, Frankie came to hook me up with a new cell phone and hang out with his big sister. The baby, Jon, also came by and what's better than siblings in a pool?

We had a great time splashing around. Here's a shot of the boys horsing around.

The Fruits of My Husband's Labor

Our ridiculously bountiful garden has already yielded basil for pesto sauce, cucumbers for snacking and a couple of zucchini for sauteing. Today I came home from work and hubby had harvested some zucchini from the garden and apparently some are on steroids...

As you can see they are bigger than the egg box. I can't even begin to describe how big they are but to quote the hubby when he was harvesting, "Who's limb is that?"


What does one do with an abundance of zucchini?

The hubby requested zucchini bread! I made my mother-in-law's recipe and doubled the batch for a lot zucchini bread which is cooling as I type this.
Here's the recipe...
3 eggs beaten (I used 5 egg whites)
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking soda
2 cups grated zucchini (I pulverized it in the food processor)
Optional: 1/2 cup coarsely chopped nuts, and/or raisins (used both)

Mix together all ingredients. Divide between 2 loaf pans. Bake at 325 degrees for about 1 hour.

Up Close and Personal

Lookie what I found...A teeny tiny baby bunny.
Did I get close enough?
How's this for cute?

Busy Busy Sunday

We started out the day waiting for a plumber to be available but no luck there. Part of the issue is that we have a home warranty that the sellers gave us with the house and plumbers with a contract with the warranty company get first choice. We were eventually authorized to go outside of the network but of course there are stipulations. So it's about 36 hours since we discovered the broken water heater and we still wait.

We cut some limbs off the big tree that hovers over our pool and took the brush to the brush drop off. Then we headed out to Target and got ourselves a deck box. We had a spot next to the house for it but it's a dirt pit with tons of weeds so we stopped at Home Depot to pick up a few supplies for a quick and cheap fix.

The before picture...

After we ripped out the weeds, Nick tacks down the Weed Block.Voila! The marble chips (rocks) and the deck box.
SURPRISE! It's 127 gallons. How could I not resist trying it on for size?

What a day!

It was supposed to be a happy July 4th but we woke early ready to start a busy day and instead the day turned into a much busier and somewhat emotional (for me anyways) day before 9am.

We had made plans to help my father-in-law walk a neighbors dogs and then we'd run a few errands before we had to meet up with our friend Mark and his girlfriend who are in town from Los Angeles. Then we'd relax a bit and enjoy the rest of the weekend. WRONG! We went into the basement to get a clothing rack we were returning to my father-in-law and we discovered half of the basement was kinda flooded.

First we thought it was a broken sump pump but realized it didn't rain recently. As my husband went through a few more thoughts my mind went to the water heater as the previous owner was obsessed about teaching us to keep any eye out of a leaky water heater. We had my father in law come over to help us instead.

After a few hours of moving boxes out of the way and emptying wet boxes that half of the basement doesn't look half bad. We're still waiting for a plumber to come out and replace the water heater but it just wasn't the right weekend for this drama.


The side of the small flood all cleaned up but we still have the hose attached from when we drained the water heater into the sump pump well.

Baby Bunnies!

I got a today and my husband announced the continuation of Tocci's Animal Planet, "we have baby rabbits!"

This is a picture of the rabbit next flagged so we'd know where to stalk the mama and the babies.
A close up of furry teeny tiny creatures in a pretty teeny tiny bunny hole. Can you see the babies? I only saw two but Nick says he saw three. I guess only time will