In the News!

I wanted to share an article from my hometown newspaper about a health study that my mom is working on.  My mom, Ramona, is the School Resource Nurse for the Hermiston School District in Eastern Oregon.  This isn't the first time she's been featured in the paper for her hard work.  Pretty cool to know someone famous!

Earlier this year Jay and I visited my mom in Hermiston. It happened to have recently been School Nurse Day.  As we were driving to breakfast we happened upon a Thank You sign to my mom at my old grade school!

Make like a leaf..

..and fall all over our yard!  Our beautiful and full trees are in the process of shedding their leaves all over the yard.  While this has posed as a huge burden to us in the prior two years of homeownership, this year the leaves are quite welcome!  Since the yard project is on hold for the winter we are counting on the leaves to create a nice barrier between us and the mud pit that otherwise would be our yard. In an effort to help the leaves break down over time to provide more of a mulch, we picked up a lead shredder/blower/vacuum and Jay excitedly got to work.  Turns out the little machine can't really handle the massive amount of leaves we produce and wet leaves are a definite no go!  So back to the store went the little machine (minus the stylish canvas bag Jay is modeling...that didn't make it back in the box. Whoopsy!)

Thanks to Craigslist we picked up a gently used chopper that can macerate branches up to 2" in diameter.  We look forward to trying that bad boy out when the conditions are a little dryer in about, oh, 5 months or so.  

So now we have a few bare trees and those dang Sweet Gums that just won't stop torturing us - please drop your leaves!!  Enjoy the gallery below.  

The making of a yard (another part of many!)

Our lofty leaf collection

On Saturday, after finishing my last blog post, I zipped outside to tidy up the yard while Jay was at a Salmon Watch training (how could I pass that up for my Saturday morning, you ask.  It was pretty easy....)  I raked up what leaves we had - for the time of year things are looking pretty good.

I ran into (literally) this creepy spider web while raking.  It's the perfect spooky web for Halloween and I couldn't bring myself to knock it down.  That, and I was afraid of it...

At 5 pm that afternoon we had 20
yards of eco-bark (that's ecoNOMY/budget friendly....not ecoLOGICALLY friendly) delivered to our driveway.  The delivery man tried to tell us we would need machinery to move our bark mulch pile...so we showed him our big guns!! (Oh no she didn't!!)

So we suited up and got to work!  Shovel into pile, dump into wheelbarrow or garden cart, drag said barrow/cart to staked off portion of yard, dump, return, repeat.  And on we went for a good 90 minutes. The sunset made us quit for the night, but we were back at it Sunday morning.  By 2 pm all of the areas had been covered and the bark spread.  It was looking amazing!
We then organized the garbage/recycling/ trash bins behind the fence and out of sight.


Our next project was to plan out our back and front yard path, to be filled in on Monday.  Once we felt comfortable with that, we moved on to cleaning up the porch area.

Our little bench, happily nestled in the new bark

Shep needed a nap after all of OUR hard work!

For the path we decided on wood chips and Monday morning Jay got to work laying down weed barrier along our staked pathway.  We chose to add stepping stones leading to the front door and opted for another wallet-friendly choice, I believe Home Depot calls them "16" squares of boring heaviness" and they look great!!  In the afternoon we had 4 yards of wood chips delivered and when I got home from work I helped finish hand spreading the chips around the house.  What a difference mixed wood products make!

Front pathway, pre-wood chip

Post wood chip! So inviting!  Let's go to the right....

...and we return to the front!

..and around the back...

Next steps

One day before our one month anniversary and it's time for an update!  In the time since our party we have been keeping very busy!

