As I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I’ve been spending this gorgeous weather we’ve had lately outside. And while that would normally be lovely regardless of the activity, gardening is definitely not one of my favorites. I know there are plenty of people who enjoy it, but I wonder: do they all just live in a different part of the country? Mosquitoes around here make gardening pretty effing terrible.
Anyway, onto the update. As a blogger, the whole “after” thing takes a lot more work when it’s an exterior project, mainly due to how many other things there are in the shot that might ruin the whole look. I had all of the exterior siding repaired less than two months ago, so I told myself that I wanted to get the rest of the yard looking more finished so I could have some decent pics of the house for a change (after five years of being embarrassed by it, I think we’re just going to chalk this up to stubbornness). So, next up on the to-do list: the front garden.
My front garden gets planted about once or twice a year, and then is left alone for the rest (mostly because I have too many other projects going on to care). Still, considering that it’s directly in front of the house and all of the new work on the siding I just had done, leaving this alone would leave my “after” pictures looking pretty shabby, even with the new hanging baskets:
I started out by cleaning up the scraggly shrubs. I’d already done a lot of the trimming before this point, but pine straw tends to get really tangled underneath and between the lower branches. I found this little shrub rake that seems to work pretty well at getting at the pine straw without pulling at the branches above.
I then began digging each hole for the new plants. As you can probably guess from the post title, I went with some fall mums. They’re perennials, so there’s always the chance that they might stick around next year, but you never know what this garden’s going to look like (and you longtime readers may remember the mangled one that never came back after it was destroyed going in!).
To help protect the area a little bit more from weeds, I used some watered-down newspaper before spreading around some dark brown mulch.
And there you have it: mums!
It really makes the rest of the front area look so much better. (Ignore the light blue paint on the ceiling that isn’t finished, though… it’s mid-project.)
There’s only one little thing, though… I have no idea what color these are going to be. There were no labels in the store, the clerk didn’t have a clue, and when the buds are this small, they all tend to look the same color (though I think they’re probably light, such as white or yellow… the darker colors tend to have a slight hue in the middle of each bud).
The front area of the house has never looked quite this good. It’s really coming along, and I’m glad that all of this yard work is hopefully paying off for a very colorful fall. What color do you think the mums will be?
Ever have a project that you started but you just could find the time to finish?
It looms over you like this dark cloud. And it’s even worse when you are a blogger because people have expectations. People accuse you of trying to be deceitful and act like you are hiding something. Well…I am here to admit that I have had one of those dark clouds. Actually it was half dark because part of it was finished and the other part was not at all. It was our deck…
When we tackled it back in the early spring, we had every intention of finishing it. But Jeremy is one of the world’s slowest painters (he does a great job but it’s just a painfully slow task and he gets antsy and frustrated so usually I do the painting) and I am terrified of heights so there was no way I was gonna finish the outer part of our deck stain job.
The other problem we have is that you have to stain when the weather is right. Too hot, too cold, too wet…all bad for staining.
So for the majority of the year, it looked like this….partly finished. OH THE SHAME. Go ahead. Judge me now. Judge like you have never judged before. I can take it.
When we revealed the Home Depot Patio Challenge results some folks were like….show us the other side! Show us what you did there! The answer was like um….nothing. we did nothing. we didn’t even bother staining the baby gate.
And I didn’t want to show the outer railing….
and definitely not the steps…
It just was plain ugly. ignored. and like past episodes of Oprah….pretty much erased from our memory. Sometimes those unfinished projects are easy to see when they belong to someone else but when they are yours…they eventually become unnoticed.
That is…until Carlos our painter arrived and we bundled in ‘finishing the deck’ with our painting the inside cost. We wanted to pay about $400 for the task and in the end, he did it for $500 plus supplies. We calculated that each segment of outer deck railings took about an hour for Jeremy to finish and he had 16 segments left including the baby gate plus a second coat on the upper deck, two coats on the stairs and the stairway railings to do. All in all, we figured out that it would have been about minimum of 24 hours of constant work for us to do all of it. That’s about $20 an hour for a skilled laborer. I’d pay that any day!
