You say it's my birthday....

We had the first actual party in the house, and it was excellent. Still not fully set up, so I decided to call it a BYOB party- not booze, we have plenty of that. Bring your own BED.

People brought air mattresses, and everyone had a big empty room. We got the door repainted, just in time, and the knocker installed. Happily the color turned out really nice when it dried, since there was a while before it dried where it looked pink.

My husband at work:


The red door:


Nice knocker:



It was wonderful to have people in the house having a good time. Also one guest dog, who is so cute!

Sleepy puppy:



The highlights by far were a wonderful dinner including BBQ Salmon and fresh local corn, make your own sundaes with cake mix-in (yeah, the busted 1959 oven burned the whole top off the cake, but it worked out), and FIRE DANCING!

Gorgeous Genevieve spinning fire on her knees on our back deck:


Drea looking serene in a wheel of flame:


Drea and Genevieve together:


A multi-armed Goddess of Fire:


One of the happiest birthdays I've ever had. Especially since the age at which you are supposed to stop caring about your birthdays is 21, and that was ,um, a few years ago. Fire spinning will be happening at many future parties, that is certain.

The Grass in Mass

Grows fast! Especially with all this rain, so we decided to hire some guys to mow the lawn. Yeah, I know. Hard core DIY.

They were extremely exuberant, even going so far as to cross my driveway and start mowing the neighbor's lawn!

They brought me out to look at it and show me a couple of flowers that they had cut off accidentally, which were not actually my flowers. They assured me repeatedly that the flowers would grow back. When I protested that I didn't own that lawn, the guy's response was "Yeah, well, it needed it". So far my neighbor hasn't noticed the flowers, keep your fingers crossed.

Then they took me around the side of the house and showed me a hole in the ground with some bees next to it. And a few kicked up clods of dirt. He apologized to me profusely for the kicked up clods with the explanation "That's where I was running from the ground bees."

At that point I really felt like I should apologize to him, since I had never even heard of Ground Bees let alone known that I *had* some. They are still out there, not as angry, but every so often a bee pokes its little yellow head out.

Apparently they can be killed pretty easily by pouring poison into the hole in the ground, but for now I have decided to concentrate on the front door.

So, I bought this knocker.



Go rejuvenation.com for the cool stuff.

Side note: Why is it that everything I buy for the house lately sounds dirty? I showed the knocker to my husband who said "Wow, great knocker!" which only made it worse.