Before you develop a poor(er) reputation with your HOA, I would suggest you personally visit with a couple of the officers individually and privately. Remind them of the history of the property (the foreclosure part) and explain to them what your situation was last year that prevented you from fixing the appearance. Tell them the current bare spots resulted from the dense infestation of weeds and you are as concerned as they are over the appearance. Finally tell them that you are now working hard to make your lawn the lawn of the month. You might even tell them you are working with lawn consultants (us, heh, heh) to help you perfect the lawn. St Augustine grows perfectly well in salty sand. In fact I've seen it escape into the wild in the dunes along the Texas coast. In the tropics I've seen it growing down from the dunes, across the beach toward the surf. Whatever your soil is, St Aug is up to the challenge. The soil test is going to tell you that you have sand and to add organic matter and fertilize. You already know that so let's get going. Actually you are already going so all you have to do is keep after it. I have not tried this but it is my belief (only) that if you use any one of the grains you have already used at a rate of 10 pounds per 1,000 square feet on a monthly basis, you should be able to keep the HOA off your back. Even if you have bare spots, your grass will be darker green than ANY of theirs is. Florida's sand can be a bugger. Watering once every week or two might not be enough, especially if you are in full sun. St Aug does not like to spread into really dry areas. If you have a mulch budget, use it in the bare spots. It needs to be very fine mulch. Grass clippings are pretty good. If your neighbors put them out on the sidewalk, pick them up. Once your grass grows up to 4 inches high, you will probably be able to back off on watering toward that once per week rate. There are a couple of other sandy minerals that you can supplement your current sand with and you should see some benefit. Greensand is one. It is chock full of a variety of minerals. Another is anything with granite in it. Look for deals on those types of materials and get some when you can. Now that I think about it I remember reading that there are different kinds of clay, and one of them was compatible with Florida sand. I remember Bentonite clay was mentioned in the article, but I don't remember if it was the good one or one of the bad ones. Sorry but maybe someone else will remember reading that. Finally I'm getting around to organic matter in the soil. The best there is is the microbes. They need food and one of the best is dead grass roots. Grass sheds its roots continually to the point where the roots you have now will be gone in a year or two. Microbes will decompose those as they are sloughed off. Feeding from the surface has to continue with the grains and that should be enough. In a year your white sand will appear to be black (gray) when you dig into it. Don't be fooled into thinking it has changed into a better soil, it has not. It is still sand but the black stuff you see is the organic matter they are looking for in the soil test. If you put a cup of that stuff into a jar of water, the white sand falls to the bottom immediately and the black stuff floats on top. The idea of spraying a lawn, even a small lawn, with compost tea quickly leads you to the sprayer problem. I ended up using a wide open watering can and finally gave up on tea as being too much hassle for my lazy approach to lawns. In your sand, compost is what you want. Anything that forms a layer on top of your soil is good. Mulch mowing the grass is by far the easiest thing you can do towards that. The weeds that are going to be a problem are the broadleaf weeds. They will shade out St Aug. Sea grape is one you've probably seen. If you have that it has to come out. Clover, henbit, oxalis, and dichondra are others that have to come out. Grassy weeds will get choked out by the tall St Augustine so don't worry about those. Same with dandelions. I wanna see the before pictures so when you come back in August we can see the Lawn of the Month results.

Schrems was surprised to discover, among the 1,222 pages of data covering three years of Facebook activity, not only deleted wall posts and messages, some with sensitive personal information, but e-mail addresses he'd deleted and names he'd removed from his friends list. Well of course it's still there. It off the page but still archived. that goes for almost anything and everything you post on the net. It's not a Facebook issue. It's part of the new age we live in. You can burn a letter or paper doc. You can't burn content off the internet. You can clean your own house but once it's out thee it is out there. I hope he has what it takes to be a better lawyer. He's not a very savvy IT guy. LOL

You're starting a great hobby that should give you lots of enjoyment! Although I am just an amateur hobbyist, I will try to answer your questions: 1) You may mount your photos in a variety of ways. Mounting them on cardstock first is called "matting." You could also mount them directly onto the page. You can use glue stick or photo splits (little 2-sided stickers for the backs of photos) or you could use old-fashioned corner mounts. Most people use a variety of techniques. 2)You can print backgrounds with your computer. 3)Some inkjet ink is acid free, some is not. No one really knows how colorfast they are. 4)Color swatches are okay, but are probably not archival, so you might think twice about them. 5)Everyone is different, but when I do a page, I usually use these steps: Choose photos that are sharp, interesting, and thematically related. No amount of embellishment or paper crafting can compensate for poor photos. Examine the colors and mood of the photos and choose the colors of your papers and other page elements accordingly. Decide if you want a one-page or two-page spread. Set the paper out and start setting the photos on the page to determine placement. Fiddle around for awhile with this. Be sure you have a photo that will dominate the layout and become the focal point. Determine where journaling and page headings will be located. Decide if you are going to crop or edge any of the photos, then do so. Mat any photos that you decide need matting. Begin mounting photos onto page. Stare at the pages (which are bare except for the mounted photos) and decide what embellishments, like stickers or whatever, you need. You may decide not to put on the things you had initially set aside for these pages. Also, make a final decision on what kind of lettering you want to use. Do your lettering and journaling, leaving room for embellishments. Add embellishments last. Place sheet in protective sleeve. Whew!

So, here's where we're at. We met with our first contractor yesterday and the ballpark estimated cost was more than double what I was expecting. I had mixed feelings about the contractor. On one hand, he has a lot of satisfied clients, according to him, and his description of the process of how they go about a job, was very reassuring. He definitely seems to know what he is doing, is really well organized and pro active, we share similar philosophies, for instance, he suggested we might retain the floors and the windows. And he seemed very confident that what we want to do can be done. But - it's a lot of money. I am usually a very hands on person, as far as researching and monitoring any work done in the house, but a large remodel like this would be difficult and with this contractor, I feel I might not have to be as involved. So it is tempting. But - it's a LOT of money. So - I added together the value of our home, with the cost of the remodel and have been using that figure as a price range to look for new homes. In the communities we would want to look, right now there is nothing. Even homes that are higher priced than that, look like they would also need renovating. So, right now, I'm feeling stuck. So, maybe a pro/con list and a talk with all involved will have some benefit.