So I wanted to share with you the finished deck. This is not staged. This is how it is all the time…rain or shine. Well…sometimes we fold the umbrella down if there is wind. You might notice that it isn’t as snazzy as the staged look we did for the deck reveal but that is okay with us….this is real life.
The whole deck is completely stained and we didn’t sweep it or do anything to prep for these photos. We do leave our seat cushions outside so that is completely normal. The throw pillows are all stashed inside in an ottoman…if we wanted to spruce it up, we could in about two minutes.
When we got home from our beach vacation, it was complete and we do still need to do touch ups on the house (there was two little areas of overspray that Carlos offered to touch up but we couldn’t find the paint at the time so we just told him not to worry about it). We moved the lounge chairs up here in the corner and the boys LOVE using the cushions as ‘slides’.
The middle of the deck seemed like wasted space so we moved the grill there. I think we should probably put the extra gas tank inside
So the real use of this deck now is a place for plants to be half dying half rehabilitated. The succulents did REALLY well but now I think they are getting too much rain. I have no idea what is happening to that tall one with the flowering tops. Any succulent experts out there? Help!
The white geraniums almost died completely (gray pot) so now I am trying to nurse those back. The top I cut off a pineapple I just threw in a pot of soil and now it is the only thing really thriving. I pay perfectly good money for plants and they die but I put trash in a pot and it grows. Go figure.
My mossy art is completely dead. I have no idea what I was doing with it. I knew in my heart it would happen. It’s like when everyone knew Miley was about to lose it. Or Britney. Or any celebrity tween girl in the spotlight. I decided I am gonna Brit-brit this back to life though. I have a plan. Just call me Simon Cowell.
I had some container tomatoes in the driveway and they did ok at first but then they got super leggy. I moved them back here and now there is a little more green on them. I think they only have a couple more months so we shall see what happens. Next year I think I might have a proper garden again so these might be herb containers
All the little potted plants were house plants but they weren’t thriving so I moved them outside. This is a really shady deck so I think they only get SLIGHTLY more sun than inside the house. One of them has a fungus. That is what my mom said. The others weren’t getting watered enough. I take blame for the watering….not the fungus.
You can see we had to replace our flag holder. The old one bit the bucket. Is that the phrase? Kicked the bucket? Bit the curb? What is it?
Oh and the ferns we moved to the front porch so our $20 tall planters are empty.
But the outside of the deck looks great.
I didn’t even bother moving the hose or raking the mulch back in the beds. Real life problems. This takes me back to when I started blogging….everyone had crap pictures and it was always unstaged. My how things have changed
The plants overall are doing okay down there in the ground. I amended the soil enough that they should grow okay. We still have a few little things we want to do…like replace that fluorescent light over the window and spray paint the light near the basement doors.
It’s not too shabby considering four years ago it all looked like this
I have been dying over these vacation photos. They mark our first vacay as a family of SIX and Max’s official first trip and our annual trip down to the shore. Jeremy was so cranky waiting for the beach week to come and when it finally did, I was right there with him….we wanted a change of scenery at any cost. Well…little did we know that the car ride down would cost us our sanity. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Apparently we have a two hour car ride limit with the littles and they were very, um, vocal about wanting out. Weston especially. The kid has so much energy that being strapped down was nothing short of torture. For all of us. We even planned out stops every two hours (we call them “baby breaks”) and when they came, we all tried to breathe in as much non-screaming as possible. When we finally arrived…I think Jeremy and I had that look that said…yup, they broke us. they won. and we lost.
These were from a rest stop in Alabama. Weston can strike a mean pose (and yes, this is totally a pose…)
LJ is still learning the art of posing.
Those curls….
The boys loved this particular stop because it had big trees and we played hide & seek.
Catch that pose again?!
Will is the only one that really “gets” hide and seek. The others just run and hide whenever and if you say “where are you?” they immediately answer
Once we got to the resort, Gramps and Grammy were waiting to meet us. We checked out the condo where we stayed and then grabbed a lunch. The resort was a really kid-friendly spot and ended up being PERFECT for our little clan. I can tell you more later about the place because of you are heading to the gulf, this place is awesome. Trust me. We usually pick private houses but this was my first condo experience that I loved.
LJ loves feeding Grammy. Grammy I think is not as sure.
It didn’t take long for us to hit up the beach.
Will is such a pro now. He knows exactly what to do and is so EASY. I will have to remember that the tipping point is age five.
Weston loved it at first.
He totally followed Will’s lead. Going in the water, digging in the sand, jumping…
LJ acted like he had never seen it before….which I understand…it was pre-sitting up the last time he touched the sand.
But then things started to change with my little Munch. We could tell he was bothered by something.
When he finally lost it, we realized. It was his boo-boos in the salty water.
The shorts would get wet and then keep that stinging water on his legs. He had scraped his knees in our driveway a couple days before and now it was so painful. He would put up his hand and say “No BEACH. NO BEACH. NO!”
I think both Jeremy and I felt terrible about it and so Jeremy did his best to calm our little guy down. It’s gotta be tough to be two and really want to keep up with your big brother and not be able to. Heck…it’s tough to do that when you are thirty two!
Gramps & Grammy took over the other kids, I nursed Max and Weston was all Daddy.
Weston is SUCH a Daddy’s boy. It’s funny because they have this special little relationship that I never understood. I just didn’t get what I was doing wrong. I thought maybe he wanted Daddy so much because I was just not a good mom or somehow I rubbed him the wrong way. He would cuddle me but if given the option, Daddy was always his number one pick. But then LJ came along and now I have that with my third born. LJ is right now a mama’s boy and I soak it up like gravy on a biscuit. It was such a healing experience for me because I blamed myself for not being enough for Weston. But now I realize…it really doesn’t have anything to do with me or Jeremy….it is just how the boys were created. It’s an inclination that we don’t have control over but we do have the ability to provide for these little charges. Sometimes that means we give them exactly what and who they feel most comfortable with and sometimes that means we help stretch them and give them an opportunity to learn flexibility. Either way…Weston needed Daddy’s comfort in that moment…away from the brothers and grandparents and even mama. And I think I will frame this one for my boyfriend
Max at first was totally benign about the beach. I mean….just look at him.
Maybe even a little bored…
But then he quickly formed a solid opinion about it as a whole…
Apparently not his thing…
These crack me up.
LJ was slightly obsessed with the birds…
I was slightly obsessed with his hair
Will just continued on. He was one with the sand….
I think it was at this point Jeremy just was ready to go to bed. A day full of toddler screaming will do that to ya….
There are only about 2.3 million photos….
Seriously mom…what are you doing?
Eventually Weston perked up a little more and he started to enjoy it a little bit more. Poor thing. One day I am gonna look back at this and think….omg look at his little legs with the million bug bites and his sweet two year old belly
Seriously mom WHY!?!
On the second day of vacation, we learned that Weston loves being buried in the sand. We had bought some waterproof bandages for his legs and they seemed to help tremendously. He was like a different kid than the day before! I think most toddlers are like that though…they can flip that switch and suddenly the terrible-twos are a distant memory
This is normally how he is….spunky and mischievous And a total ham for the camera….
I can list out the places we went to eat….they were The Donut Hole, Fudd Puckers, Harry T’s (this was new to us and the bacon wrapped crab stuffed shrimp was AMAZING), and this little local place called Taco Bell
The best part about the resort was the upper toddler zone. It was PERFECT for us. Since it was fully gated and the water was never deeper than 10 inches, we could let the little dudes play and we could actually SIT DOWN. like in a chair. on our rear ends. BLISS people BLISS!
Max joined us in his bouncer seat. When he finished his naps, we would change him and let him sit in our laps near a bubbler. It was so great.
The beach was definitely part of the routine but usually more of a morning activity. I loved that Jeremy captured some of the moments on the beach….
Overall…it was a great vacation and we couldn’t be more grateful to Gramps & Grammy who paid for the condo. We had so much fun (once we got those bandaids) and overall, the boys loved it (well….all but Max but his opinion doesn’t count….yet!).
I have so many more photos to share….I know that the grandparents want to see them all….so get ready because we aren’t done yet with our Gulf adventures