• Jay interviewed for a graduate school program and we are waiting to hear the good news of his acceptance (of course he's going to get in!!)
• In other exciting Jay news, he will be starting a part time job with a local-turned-global engineering firm working on bioassays for water quality.  He'll be going back to his research roots but working on different processes than he most recently used at UC Davis.  
• I have officially changed my name! New social security card, new drivers license (though it looks like laser beams are shooting out of my eyes....the guy told me it would click on the count of 5 but it clicked on 4!), new business cards on their way.  No longer will I get funny looks at the Safeway checkout when they read my receipt and no more "You can just call me Crystal" to avoid the disaster of mispronunciation!
• We are in the process of refinancing the house and are very hopeful that we will be successful in saving a few bucks a month to put toward more home improvement.  Our goal for a long time has been to live roommate-free and after a whole summer of having the house to ourselves we hope to keep things that way.  We did take a look at Room Wanted ads on Craigslist just to see what's out there - with record enrollment at OSU this fall there is a shortage of housing in Corvallis - but we're just not ready to share our home!  With Jay's additional working hours coming up and my anticipated 30 cent raise for cost of living (try not to be jealous!!) we anticipate retaining the office and spare room/guest room as is.  
• In yard news - today is an exciting day!  The weeds are finally knocked out, for the most part, and we are ready to move forward!  This afternoon we will have 20 yards of Eco-Bark (the cheapest kind!) delivered and we will start spreading it out in paths that we marked off last night.  Hooray!
• The chilly mornings have begun and that means the pellet stove has been fired up!  We had a little incident the other morning, though - the stove was full of pellets from a bag that we opened last season.  With a little moisture, then drying out, we had a substantial amount of crumbled pellets and pellet dust, which clogged up the auger.  Having small hands came in handy at 7 am on Wednesday when I needed to dig out as many handfuls of sawdust as I could grab from the inside of the stove.  Then Jay sucked out the remaining debris with the shop-vac.  An evening of sifting dust out of the remaining pellets (frugality = odd jobs sometimes) and we are back in business with a beautiful, warm fire in the stove.  
• The ants came back....perhaps the rain drove them back into our dry house? They really love our wireless internet router... We reallocated our ant traps around the house and we're seeing some improvement.  
• The flower garden went crazy and everything bloomed!  We even have lettuce growing in there from some free seeds we got in the mail.  
• Jay uploaded his Septembeerfest pictures - see below!!  

Jordan and I enjoying beer samples

Jay, after a beer...or two...or three

Our beautiful flower garden!

The ants go marching....to
the internet router!

The 2010 pint glass - we're
starting a collection!

Jay watches as pellet dust ignites!

The weekend after

A week after our reception we were looking forward to just relaxing. The weather had a major change of heart and was amazing, if even a little too warm for us.  Saturday morning Jay and our pal Jordan went for a bike ride to Harrisburg.  The two of them are planning a ride to the coast pretty soon, so this was a good warm up for them.  After they took off, I packed Shep in the car and we headed out to the forest.  We took a nice hike down through the Old Growth Forest and then made a loop of about 6 miles.
  The guys made it back a little while after I did - they logged 62 miles!!  That's enough to work up an appetite for some grub...and a little beer!  Well, wouldn't you know it, Saturday was Septembeerfest in Corvallis!  Back on the bikes!
The three of us met up at the Benton County Fairgrounds and waited in line for admission.  There were quite a few beer vendors on hand and a few food ones as well.  We started with a few samples and enjoyed some nachos and a big pretzel during our afternoon.  Before we could leave we were sure to use up all our tokens (purchased bottle caps).  We were even lucky enough to be given two tokens by a nice gentleman who was leaving early - that's a free 8 ounces of beer!  (The guys took a few snapshots during our time at the fest, and when I get ahold of some of those I'll update the blog).
  We hopped back on our bikes and rode through campus, with Jay and Jordan pumping their fists in the air and giving a hearty "SeptemBEERfest!" in their manliest tones to all we passed.  I was sure to ride ahead a little ways.....  We then stopped at a local pub downtown for a more substantial meal while we caught the last of the Beaver game...we have high hopes for the rest of the season!
  Sunday was a super lazy day.  The weather switched back to gray and wet and catching up on our favorite shows online proved to be much too tempting.  What a great way to celebrate our first week of marriage!

Cookin' with Sunshine

Our CSA shares have continued to be bountiful and provide us with new produce to try.  Last week we received a very pumpkin-esque squash - the Sunshine squash!  I decided to prepare the squash last night, and luckily our CSA providers type up a handy sheet of cooking suggestions for us.  I just cleaned the outside of the squash, put it on a baking sheet, and it sat happily in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour, though it probably would have done well with a little less time.  I took the squash out and cut it open - it looked like a pumpkin inside, too!  The squash is very tasty and palatable.  We didn't need to add any seasonings to enjoy some sunshine.

We're back!

After a hiatus to prepare for our recent wedding celebration we are back to blogging!  The recent rains have gotten our weeds growing like crazy and the flowers in our community garden bed have been doing great!  Shep is still adjusting to less time outside, right after he got used to having the backyard to himself.  And we are still recuperating from our wedding weekend and enjoying photos of the party. 
Stick with us as we get back into our blog-groove!