Yardwork Yo (frontyard edition)

We were on such a roll with the backyard, the next day we decided to just keep our hard work up in the front yard.  Which previously looked like this…

Needs some work huh?  We knew this was going to be a big project.

Look at this mess.

I started by moving all of the old white border bricks our of the garden to the road.

Meanwhile, Justin was shoveling out roots and stumps from the old holly bushes that he cut down a while back.

Did I mention that these front gardens were filled with rocks instead of mulch, black ugly rocks? So we went to it shoveling and shoveling and shoveling rocks into contractor garbage bags.

These bags are all filled with rocks.

Initially, we planned to head to Lowe’s once things were cleared out.  This process took so long that we decided adding the new plants would have to wait till another day.

Once things were semi manageable we started adding in mulch.

And with all the mulch in…

BAM!

So once our backs stop aching and our calluses heal we will add some plants to these gardens.  And guess what? We will keep you updated!

Yardwork Yo (backyard edition)

It turns out our hedges…

…..are trees.

Justin looked them up and it turns out they aren’t bushes/hedges, they are suppose to be trees.  The people who lived here before us let them get overgrown.  Justin trimmed them back and freed up the bottom branches, it makes the yard feel a little bit bigger. Yay! We can use all the room we can get.

Since installing the screen we are unable to mow the lawn right up next to the the patio.  We also cannot use the weed wacker because it would hit the screen as well.  Our solution is to take the sod out next to the patio…

Charlie really wanted to keep the dirt patch.

We decided it would be best to make it a garden.  It solves all our mowing issues. So off we went to Lowe’s for gardening supplies.

We picked up plants for the garden..

We got two different dog friendly plants.  We really had to search for something that would be safe if the dogs were to eat it.  Zack is part cow, so we plan on him taking a taste at some point. The first plant we went with is a…

Yup, you guessed it a Sanchezia.  I really love this plant, dog safe and my two fav colors(green and yellow).  Next up we got…

A shrimp plant pachystachys of course.  This one is dog friendly and went well with our leafy sanchezia friend.  We also picked up a baby magnolia tree to add to the empty side of the yard.

And lastly we got 20 bags of red mulch.

From there I dug up and edged around the newly discovered trees in our backyard.

Once I was happy with the edging, I started dumping in the mulch.

with all the mulch in…

While I was mulching Justin was laying the garden fabric for the plants near the patio.

I then set the plants on top in the spots that I thought they should go.

I tried my best to get them as even as possible, I wanted to get the tape measure out and make sure they were all the same distance apart.  Justin said I was nuts and they looked good where they were.

From there we made slits in the fabric and dug into the soil to plant the sanchezia and pachystachys.

Boom they’re in! Time to add mulch!

We continued the garden fabric and mulch around the corner where we will eventually add a plant of some kind in the corner(possibly a small palm).

Then Justin dug a pretty decent hole and planted the magnolia tree.

And we were finished…

Feels like a whole new backyard!

Patio Paver Add On

The patio pavers Justin added look like this…

They make it just to the window and just past the dog door.  Justin thought it would be better if the pavers went the whole length of the patio.  So he added a couple more rows and now we have this…

Some of the pavers weren’t level and were still letting water slope down onto the corners of the patio, so he actually dug all of the pavers out and re-leveled them.  Fingers crossed that we will no longer have water issues with rain.

I think it looks better now that the pavers continue the full length of the patio.  Also gives a little more room to move the grill around.

There you have it, we now have a few more pavers in our lives.

Patio furniture… Finally!

We finally invested and got a patio dining set.  We are thrilled, I don’t think we have eaten one meal inside since. This was not an easy decision though, we have been quite the patio furniture shoppers. We spent a Saturday searching for something that would work in our space.  We first hit up Home depot and debated getting this…

I really liked the look of it and the price was pretty good at $479, but we weren’t sold.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t purchase something without looking a couple places to make sure I am getting the best deal, so we headed to BJ’s.  Justin had seen a patio set there that he wanted to show me…

This thing is huge! Seating for 8, it was very nice, but pretty pricey at $999.  We really weren’t looking to spend that much and we really do not need seating for 8.   It had a nice tile top and it is bar height.  We measured it and it turned out it would just fit in our patio, but you might have trouble when trying to get in and out of your seat if you’re sitting near the screen.  We would prefer to be comfortable and not have to suck in our guts to scooch out of our seats.  So we moved on and headed to Lowe’s aka our second home.  That’s where we found this guy…

We love it.  It’s so pretty and comfortable. So we snatched it up and purchased it for $498. Guess what else, we got it home and it fits perfectly.  We now even can have more that two guests over for dinner(our kitchen table only seats 4) Woot woot!  Here she is in her new home(yes it’s a girl)…

Yay.

Fits so well.

I also think it matches our other patio chairs nicely.

While at Lowe’s we also got a new plant.

Pretty sweet right?  It’s called a yucca plant.  I hope I don’t kill it!  I have trouble keeping plants alive, usually I over water them.  I am going to try my best with the yucca and hopefully it will live a long happy life.

We are moving along with finishing up the patio area and that means updated list!

Patio to do list:

1. screen patio. 
2. replace fan.
3. texture drywall.
4. paint patio and doors.
5. tile and grout floor.
6. find patio furniture.
7. enjoy!

Getting pretty close to being finished with this space!

Sprucing up the office

Since painting the office, we were pretty much left with a blank slate.  Since this is Justin’s office, he wanted to hang some stuff on the walls so it wasn’t so bare.  He started with a couple pictures of the dogs…

Yeah those are 8×10 photos of our dogs.  We know we are crazy, you don’t have to tell us.  Sorry about the dark picture, the window lighting is so bright all the photos were turning out pretty dark.   Next Justin wanted to hang a signed picture of some hockey player, sorry not sure who it is.

Then last he hung some concert ticket art that we had in our apartment.  Justin and I have both saved all of our concert tickets forever, even before we met each other.  I thought it would be cool to display all of them somewhere in the house…

The frame on the left has Justin’s concert tickets, the frame on the right are mine and the one in the middle is concerts we’ve been to together.  The funny thing is that Justin and I went to a lot of the same exact concerts when we were in high school and we didn’t even know each other.  Pretty crazy.  Here is a close up of the center frame…

We went with black frames in this room,  I thought they would go well with the color of the walls.  Also portions of the desk are painted black.  I thought it would tie in well.  So here is the office now…

and

Can’t help but make another list.

Office To Do:

1. Paint trim and walls.
2. Add frames to walls.
3. Replace carpet.
4. Close off room and add french doors.
5. Add some window treatment(shutters or curtains).
6. Purchase long corner desk.
7. Purchase bookcase or cabinets for storage.

I am sure I will have more to add to this list as we go, but this is what we would like to do down the road.

And the visits over

I feel like my family came and went so quickly, even though they were here for a full 7 days.  I think everyone was ready to get back home to normal life again though.  Their last night here we went out to a nice dinner at Mezza Luna.  BUT,  before we left we had to do family photos as requested by mom and dad.

Group shot?

These were great to get because Justin set up the camera on a timer.  In this try I guess Justin is looking at John? And with another try…

Yup, John’s eyes are shut.  Unfortunately, we didn’t notice that right away so this is the best one we got.  We also got one of Jess, John, Justin and I.

And at dinner we had the waiter take a picture of all of us, with all of our eyes open.

Kinda blurry, but it’ll have to work.