Annoyed

We have this honkin' huge dead tree in our yard. Hurricane Ivan killed him. Yes it needs to be taken down. When it falls it looks like it'll fall straight down and the spousal unit is quite excited about dragging out the chain saw and taking it out, but there's always a possibility it could fall on my neighbor's car or by some weird fluke fall on our house and since our address happens to be in the world of Weird Flukes, we decided someone with more knowledge than he or I needs to take this out. When I let the dogs out this morning I saw this vandalism to the back of the tree. Some neighbor kids must have had a great time while we gone yesterday beating the snot out of this tree. My kids believe it's going to fall at any given moment so the youngest one has better things to do than whack the tree.

Here's a picture of the kid made mulch beneath the tree. I'm so beyond mad about this.

In other news, this weekend I read the first book in a new series, Full Moon Rising by Keri Arthur. I loved this book. I liked all the characters, I'm loving the werewolf/vampire story line. Can't wait to track down more books in this series. I found this one at the library and will have to look for the others at the bookstore.

Only a little bit of stitching was done this weekend but I will have an updated picture of The Monkey Sampler tomorrow. I've completed one of the over 1 monkeys. Too cute.

This next section of pictures is for my friend Val in England, for some reason I can't send pictures in email, it's easier to post them here. We've been discussing the housing market in our countries. I was whining because I couldn't buy the house below, it's next door to me, the owners are asking $220,000 and are willing to negotiate, it's 4/2 with the screened in porch(lanai or conservatory to Val) and pool. This is taken from way back in the backyard(garden). Grass is very dead--Val you read the ad, see any lush landscaping? The windows to the right are to the kitchen. The kitchen has a tiled floor.

This is the view of the pool from right outside the screened porch.

This is the porch taken through the screen. This floor is also tiled and the French door there goes into the living room. All this porch needs, other than some comfy furniture, is a ceiling fan. I would never leave this porch.

On a positive note I can't imagine the owners selling this house for their asking price(especially since I know about the leak in the hallway that hasn't been repaired, that it needs new carpeting all through the house and various other nitpicky things) so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they might think a 100% profit is being just a little greedy and might take a little less for it. Especially when you can buy a new house in any neighborhood around here for around the same price maybe a little more but it's a new house as opposed to a 12 yr old house.

Val--the home up the road from me is also for sale, it's 3/2 and has some serious lush landscaping, I think the owners put in $10,000 worth of palm trees and stuff this winter, not to mention they told a friend of mine they had $20,000 worth of renovations done to the kitchen and they were asking $240,000 and have come down to $219,000. Those people absolutely loved their house and their yard. It's also all brick and the house above is a mix of brick and siding.