A Night Out and a Day in The Garden

M got a babysitter for Friday night and we planned on seeing "The Aviator" at the cheap theater in town. We had seen it on the marquee earlier in the week. Wouldn't you know it, but the movie wasn't there any more! We didn't see any movies that we both wanted to see (I thought the Wedding Date sounded good, but it looks like I'll be seeing it on a business trip from the movies-on-demand in the hotel :> ) In our quest for a movie to see, we swung by the other non-mall theater in town (mall parking is a pain) and didn't see anything good their either... Remember the days when the one theater in town had one movie showing? And you checked the newspaper or called the movie theater itself to see what time that one movie was playing? Well, these days, the movie theaters have so many darn movies showing (our "small" theater has 7 theaters and the big one has about 16) that we don't really have to plan anything. We usually can just show up and a great movie will be showing within a half hour. This has only backfired on us two times and Friday night was one of them. So, what to do when you've already eaten dinner and there are no movies that you want to see?

You go shopping.

We hit a couple of furniture stores, the brand new Salvation Army store, Target, and K-Mart (we already went to Wal-Mart the day before. We were looking for a bunch of things -- patio furniture, front porch furniture, living room furniture, and a great reading chair for the bedroom. There was no particular priority except that patio furniture is kind of at the top. We have a lovely patio table and chairs, but we need more for our big deck. We'd like to be able to sit at least eight people for dinner and have extra seating to boot, not to mention the must-have chaise lounge that I require for outside reading.

We thought we found a cool reading chair for the bedroom, but it turned out to be too big. I'm actually not sure that we really have room for a reading chair in the room, but we sure want one and hopefully we'll find one that's good for reading and small enough for the room. We did find a wicker set for the front porch -- a love seat and a chair with cute blue and white cushions.

I also found some beautiful, brightly colored bowls and a pitcher at Target. Target is always a good time shopping for cute little household things. All in all it was a fun night.

Saturday brought a gorgeous sunny day and yard work. The previous owner laid down some weed protecting fabric throught the landscaping, making it impossible to plant anything (we punched holes in it to plant the bulbs when we first moved in). M and I raked and shoveled up the bark mulch to get to the weed protector and pulled it all up. I was pretty sore in my back and arms this morning, but really happy that we got it done. M also tilled the soil and we'll mix it with potting soil and mulch to make it all ready for planting after the last frost. Another fun part about working out in the garden is that I got an upclose look of the plants coming up -- looks like there are a few geraniums, some tall grasses, and a couple of plants with tiny purple flowers. Our raspberry plants are budding too. It's fun to see spring happen up close and personal :>