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Time to put that stinky organic brew on my garden

by The Diva

I’ll be spending some time in the garden this weekend. It’s time to put some alfalfa tea on the garden beds.

I have two big plastic garbage cans of alfalfa tea brewing in my driveway. Alfalfa apparently has some kind of organic growth hormone in it and it just gives plants a huge boost. It’s the only thing I use to fertilize my garden. Well .. other than some home made compost and sometimes manure. LOL

It’s easy to make too – just add about four cups of alfalfa pellets to a large garbage can, fill with water and stir daily for two to three weeks. I also add some molasses ( it helps combat some of the fermentation) and sometimes – usually in late spring, I add some Epsom salts to the mix.

the only problem with the alfalfa tea is the smell. If you don’t stir it and aerate it daily as it’s “brewing” it can really get stinky. Even well stirred brew smells. When I put it on the garden I have to put on protective clothing to guard against smell splashes, and I tend to apply it to my garden in the evening – usually after dinner time. Why? Well since it smells I’m trying to spare my neighbors some of the bad smell … if I put it on the garden after dinner most of my neighbors who would be affected by the smell are indoors watching tv.

So .. sometime this weekend I’ll be applying the smelly alfalfa tea that I’ve been brewing to my garden. I’ll give it a little water afterwords – as it seems to help ton down the smell. Then .. about four or five days after my application my garden will start to look great. I’ll see new growth on my roses and the leaves of all my plants will look nice and healthy.

Do you ever treat your garden to an organic fertilizer like alfalfa tea?

Filed Under: Gardening, Home and family, Home Improvement, House and Home, Items to Try, The yard Tagged With: alfalfa tea, garden beds, neighbors, organic, organic fertlizer, smells, splash, stinky

When will the new neighbors move in?

by The Diva

I think our new neighbors might move in sometime soon. They’ve had possession of the house next door for about two weeks now and they’ve been coming by to clean and paint the house.

I’m not sure what they’re doing as far as renovating or repair the house goes. I’ve heard a lot of hammering and banging, but it doesn’t seem like they are doing a lot of new work. unlike us when we got our house – we were at our house every day for three weeks tearing down walls, refinishing floors, plastering and painting before we finally moved in … whereas our new neighbors have only visited their new home about four times since they got the key.

Anyway, since it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a lot of work to the house I expect that they must be almost done cleaning and painting so maybe they’ll move in this weekend. If not perhaps the following weekend. It can’t be much longer.

One thing that I liked about moving to our house when we got it was that it was a chance to get new furniture. LOL I loved preparing the rooms and then picking out new contemporary furniture that would look great in each room. As it turned out we didn’t have to buy a lot of new furniture as we had quite a bit in our apartment, but I did get to get all new master bedroom furniture and a year later we got new living room furniture.

We haven’t talked to the new neighbors very much, but they seem nice enough. That’s all I’m hoping for anyway … I mean, we have to share a tiny driveway and our houses are very close to each other so it’s important that we’re at least on friendly terms with our neighbors. Hey … they’ve got to be better than the awful renter neighbors that we’ve had to deal with for the last year.

Filed Under: A clean home, Home and family, Home Improvement, House and Home, Items to Try Tagged With: bedroom, cleaning, decorate, friendly, Furniture, living room, moving, new neighbors, nice, painting, Renovating

New neighbors coming soon

by The Diva

It looks like we’re going to have new neighbors soon. Yeah … I hate having an empty house beside us … of course I hated our bad renter neighbors even more.

The couple who bought the house came by earlier this evening. I think it was their first visit since the house officially became theirs. I have no idea when they might move in though – maybe this weekend.

If they’re like us, they’d be smart to keep their current house, apartment or condo for another month and start some renovations before they move in. That’s what we did and it’s amazing how much we got done in one month! We knocked down three walls, tore out all the carpeting and sanded and then put polyurethane down on the wood floors, painted every room of the house, got electrical work done to replace all of the old knob and tube wiring and had some new duct work done.

Wow … I think that’s everything we did .. I might be missing some stuff but that’s the main things we did to our house in a month before we moved in. mostly on our own!

I was rail thin by the time that month was over … oh and we each only took two weeks off so we also worked for the last two weeks of that month.

I had to drag my husband kicking and screaming into our big home renovation. I think he would have rather sat back and taken a enzyte, but in the end he really liked getting his hands dirty and had a feeling of accomplishment at how different our house looked once we were done .. oh and it looked good. It’s all open now instead of having tiny little rooms on the main floor.

Anyway, I have no idea if the new neighbors will renovate or not – but knowing the house they bought as well as I do, I think it would be in their best interest to renovate as the house needs work.

I just hope they’re nice. We have to share a driveway and considering the driveway is only about 10 feet wide our houses are very close together .. so the better we get along the better for all.

Filed Under: Home and family, Home Improvement, House and Home, Renovating Tagged With: close houses, floors, house, neighbors, new, next door, nice, renovate, shared driveway, walls

Do you ever go to open houses just to look around?

by The Diva

This past weekend my husband and I decided to go to a few open houses being held at some homes that are up for sale in our neighborhood.

We aren’t thinking of selling our home or moving – not just yet anyway … but we were curious as to how the home owners had renovated and decorated their homes.

One open house we visited was in a home that’s very similar to ours in design. Like us – they had knocked down the walls in the entry hallway, and the walls separating the living room, dinning room and main hallway in order to create an open living room dining room area. The only big difference was that they hadn’t taken out hte stairway hallway as we did. We felt that our main floor looked a little bigger or more open than the home we were in.

Another house that we visited was totally modern – stark white walls, white furnishings and just about everything stainless steel in the kitchen – including the Hansgrohe faucet. The house was a little too modern for my tastes, but I enjoyed looking around.

My husband and I are still renovating our home. Actually our renovations are stalled … so visiting a few open houses might have helped motivate us to finish our renovations and gave me some ideas for how we might decorate once we’re finally done our renovations … well if we ever manage to finish!

Do you ever go to open houses to just look around and get ideas?

Filed Under: Appliances, Furniture, Home and family, Home Improvement, House and Home, Items to Try, Real Estate, Renovating Tagged With: decor, decorate, for sale, home, house, ideas, interior design, look around, open house, renovation

How not to sell a house!

by The Diva

Last week our neighbors house, which is for sale (remember the bad renter neighbor stories?) had an open house. Just for the heck of it my husband and I decided to take a peek at the house.

I know the house hasn’t had any renovations … possibly since it was built in 1927 … but we were still curious to see if our neighbors family had decorated the house to prepare it for sale … Uh … the answer is NO. A big no!

The house is mostly empty … which is fine. I don’t think a house necessarily has to be dressed up when it goes up for sale … an empty house can allow prospective buyers to picture their own furnishings in the home.

However I don’t agree with what our neighbors family did. As I said they left most of the house empty, but they put what appears to be office furniture in the living room and dining room.

It just looks … odd.

They also took out all of the appliances! Why? I’m fairly certain that if you’re trying to sell a house for a good price you’re probably more likely to make a sale and get your asking price or higher if you have all the appliances (washer, dryer, fridge, stove etc) in place.

This is definitely an example of how not to sell a house! LOL

I guess it will be a while before we have new neighbors!

Filed Under: Appliances, Home and family, Home Decor, Home Improvement, House and Home, Items to Try, Real Estate Tagged With: decor, decorate, dress a house, for sale, house, neighbors, no appliances, no furnishings, odd, office furniture

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