The saga of our front yard

I thought I would be loving my role as full-time stay-at-home Amy, but it's not quite as wonderful as I imagined. I need things to talk about at dinner with my husband besides the hilarious episode of "Rugrats" that I watched on Netflix. Yeah, so I watch Rugrats sometimes on Netflix, what's it to you? Anywho. So after I loafed around and collected dust on Monday, I decided to be a worthwhile and contributing member of the household for the rest of the week. On Tuesday I did some shopping, wrote thank-you notes, did some laundry, went running, and checked off various items on the ol' to-do list. I was very productive and enjoyed a nice pat on the back from myself. Today's itinerary only included 1 thing:

1. Make our yard less ugly. This is our yard when we moved in:

Not the greatest picture, but basically it was not exactly a beautiful oasis. The flower bed by our front door had knee-high weeds all over, the lovely bushes that the housing place planted were all dying and wilted, there were dead spots all over... it was just a mess. But I didn't really care. I am not a fan of yard work. There is entirely too much bending involved. Besides, I had classes to do, an internship to go to, and cookies to bake. But now that I am done with school and super bored, I decided that I would give our yard a makeover.

60 bucks at Home Depot, 6 hours in the yard, several fire ant bites, a wicked sunburn, and several four letter words later, our yard now looks... like somebody tried just real hard to make it look nice. The woman at Home Depot convinced me into getting these click-in border things to go around our flower beds and trees. They were supposed to be easy to install. This is a lie. From the street, the yard looks pretty decent. But please don't look closely. And please don't kneel in the grass because you will get fire ant bites and this just in: They hurt like the dickens. And you might run around your yard slapping and swatting at yourself and screaming like a lunatic. No wonder the neighbors have never come over to say hi. After my unfortunate incident with lots of fire ants, I decided to do the remainder of my yard work in a squatting position. Consequently, my buns and thighs are no longer functioning in their usual manner, and sitting down is significantly more difficult than I recall it being. Between the insane sunburn on my back and my enormous ant bites, I felt like I was burning alive last night. The conclusion of this lovely story is that my thumb is distinctly not green and I still don't like yard work. Anywho, here is what it looks like now:

 I mulched and put a border around the bushes and around the tree; dug a hole and filled it with rocks underneath the spigot so it would stop flooding our sidewalk.

Pretend there are beautiful purple flowers in that middle plot. They are now residing in Abby's belly and probably not very beautiful anymore.

I put a border around the flowers that Cary planted for me. They are supposed to grow and cover all of the dirt, so I didn't mulch it, and also I ran out of mulch. I let Abby sit outside with me while I did all of this, and for the first hour, she did great! Just chilling the shade and keeping me company. But then apparently those flowers were looking mighty appetizing and she decided to have a little snack and ate a bunch of the middle flowers. And then she decided that since I was already angry at her for snarfing down my flowers, it would be a good time to get some exercise and run down the street. That booger. Good thing she is cute/ no one I know wants a free dog. Just kidding. I wuv my widdle puppy. Well, she's not that little. She's really pretty tubby, actually. Probably because she keeps eating my plants.

In happier news, if there is one thing I am good at, it is making and consuming treats. A friend and I decided to embark upon The Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls and hot dang, those were some good eats. I omitted the coffee in the icing because coffee is grodee, but besides that, I followed the recipe exactly, and they were knock-your-pants-off delicious. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a heart attack and/or find some insulin.