One more flower

Alex and I were looking at all the forsythia blooming around town the other day (and they are blooming EVERYWHERE - beautiful big yellow bushes everywhere). I commented how yellow they were, that they looked like highlighters. Alex's response was "Yeah, NEW highlighters!"

He's right!

Spring's a-bloomin' (early)

We've had such a crazy warm winter this year. Aside from our freak October snowfall, we only had one small snowstorm (and it was all contained in one weekend). So I'm posting my "look what's blooming now!" notice almost three weeks earlier than usual.


Snowdrops are the first to show. They have been up for a while so are starting to look a little puny.


Crocuses are the next ones to bloom. I love these white ones with the purple stripes.


There are clumps of them that have popped up everywhere in my beds. Blue, white and purple, but also yellow ones all over the place too. I get so many compliments on them, but I always fess up that they are from all the work put in by the previous homeowner.


The daffodils are my newest bloomers. I can't bring myself to cut them, so even though I have lots in the flower beds I still treat myself to a bouquet of them from the supermarket.


These last two photos don't look very impressive, but they show all the other bulbs starting to poke up on either side of the front door. If I remember correctly they are lots of hyacinths and tulips. But as you can see until the hostas and tiger lilies decide to show up (which there are a LOT of) the ugly foundation of our basement walls stick out like a sore thumb. So one of my big projects this spring is planting some evergreen shrubs to keep that bare concrete covered year round. But what is going to make that tough is ALL those bulbs planted pretty much every square inch of the plots. I foresee hand digging them all out with a trowel before even sticking a shovel in the ground. And then I'll still have to replant them, because I just can't bring myself to get rid of them!

I'm itching to get started in the yard, but have to keep reminding myself that gardening starts an entire month later up here than it did in Texas. I know if I were to actually get those shrubs planted now we'd be hit with one more hard freeze in the next couple weeks (which of course won't happen since I'm going to be good and wait).

Ikea

Well, I discovered yesterday that the time to go to Ikea is solo on a Thursday at about 10:30 am, versus with the entire family on a Saturday afternoon. Except of course when it was time to load up the car - I could have used my husband's helping hands (and muscles) with that one.

But the store was wonderful to shop in. One or two other sets of people (singles/couples/families) in a section with me at any given time. And I could take all the short cuts I wanted to avoid entire sections all together since I was there for three specific items.

Have you shopped at Ikea? Especially with the family? No surprise 30 Rock called it "relationship kryptonite". The trip starts off all fun with meandering around looking at all the room displays, but by the time you've hit the end of the trip (2 or 3 hours later) everyone is tired, crabby and just all around sick of each other.

But we love Ikea stuff at this point in our lives. We have kids. Youngish kids. So very rarely do we want to invest in heirloom-grade furniture, knowing that it will most likely get destroyed by grimy hands. Ikea is awesome for items that look great but cost very little. And I must admit I pretty much rock the assembly of Ikea items. Jim doesn't have the patience for it, but the left-brain side of me loves having the step-by-step instructions to follow (though I have to wonder where all the Allen wrenches end up - there must be a large stash of them by now someplace in my house).

And I'm passing that love on to my son. He helped me assemble two wooden dining chairs yesterday (Stefan - brown-black) and came to realize assembling Ikea furniture is quite like following his Lego instructions. And that boy could wield the Allen wrench. I kept asking if he needed me to finish (they get pretty hard to twist right at the end). Nope - he kept at it with the determined look on his face and got it all the way down.

Now I'm off to the basement to finish assembling the chest of drawers (Hemnes 3-drawer - gray-brown). And our new Salong vase (red) looks fantastic on the mantle!