Weekend Basics

Hola and happy Cinco de Mayo — how is it May already (May 5th, moreover)? This weekend we mentioned we'd be pretty landlocked due to the bike course for the Collegiate Road National Championships lining up in our neighborhood. Well, not only did we have a blast watching the race throughout the last couple days, we also knocked out a bunch of things on the old to-do list while hanging close to home and had a little time to branch out and about within walking distance from the house. It was a busy weekend to say the least!

In terms of weekend projects, Mary was able to pick out some succulents and I was able to pull out the hole saw drill attachment for a project we have coming up in our eHow series this week. Stay tuned for all the details coming this Thursday — as this was a fun project we're looking forward to sharing.

Saturday morning we walked over to a neighborhood church's annual yard sale on the Boulevard:

This is the same sale where I found the matching Wagner Ware aluminum soup pot to my grandmother's larger dutch oven last year — so we were excited to come back again this year to take a look around. Can you spot Mary sniffing out some vintage finds in the picture below?

We left with a few finds for the vintage Etsy shop, and love that this annual sale's proceeds help benefit local organizations we care about like ART 180 and SCAN.

Later that afternoon I pulled out the electric trimmer to give the front hedges a little cut and both Mary and I ended up giving our front garden bed a little heavier transformation than we'd originally planned for, but love the final outcome of. We started out with an overgrown spring look going on:

After some heavy trimming on the tops of the hedges, we decided to make some serious edits to the underside of each of the bushes we have out front:

We've always loved the look of hedges with exposed woody branches underneath, but never tried it ourselves. We can now say we're the proud new care-givers for maintaining this new look out front:

It's a subtle change, but different enough to make us feel like the front space appears a little more structured and manicured. We're also feeling like there's been some great progress since March when things were looking much sparser out front here.

So...about those hedges lining the walkway. While our camellia bushes in the front bed came back and flowered great this season, our gardenia's didn't seem to make it through the winter like they have in the past. Here's an example of how they looked when healthier a couple summers ago. We're not sure what to do about these, but may decide to uproot them for an update later this year if they indeed become a lost cause. Any tips from experience or trained eyes welcome!

It was also a weekend of races! We paused to watch the Kentucky Derby, as we do every year. I always text the kids and we all pick a pony to win. This year Mary chose California Chrome, I went with Dance With Fate, Brandon was rooting for Uncle Sigh and Stephanie chose Danza. We enjoy watching all the stories about the different horses and jockeys building up to the race, then watching it as it flashes by. As they say, it is the fastest 2 minutes in sports. This is also the point in this post where I have to admit that I gave Mary a little grief for choosing the rumored favorite — then ate my words when he crossed the finish line like a champ. Now we're all on the same page, rooting for California Chrome to make history, pulling for him to win the Triple Crown. The last time a horse won the triple crown was in 1978. You could argue this is one of the toughest accomplishments in sports!

We were also excited to check out the Collegiate Road National Championships which took place right here in Richmond, part of the course being a block off our street on historic Monument Avenue.

My parents came over for the day yesterday to watch the race. I'm not sure if I've mentioned here on the blog before, but my dad used to be a semi-professional cyclist in Hungary before coming to America at age 16. Cycling has always been a big part of his life, so it was fun to spend time together and have something to get excited about.

Whenever we get to walk a few blocks to partake in events like these (bike race, Easter on Parade, 10k and more), we always feel so blessed to live in an area we love with access to so much activity and community.

Finally, after living for several weeks with a garbage disposal on its last leg, I was able to take care of business under the kitchen sink:

More on this little update to come.

In other news, somebody is still in denial that it's already Monday again...

Whew! I think that's the full rundown. We always enjoy busy weekends where we get a lot accomplished and sometimes look back and wonder how we had time for it all.

How was your weekend?