Saturday, July 20, 2013

farewell lady bugs

A while back I stumbled across a little lady bug habitat for $1 at a garage sale. It was like those little butterfly kits from back in elementary school where you watch them grow from catepillars to butterflies and then let them go... except that it was lady bugs.

We ordered and received the larvae in the mail within a few weeks and then dropped them into "lady bug land" as these weird tentacly creatures with long bodies and watched them plump up, develop an outer shell, hatch as yellow skinny critters and then darken and finally develop their spots. 

Casen really enjoyed watching his lady bugs grow but the time to let them go snuck up on us quickly. Then he REALLY enjoyed letting them go. They flew and crawled all over him. He loved it. (Anders want quite sure what was going on.)

The beauty of it is we can order more whenever we want and use lady bug land over and over! 



Tuesday, July 16, 2013

thrift score


Yesterday, I spent the day working and hanging with my dad. We went to eat at a local sushi buffet for lunch and then ran in to the thrift store that was across the street for a split second. We weren't there long but I scored these babies:

Red Sloggers for tending the garden // $1.99
Straw sun hat for tending the garden // $0.99
Striped zipper bag // $0.99

Total: $3.97+tax

! ! ! S C O R E ! ! !

Have you scored any bargains lately?

Monday, July 15, 2013

Weekends are overrated

On Saturday, Fico and I were able to leave the boys with his aunt and joined some of our really good friends on a little field trip to Monday Night Brewing. I will be the first to admit that I am no beer connoisseur, but I am married to one so I have a pretty close relationship with the stuff if you know what I mean. I'm practically married to it, literally. I actually was a "brewery wife" for a couple years when we were in Huntsville because Fico worked in the taproom at Straight to Ale, a local brewery there. So I know more about beer than most non-beer drinkers can admit. As much as Fico tries to get me to enjoy a beer and admire the florally-hoppy-coffee mumbo-jumbo, it just is not my thing. 

That being said, I tagged along anyway for the company and we had a GREAT time. I haven't laughed so hard in a while. It was a nice break from reality. I love these people. 

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Our Backyard Flock: Week One


Introducing the newest additions to the Escalante Clan.

Owning chickens has been on our things-we-definitely-plan-to-do list for as long as we've been talking about our future together, so we knew we'd end up with a little backyard flock, we just didn't know when. My family had chickens back when I was in high school and continued to have them after I left the nest (pun intended), so I knew that they made great little pets. We were expecting to wait a while until we got everything a little more settled with our new house, but I got a little impatient, as is my custom, and we went ahead and took the plunge.

Even though we had been talking about getting chickens for a while, the way we went about it was completely spontaneous. As I was scouring Pinterest for landscaping and gardening inspiration a few nights ago, I decided to just sketch up what I had in mind for our own back yard and started thinking about where the chicken coop would end up. That led to me searching Craigslist for baby chicks just to see if there were any in the area, which led to me finding a hatchery 10 minutes down the road, which then led to me telling Fico that I wanted to go "look" at some the next morning, which led to us actually going to "look" and leaving with four wittle chicks. Haha. So between the thought of getting chickens and actually getting them, I don't even think we let 18 hours pass. That's just the way I roll. I'm a little premature when it comes to deciding if timing is right or not. We didn't even have food, containers, pine shavings, or any form of heat for these little ladies ready for them. But we made it work and now they are full, warm and happy.

When we got them a couple days ago, they were 4 and 5 days old already, so they are a week old now and I am planning on taking a pic of each of them every week for the next few months since they grow SO fast and change so much in such a short period of time.

We couldn't be happier with these sweet girls -- at least we were told they were all girls, crossing our fingers -- and the four of us are already bonding with them well. I can't wait to see Anders and Casen grow up with them. Casen has taken on such a nurturing big brother role already. It's sweet to watch. All Anders does right now is get really excited and shout at them. Haha. He will learn in due time.

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

A new leaf and a new life

Life has been rather hectic lately. As you can see, I have been absent from the blog despite being determined to better keep up with it. Typical.

To get down to the crux of it, we are now finally semi-settled in a quaint little home on the corner of a cute and quiet little street right outside of downtown Marietta.

Just to summarize the past 2 months:

We were originally not planning to move back over to GA until the very end of May. We thought we had a solid chunk of time before we had to say our goodbyes to everyone in Huntsvegas, then the unthinkable happened. We lost a very, very dear friend/family member and plans changed abruptly. We had to load up and say our goodbyes in a matter of days instead of the anticipated weeks and head back to Georgia in a flash. It was a whirlwind couple of weeks dealing with the loss, as well as the new beginning. It was entirely bittersweet. While staying in a tiny day bed with a trundle in my mother-in-laws house, Fico and I were both spending countless hours trying to find a rental online and driving all over Atlanta to find the perfect home as well as the perfect location. (The latter was just as or more important than the house itself.) We thought we found the winner and waited almost two whole weeks to hear back from the stupid property management company whether or not we were approved for the house. We genuinely thought that we had it in the bag, so we didn't do any more searching for the better part of those two weeks. Boy were we silly. Anyway, we got the news that there was another application that was better suited for the property and we were BUMMED to say the least. I mean, we had gotten our hopes up SO high thinking that this place was our new home. Later that morning out of pure frustration, we hopped in the car with steam coming out of our ears and drove around for hours looking for a rental sign out by the road. And then we spotted one!! So, we called and the woman on the phone had no idea her husband had even put the signs out yet. She said he must have just put the signs out minutes before and that we were the first people to call. She didn't even yet know how much he was wanting to ask for it. As soon as I got off the phone with her, I was certain that we were going to live in this house. I just had that feeling, ya know?? So later that evening the owner called us back, gave us the details and we scheduled to see it the next morning, even though the price was a bit out of our price range. Soooo, the next morning we went to see another house that better fit out budget that we had come across online, but was not in the best area of town... We were on the verge of settling with that one, but wanted to go see the other house just in case. On the drive over, we had the bright idea to see if we could get the landlord to come down some on the price (to that of the other more affordable house) if we were to take some of the home upkeep responsibilities off of his hands. He didn't even hesitate before saying yes! He actually left us alone with the house and told us to lock up behind us when we left. The second he drove off, I started squealing. This was it, this was the house! So as soon as we made our rounds and looked some more, we called him and scheduled to meet up at the house again the following morning to sign the lease. He didn't do any background checking or anything. He said he just liked us :) So the following day we signed the lease and started moving in THAT DAY! We stayed one more night with the MIL and then we were home free. It was like a dream come true how perfect the house felt for us. I feel that everything fell in to place at just the right times, for just the right reasons. It feels so wonderful to love where you live. Oh! And I haven't even gone in to detail on the location. We are literally a 7 minute walk to the Historic Marietta Square. There is so much to do and so many fun events there throughout the year, I can't wait! We already once walked up to the farmer's market a couple weekends ago and yesterday I walked with the boys to play at the park and get some ice cream. Now I just need to get a bike and throw one on the front and one on the back. Then we can cruise around anywhere and everywhere.

Needless to say, our home needs a LOT of work, but we are making progress a little bit every day! It feels so much like home already and I have so many ideas in store to make it feel even more so. I will keep you posted with all of the random things that we do around here going forward :)

Anyway, that is just a little summary of what we have been up to and now I leave you with a handful of pics that we had taken before we left Huntsville: