A Mighty Wind

Also known as, we lost another tree today.

Yes, I know. The odds of us losing 2 trees to wind within a year are pretty low. Well, we're over-achievers here, so we just like to keep setting the bar high.

Here's a before glimpse of what our front landscaping used to look like:



Notice, if you will, the tall, skinny tree off the the left of the photo (helpful labels added by yours truly). Pretty. Elegant. And infested with spider mites.

By the time we knew what was wrong with it, the tree was pretty far gone. And apparently the only way to fix that problem was to douse the tree with a vigorous spray of water and soap every so often.

Since we didn't have a 40 foot ladder, this was a bit out of our league.

So we just decided to do the humane thing and let it die of natural causes at its own pace.

Last week, it was a bit windy...and I honestly thought that we'd lose the tree soon. So just about 2 days ago, we talked about calling someone to come and get it before it fell and potentially caused damage.

But we were a bit too late....

After a windy morning, we looked out the front door and saw this:



Here are some shots of the aftermath:













We had to use a circular saw, 3 extension cords, a spade, and a hand saw to cut the tree into movable pieces. Yay for manual labor!!

Just thought I'd mention...

Yet another local business that you might be interested in: Palmer Concierge

Here's a blurb from the founder:

We endeavor to give back to the community by helping busy people shrink down their t0-do lists, giving them more time to focus on the important things. Palmer Concierge can help you by shopping for groceries or gifts, organizing your office or home, taking your pet to the groomer's, wrapping gifts, making your retail returns, and bringing you coffee, lunch, or dinner. Some of our other services include event planning, photography, making your scrapbooks, and wardrobe consulting.

When you use Palmer Concierge, we commit to returning 10% of our profits to organizations that assist our fellow Austinites in need. By helping you, we are helping others, too.

And a view of their pretty flier...



I don't know about you, but this is especially timely given the holiday season. Shopping, gift wrapping, various errands...anyhow, just thought you'd want to be in on the latest scoop!

My first book

For a few Christmas presents this year, I decided to create a book on Blurb that showed some of our favorite places from our trip last year to Israel.

And you can check it out as well, if you're interested:

Book Preview

Enjoy!!

The Christmassing...and attack of the Scotties

Christmassing is in full swing at the Ramas. I have proof. And two furry black helpers.

Filling small amounts of time with randomness

Given that there was such a flurry of interest regarding the various aspects of redecoration that have occurred at our abode, I shall soon be posting the newly updated "Christmassing" of our house.

I've noticed something about myself: I tend to fill small amounts of time with tasks that I had no notion of attempting until just the last moment.

Case in point: random Christmas decorations were pulled out of the storage shed yesterday afternoon and were complete within about 90 minutes.

Done.




P.S. I just invented the word "Christmassing". You are now free to use it to your heart's delight. Enjoy!

Redecoration results

After a little shoving around of heavy things in our living room, we arrived with this:












I have a vision for what I want to do about the wall above the sofa...hoping to work on that this weekend.

I'm also wanting to add seating, since we don't have much now. Also hoping to work on that this weekend...

Cool new site...

Ok. Before you read the rest of this post, you must promise me NOT to read too much into this. I'm posting this, not out of any personal necessity, but rather to help spread the word about a neat site a friend of ours just launched.

Ready?


Are you sure?






We have a deal, right?








Ok. It's about babies.

BabysList.com is a new site that a friend of ours launched due to their own personal quest for all things baby. Here's an excerpt from Jeff's email:

I'm happy to announce the beta launch of another Austin Startup Lab company called BabysList.com. BabysList is a niche site that will serve the Austin and surrounding communities by assisting parents that want to sell, swap and search for all things baby, locally. It's my hope that this site will develop into a marketplace for parents to help others in their community that don't have the means to buy "new" baby products as well as provide a platform for letting stay at home moms and dads make additional income without the cost of shipping charges and risk of fraud.

BabysList was "born" (sorry I had to :) ) when Jen and I were shopping for Elise before she arrived. I was amazed at how much stuff we needed and what it all cost. Given the life cycle for most baby items is measured in months, I saw them as barely used, or in some cases not even used at all before the child grew out of that product. I set out to create a place where parents could market their used baby items to a very specific, local audience as well as find great bargains on all sorts of things for their baby.

This holiday season is shaping up to be a hard time for many people, so if you have any items that you were waiting for your next garage sale or were going to donate, I would ask you to consider posting them on BabysList so that local parents needing a little help with finances this holiday season have an alternative to buying "new". It's good for everyone when we all lend a helping hand.

Happy shopping!

Redecorating

I am in the mood to redecorate. And luckily, I've been able to convince Amar to help.

So tonight, we'll be completely reversing the arrangement of items in our living room. Who knows, maybe it'll work out? Maybe it won't? Our living room has perplexed me since we moved in. It's long and narrow, and we have a rather spacious couch...so even though I'd love to introduce additional seating, it has been a challenge to figure out exactly how to accomplish that.

So we're just going to move stuff around a bit to see how we like it.

Also, I made a new masthead this morning. I hope you like it!

Happy December!!