Friday, June 27, 2014

Self-Portrait | June 2014

The end of June brings with it the six month mark since moving into our new house, which is so hard to believe!  I spent part of the month continuing to unpack and organize the garage.  I was finally able to get rid of some of the stuff that we had moved from Indiana thinking we would use it in a new house but it just didn't fit for one reason or another.  I still have a little more work to do before I'm completely finished, but it feels good to be making some real progress towards finally getting settled into our new home.

I have no idea why we waited until the start of the insane Phoenix summer to work outside, but Kevin and I also spent the entire month working on our backyard and our pool.  When we moved in, our yard was full of old tree stakes.  Since I'm a klutz and kept kicking and tripping over them we decided we needed to remove them. Of course they were super heavy duty and we were unable to pull them out, so we had to dig around them and cut them off several inches underground.  It was a huge job and took forever. Of course, once we thought we were done we found a few more.  Sigh.  But those can wait for another month.  Possibly a cooler one!  The few more we found actually don't stick up all that high and they are in a part of the yard we rarely walk though, so they aren't quite as big of a deal.

At one point our backyard and pool deck was lined with landscape lights, but the previous owners didn't keep them in good repair.  So when we moved in, the majority of them were either missing or broken, and we decided to take them all out and replace them.  Kevin and my dad replaced half of them a few months ago, and we finished the rest this month.  Given the number of lights we replaced it was another time consuming and exhausting job, but we are thrilled that they are all in and we can now light our yard at night!

Our yard has several large trees in it that provide us with a lot of amazing shade and gives our backyard a wonderful, tranquil, relaxing park-like feel.  It also means that our yard is constantly full of branches, leaves, flowers, mesquite nuts, pods, etc. - the majority of which seem to head straight for our pool!  It has been a constant battle trying to keep it debris free so we can actually use it.  We finally decided it was time to break down and buy an automatic vacuum to go along with the automatic skimmer we purchased a while ago.  So after much research we finally decided on one and purchased it.  After a bit of trial and error we finally figured out how to use it properly, and for the first time since we moved in we have a clean, debris-free, usable pool.  Woo Hoo!

So, here I am finally enjoying some relaxation time after so much hard work this month...


Did you miss some of my past self-portraits?  Clicking here will take you to all of my self-portrait blog posts. Clicking here will take you to my self-portrait Facebook album.

Michele Whitacre is a portrait photographer serving Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area.
Visit Michele's Website | Like Michele on Facebook | Follow Michele on Instagram | Follow Michele on Twitter


© 2014 Michele Whitacre Photography LLC

1 comment: