I hadn’t held out any sort of hope of getting all 17 days of #17DaysofGreen on this blog, but I think considering my track record for the past two years, I’m doing a pretty damned good job!

Also, my house is sadly pretty sparse in the green department.

BUT….

I love candles.  I ADORE candles.  I have them all over the place.  I’d bet that I have close to 100 candles throughout my home.  But you know what?  Candles can be expensive, and a candle habit is one I’m not really thrilled to pay exorbitant amounts of money to feed.

So I bought a candle-making book and a 32-lb. chunk of wax and some other odds and ends and went to work.  So far, I’ve only made poured or molded candles.  I’m really hoping to make tapered candles which are made by dipping.

These gorgeous green jars are from some Glade Christmas Tree scented candles.  My home always has fake trees (have you seen the videos of those things going up in flames?  NO THANK YOU!) and I miss the scent of a real tree.  Glade did a great job with the scent, and the glass jars are soooo pretty.  I also have red jars (of course I do!) that I’ve refilled and keep in my family room.  And in my kitchen I have mason jars that are filled with white wax and they look freaking adorable next to my cream-ware pitcher.

The only candles that I buy anymore are tea light candles.  I have 7 liquid potpourri burners around my house, so I go through quite a lot of those and the time v. money-saved just isn’t worth it to make my own tea lights.

It’s just another thing in a long list of “crafty” things that I only do in a very half-assed manner.  It doesn’t stop me from enjoying it or being happy to show it off, it just means I’m more useless than you might suspect!

Any other candle fiends out there?

I am so lucky in that I have a great house that sits on a wonderful piece of land in a neighborhood that seems to have sprung from a Norman Rockwell painting.  Both my front and back yards make me super duper happy.

Because a proper winter just never happened to us this year in this part of the world, spring has been in a perpetual state of “almost” for about 2 months now.  Hopefully it will come full bloom soon.

So for my #17daysofgreen post today, I went around my property and took pictures of new buds and pretty flowers.  Not all are green, but Spring is all about green!

Tiny green buds on my Weeping Cherry tree.

Fuzzy green buds on my Magnolia tree.

Forsythia waking up from a winter’s nap.

I don’t know what these white and purple flowers are.  They look like tiny tulips and are scattered here and there in my front yard.

LOVE my Daffodils.

These are solar lights.  I like putting green decor out in my front yard.

LOVE this.  I saw it at Marshall’s and thought to myself, “I don’t need it.”  I left and regretted not getting it.  Luckily they still had it in stock when I rushed back a few days later to get it.

Fresh new leaves on one of my NINE rose bushes.

Pretty pink buds on a tree I CANNOT name for the life of me.  It grows weird little fruits that almost look like tiny pears.

The best thing about my backyard is that there was room for this.

Notice the GREEN sand box?  Eh?  Eh?

I love the clusters of these little white flowers.  I hate mowing them down.

I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of the RED buds on my oak tree.

These teeny tiny blue flowers grow around my compost bin.  They are so pretty.

My neighbor’s “privacy” shrubs that are mostly dead (thanks to the ivy, see next picture) that just hang over my fence.  I want to go postal on them with a shrub trimmer, and I know that I can so they aren’t falling over my fence like that, but I’m scared of pissing my neighbor off.  I’ll get sick enough of it one day and trim them, I’m sure.

Ivy choking those “privacy” shrubs.  My neighbor actually told my husband that he planted the ivy because he thought it was pretty.  He didn’t realize that it would overtake his entire back yard (which it has, all of his tree trunks are covered in the stuff) or his neighbors’ yards.  Yeah, thanks to him I fight a yearly fight to keep the ivy out of my yard, off of my fence, off of my trees…blah!!

All in all, I love my property.  I even love my not-so-green-thumbed neighbor side.

Today marks week 3 (THREE!! GAH!) that I have been battling the world’s most annoying cold/plague.  I just can’t seem to kick it and it was really starting to wear me down.

So today, I decided to stay in my jammies.  They just so happened to be GREEN jammies, so I thought I’d showcase them!

I happen to love my jammies very much.

Look, I’ve been with the same guy for 11 years and I have two small children.  To think that I float into my bedroom every night wearing something silky and skimpy is just stupid.  When it’s time for bed, it’s time for COMFORT!  And it also needs to be something that I can wear in the mornings while feeding and wrangling two very rambunctious little boys.

Today was a beautiful and warm day here.  I opened all of my windows (much to the horror of my sinuses) and enjoyed the breeze moving through my home, instantly making everything fresh.  My spirits were lifted.

If you look closely at the picture above (I’d prefer if you didn’t!) you’ll notice some wonky things about walls and ceilings going on.  Well, we’ve been doing a massive kitchen renovation 100% by ourselves and paid for 100% with cash.  That basically means that we started it last July and still have a long ways to go before it is finished.  So, my house is NOT photograph ready.  Excuse the mess.

Also, I’d like to submit a FORMAL apology to my new bloggy friend, Carrie.  I left a comment on one of her #17DaysofGreen posts and accidentally called her husband “chunky” instead of “hunky.”

Technology gods, save me from myself!

I have a new Kindle Fire and have been using it to do my social network thing, and the autocorrect on that thing has been slowly trying to ruin my life.  Turning “hunky” into “chunky” is the most famous example so far.  I’m so sorry!!