A little change to the front of our house

Okay, here is a confession:  I'm not very daring.  I don't like to rock the boat or do the unexpected because I think the "normal" thing is usually what I typically like best.

I've been thinking about painting my front door.  I know, I know, not too daring, but I've been thinking about a surprising color for it.  Lime green.  Soft mustard.  Something like that.  So when I saw a commercial on TV saying Ace Hardware was giving away a free quart of paint today, I decided to just do it.
                                         
The "before" wasn't bad at all, but I just wanted something more interesting.  In the end I couldn't get either the lime green or mustard because they both used a yellow base which wasn't included in the giveaway, but got this instead:

I know.  Orange.  Isn't that cool and funky?  Oh, and a 4-5 coat paint (grrr . . .).  I'm not sure if that's due to the paint I'm using or that it's a light color going over a dark one or that my brush is not a super-smooth one.

Evening walk around the neighborhood

The girls and I walked around the neighborhood after dinner tonight and I realized the houses and landscaping are completely different from any other place I've lived and I ought to take pictures of them. Even though I live in the southwest United States, when I think of "southwest-style houses" I think of Santa Fe-style houses.

Santa Fe-style tract house

I don't really know what the style here is called but I call it Arizona style. So here are some sights in my neighborhood:

This is a car parked at the side of a house that you see when you come into the subdivision from one side. It's an interesting car but I'm sure tired of being greeted by it.Here are S and E in front of typical landscaping. Lots of cacti, huh?
This is looking down the street. There are a LOT of cacti around here as well as Mesquite trees. The Mesquite trees are attractive but they drop stuff on the ground year 'round. Well, at least June, July, August, September, and October, the months we've been here. I'm kinda guessing it continues all year.These two houses have lots of native landscaping. I especially like the second one.

Dh and I both love all the palm trees, (or "pom pom trees," if you ask the girls) and although this variety isn't a towering kind, we think it has the prettiest canopy:Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home (note to self: MUST get to those weeds):

How I'm feeling and some silliness

I'll have to say I have felt depressed all week after hearing about Savannah's death. There are some other things going on too which are hard to bear, but I realized I can't bring Savannah back and while I can be a listening ear and a giver of advice, I can't take away the other hurts some family members are going through right now. For the sake of my husband and children I decided I have to shake the melancholy.

I thought I'd tell some of the silly things about our new house. The former owners made lots of upgrades, but they were all as cheap as they could go! I think they watched way too much "Designed to Sell." The master bedroom has two walls made out of this local concrete block called slump block. What a yucky name. I guess they didn't like it any better than I do, so they stuccoed over it. They didn't do a very smooth job of it and when they came to the electrical outlets and light switch covers, they didn't bring them out flush with the new wall, they curved the stucco in like it was adobe or something. Oh, and they trapped the covers in the stucco so they can never be removed or changed!

The master bath looks pretty good. The former owners replaced the counter and the sinks and they sit on sleek black cabinets . . . which are the old cabinets with a coat of black paint. The black towel rod . . . is the old oak one painted black. Even the door has been painted a dark color on the inside while the outside is still white.

The kitchen has newish cabinets, about 10 years old, I'd say. I can say with 98% surety they are the kind you buy at Home Depot flat in a box and assemble yourself. They aren't too bad, but still, nothing like the custom cabinets we left in our house in Gallup.

The last two tie for my "favorite" cheap upgrade. The floors look like 14" ceramic tiles, until you look a little closer and see that they are vinyl peel-n-stick squares . . . applied over Pergo.

The other "favorite" is the pool. It's an older pool and the water is a beautiful blue. Cloudy blue. We had the pool guy come out and test the water to see what he could do to clear up the cloudiness. It's so cloudy you can't see the third step where you enter the water, or your feet when you are standing in the pool. Turns out the color is so pretty because below the edge tiles, it is painted a beautiful ocean blue. You don't paint pools, you plaster pools. Because if you paint, the paint comes off in the water and makes it cloudy. For as long as the paint is on the pool walls. I guess it was cheaper than replastering though.

A few pictures from today

I'm not putting up any pictures of the hideous part of the day which is the 150 or so boxes EVERYwhere in the new house. Actually, 150 is probably low. It could be as many as 200. However, they are all in the house. The truck pulled away at 6 pm, about 8.5 hours after arriving. The driver stayed an hour or two after the other two left so he could reassemble some of the furniture.

But here are the good parts: the yard. The first picture shows green lemons. I think those come on in the fall.Next are the green oranges:
The grapefruit tree is interesting because there are still juicy, delicious grapefruits on the tree from last year, but there are also new green ones growing as well:
I thought I turned the picture but I guess I didn't. So turn your computer screen. :-) This is the grapefruit tree in the back yard:
My parents had this safety net installed over the pool. Two guys came to install in and it took only about two hours to complete and it is a beautiful piece of art! AND it is tight as a drum. The "button" in this picture is the chlorine tablet dispenser:
This shows the center pulley system that is used to tighten the net after the edges are hooked down:
The edge is kind of scalloped after they cut away the extra net. The edge is double bound. It's very, very secure. The blotches are just wet concrete:

Tomorrow one of my online friends is going to come help me do some unpacking. The same thing happened when I moved to Gallup--an online friend came to help me. No one from church or anywhere else offers, but ladies I've never even met do. It is much appreciated.