RTT - Patio redux, work holiday party recon, Paul McCartney

It seems imperative that JR and I have a little outdoor oasis wherever we live. Just somewhere to sit outside on a cool morning and drink coffee or on a balmy afternoon for our aperitifs.  This new place has a small patio area (and I mean really small but for a Houston rental it is big) between the townhouse and the garage. One third of it is tiled but the remaining 2/3rds was just dirt and some drainage rocks. If I had been clever I would have taken a before photo because it was just too pathetic.

Anyway, we spent a little time at Home Depot and about 4 hours dressing the place up.

We covered a good portion of the area in gravel, left a small strip for some bedding plants, potted up some plants, cleaned up and plugged in both fountains (you can only see one in this picture), set out a couple of sling chairs and a table that we have had forever and there you have it. A quiet little oasis in the city.

 

Nessa was a huge help. though she immediately cluttered up the place with her toys. The other fountain is right behind her. She promptly dropped her ball into it. 

All and all, I'm pretty happy with the way it is shaping up. We still have to decide how we want to cover the air conditioning unit. Can you say "ugly"? I'm thinking of having JR bring home a pallet from work to make a screen out of it. Then hang some plants off the pallet screen. I think that will make a nice vertical herb garden. 

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Another part of the weekend was spent doing a little recon work at Michael's Craft Store for the work holiday party. The planning committee plans to make these for the decorations in the large meeting room where lunch will be served. 

And these for the staff lounge where we plan to set up the desserts.  Except we won't be using candles with flames. We are planning to pick up some of those flame-less candles. The ones with the little LED lights. The University fire department frowns on fire inside the building. 

We found both ideas on Pinterest, of which I've become a Pinterest fool. I spend way too much time on that particular site. I now have about 15 projects I want to do that I have absolutely no time for. 

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If you and I are friends on Facebook you'll know that JR and I went to the Paul McCartney concert. To say we enjoyed yourselves would be an understatement. It was fantastic, amazing, fun and expensive but worth it.

There are a couple of things that I noticed about concert going in the 21st century that are different than the 20th. 

1. instead of holding up lit lighters the attendees held up cell phones with lit lighter apps on them. Very high tech.
2. maybe it was just this crowd in this venue (a stadium with the roof open) but there wasn't that blue haze of pot smoke. Or any pot smoke smell around us. Maybe, I have a weird sort of nostalgia but I sort of missed it.

There were some other things I noticed that I think are Houston centric such as, a woman wearing a real fur coat to a concert by an avid animal activist (no apologies from this crowd), everyone and I mean everyone sang along to all the songs (that was actually great) and this one says nothing about Houston or the venue but the nachos (the only things served by the vendors that was vegetarian) were so salty as to be almost unpalatable.  I say almost because I was hungry and they were served with great pico de gallo. Washed down with beer and they weren't too bad. Also, if you order them without the chicken or beef the concessionaires seem to think that you need more of the fake cheese sauce.

Here is a really bad video taken with my cell phone.

That is all from me. Please go visit a few of the others participating in Random Tuesday Thoughts.

Peace,
M