Ferns and Foliage – possibly for the yard?

These would definitely add color and texture to our yard. I am hopeful some of these species may be friendly to shade? Since our yard is pretty high on shade and low on sun.

These three seem to be three varieties of the same plant. A plant which I think I used to have but may have finally killed after three years. I have faith that if I had this plant again I could help it survive.

Flowers – inside or outside? Sun or Shade?

Everyone is aware of how much I love this shade of orange, right?

I kind of love everything about this flower. The round petals and the color.

A sweet looking flower that may choose to grow wild in my yard?

I love how this guy looks like he could be right out of a Dr Seuss book!

For the unidentified flowers and ferns (which is basically all of these) does anyone know the variety?

We had a great time hanging out at the winery in the village after touring the house. We toured the production area which was very interesting. Then we headed over to talk to the Smithy. On the way we may have taken a short detour to check out some of the mohair fleece they have for processing demonstrations. We spent a good while talking to the apprentice blacksmith who actually happened to be from Ohio. So many cool tools to check out that have barely changed since they were invented. You know what they say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The next morning there was a break in the weather so we headed back to the Biltmore to get some pictures outside of the house and a few more in the gardens in the daylight.

I found several flowers that I would love to see if I can grow somewhere in my house or yard. I do however need to get some better gardening skills before I can invest in a ton of flowers. Heh.

After we left the Biltmore we drove over to Tennessee to take a drive on the infamous Tail of the Dragon. It’s an 11-mile stretch of highway with 318 curves in the road. It’s quite popular with the motorcycle crowd and the touring crowd. The locals aren’t always too thrilled to have to drive up and down the road though when they’re in a hurry.

We had a good time and did three passes before heading up to Maryville, where we stayed on a mountaintop. Driving up and down the mountain was an adventure in itself and the boy definitely got his fill of driving super windy roads. It was a bit nice to finally get onto straight roads when we drove back to Ohio the next day. This place is a new bed & breakfast and the owners are wonderful hosts. We had a great time relaxing up there and are hoping to get back again some time.

One of the best parts about finally getting home after a long and very rainy drive was a phone call telling us to go out and get the big stick off our shed. After some prompting the boy went to check it out and we found that his parents had left us a super comfortable swing for our lanai. (I had to wait until the next day to get pictures.)

All in all it was a great anniversary trip. I think we’ll try to do something each year for our anniversary from here on out.

Hope being a bit camera shy

Oh, I guess to back up the boy and I started fostering rescue dogs April last year with a lovely dog, Lucy, who was fortuitously adopted 3 days before our wedding (now that was an emotion packed week!). We took a several month hiatus and I became more involved with the rescue group again this March. We took on a temporary foster, Bandit, while his foster family was on vacation. I volunteered to help out the intake coordinator with placing dogs and we got Lizzie a golden retriever/boxer mix who is hanging out with us this week while her adoptive family is on vacation (totally their idea and choice – not a requirement of our organization! )

So Hope. Hope was rescued from a high kill shelter in Ohio (Shelby county). Our organization pulls all breeds from high kill shelters around the state, mostly ones within a reasonable distance of central Ohio. Hope was tossed out of a vehicle while pregnant with pups. She ended up at Shelby county and was saved from euthanization by a family who took her in so she could have her pups. My organization – ADOPT Pet Rescue – took Hope and two of her pups – Luke and Bosco – in this weekend. When we got her on Saturday she was very afraid of cars (with good reason!) and had no clue what to do with stairs. We’ve helped her figure out stairs (much to my chagrin!) and are slowly working on getting her more comfortable with cars. Right now though we have our hands full having two good sized dogs in the home. We usually only have one at a time!

Hope has been approved to enter a service/therapy dog training program where she will be a companion for someone with special needs. We have to finish up some paperwork before she can go live with her trainer but we’re very excited for her!

As proof of my exploits I give you one of my favorite pictures from our sneak peek photos.

Enjoying our hobbies in our finery.

These are the photos our photographers put into a slideshow during our reception. The rest of the pictures won’t be available for another 1-3 weeks.

The boy purchased a fancy Nikon D5000 as my wedding gift so in theory you should see a lot more pictures around here. Lord knows I took enough on the honeymoon. It may just depend on whether I get too hung up on processing and sorting to get around to posting.

On a side note, it’s been almost 3 yrs since I started this blog and my 3 yrs of hosting is about up. Leave me a note if you have any good suggestions for hosting companies to switch to. I am currently using Blue Host but the cost has gone up by $90 for the 3 yr bracket. I would like to stay somewhere around $4.50 a month if that’s even possible anymore. Have a great day!

Before Picture

After Picture

]]> http://blog.halfacregoods.com/2009/12/10/now-you-see-her/feed/ 1 http://blog.halfacregoods.com/2009/12/06/village-lights/ http://blog.halfacregoods.com/2009/12/06/village-lights/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:08:36 +0000 LittleWit http://blog.halfacregoods.com/?p=1626 Continue reading →]]> I took my little to the Village Lights festivities tonight. We had a great time hanging around at Book Loft for an hour before they turned on the lights. Then we hopped in line for the one horse open sleigh rides. She took this picture of the horse when another group was getting on. You could fit 4 people comfortably and squeeze in 5 if you had small kids. It’s a good thing we happened upon the line early as it got long fast and with each trip being about 10 min the wait time was pretty long.

The horse's name was Erin

After we finished our sleigh ride we hightailed it to the other end of the festival to a bakery to try their cupcakes. Then we walked back and had to head home. It was a great time and I will definitely swing by it again next year. Although I may go with the boy so I can partake in some of the adult festivities and drinking.

Now, the boy is complaining that his mouse is squeaking…we’ll see if it’s still squeaking in the morning. Silly boy.

In other news, that riddle from yesterday, it’s gotten worse. I am totally going to run out of yarn and I can’t decide if I should just rip it out now at 28″ and just re-knit the yarn into a new pattern. Or if I should block the scarf long or if I should just write a note apologizing to whomever receives the scarf for its short stature and give them some ideas on how to wear it all fancy like. Sigh.

In other news, I have a riddle for you -

How can a scarf measure 10″ length and 15g of yarn used; then 3 hours later measure 21.5″ length with 45g of yarn used? Give up? Me too. Oh well. Hopefully I won’t run out of yarn too soon. Also, it appears that I have the same gauge all the way through but I haven’t taken a precise measurement.  Gauge doesn’t count for scarves

In the evening my Kentucky relatives drove up to visit. We had a lovely visit and got to look at the pro wedding pictures from my cousin’s wedding this summer. We were chatting so long that we lost track of time and the boy and I had to scoot out so we could get home at a decent hour. I can’t wait to see most of them again at Christmas.