Cupcakes and flowers

Yesterday was my aunt’s birthday, so we descended on her with cupcakes:

She had ice cream, so we had all the necessary snacks and good company, so an enjoyable visit. We need to pop down there more often, and also need to go see my other uncle more. So much to do, so little time.
Like painting this house. It needs it desperately and we’ve attempted screaming (this is an autocorrect – I meant scraping but that seemed appropriate too) but haven’t gotten far. And then we’re all scared of heights. So I broke down and am getting an estimate to have someone else do it. They gave me a rough guess of 3,000 (they’re coming Thursday for a real estimate) but if the real estimate is the same we may try to save for it because I’ve figured between paint, supplies, and equipment (like scaffolding) we’re looking at 2,700$ to do it ourselves with a whole lot of labor and terror… So the extra 300$ would be a good investment. But we’ll see what the final estimate is, as 3,000$ would be our absolute max.
In other news, flowers are blooming even better than last year. I get a huge giggle out of the rosebush at the end of the driveway because our first summer here it did nothing so I had planned to kill it. Now look at it:

I need to cut out the trees growing around it, I know. Anyway, here’s some more flowers:

My favorite rose isn’t doing anything because someone whom I won’t name weed whacked it. There’s an inch of stem left with some leaves, so hopefully it will come back. Ergh.
And that’s all for now. Have a cupcake kind of day!
Jo 🙂