Front Yard Makeover

We have been unhappy with the way our front yard looks pretty much since the day we moved into our house a year ago (yikes! has it really been a year already?).  The two big trees in the front shade the yard and make it impossible for the grass to grow.  The result...

So, we decided to take advantage of an incentive offered by our water company called the "Water Saver Landscape Coupon".  The basic idea is that for every 200 square feet of lawn you remove, the water company will give you a $100 certificate good toward the purchase of select water-friendly plants.  We applied for two coupons and went to work.

First, we added terracing to help break up the future mulch-expanse and to help tame the steep slopes.  Then, we added metal edging to help contain the mulch.

Next, we applied Round-Up to everything inside the edging and went on vacation to Boston while we waited for everything to die.  When we returned, we went plant shopping.

After much deliberation on the final layout (Roxie is always so helpful), we planted like crazy.  Then, we mulched, mulched, and mulched some more.

All-in-all, we are very happy with the results.  So much better than the ugly, dead grass!  Even if the plants are tiny for now.

Back in Action

As you may have noticed, I’ve been MIA since I started working two weeks ago.  Turns out, by the time I put in 10 hours at work, spend an hour at the gym, drive home, and make supper, it’s pretty much time for bed!  While I love being back at work, I really miss having all day to do whatever I want to do… like post about random things on the blog.  However, I get off at noon on Fridays, so I had some time today to catch you all up with what’s been going on in our lives lately.  There have been a few updates to the house:

Laundry room:  We re-arranged the existing wire shelves so that no one was in danger of losing a eye walking through the room.  We also added a board over the top of the washer and dryer to give us a place to put laundry baskets and a place to fold clothes (in theory).

Entry way:  We got this idea here.  There are dimensions and good instructions that make this project pretty easy to follow.  In the process of removing the floor trim, we discovered our washer connection was slowly leaking and making the drywall damp.  Glad we found that problem before anything got moldy!!  I still need to do some decorating on the self and find a new rug, but the heavy lifting is done, and we love the way it turned out.

We also installed a two new outlets in the garage.  I now know lots more about how electrical wiring works.  And, after an successful escape by our littlest munchkin, we repaired a couple boards in our fence gate.

We've been hard at work on our yard.  The local water company offered a rebate on mulch this fall, so we were able to pick up 27 bags for about $6!  The north side of our house gets exactly zero hours of sunlight a day, so we decided to put the four blades of grass out of their misery and make a planter bed along the whole side of the house.  We had to find shade-loving plants that could survive what is sure to be a brutally hot Texas summer.  Hopefully, once it warms up a bit, the ornamental grass will recover from it's transplant shock and perk up a bit!

I think that’s about all for now.  We've got a couple other projects in the works, but I can honestly say, the work on the house is winding down.  Our bank account is certainly thankful to be taking a break!

More Decor!

My parents just headed home after a week-long visit, so house was actually clean all at the same time for a few hours before their arrival.  Which means decor updates for all of you. 

I found a set of shower curtains at Target that were perfect for the dining room windows, so I added a strip of red fabric at the bottom to make them long enough.

We hung up a bunch of frames in the living room then ordered vacation pictures to fill them.  Once the Christmas tree is down for the season, I'll put up pictures of the finished gallery.

We also hung up our cuckoo clock from Germany.

As a bonus... Christmas decorations are up.  In all honesty they've been up since the first of December, but I'm slow.

House Update

We've been hard at work on the house in the last two months, and we are finally done with enough of the projects that I can share some great before and after photos!

Kitchen

Not a lot of change here.  We got a kitchen table and actually managed to get almost everything put away.  This is the next room we would like to paint, but we're stuck on the color.  I'm also planning to change out the window coverings when we paint, but they'll do for now.  

The best change in the kitchen - Chris made me a new drawer to replace one that was seriously broken when we moved in.  Nice work!

Dining/Entry

We painted the dining room a light blue and put up a few holiday decorations.  The Christmas decor is up now, but that's another post!  Also, check out our "Familia Bahrij" tiles from the Azores.

Living Room

Goodbye, yucky dark rust-colored paint.  Hello, bright pretty green!  

Nearly five years after its initial construction, we finally stained and varnished our bookcase.  It makes the perfect TV stand for our new living room.  I will certainly think twice about staining anything again, though.  I had brown fingers for days!

One of our favorite construction projects was the addition of wooden cornices over the windows in the living room and dining room.  We had a similar cornice over our sliding glass door in Kansas and loved the look.  We decided to duplicate it here and love the way they finish the room.  We learned a lot about compound miters during this project.  Most importantly... buy a miter saw.

Master Bedroom

This is by far my favorite room transformation in the house.  Maybe it's because this is the only room I can say is actually finished!  I transformed two cheap shower curtains from BB&B into extra-tall window coverings by adding 24" of dark purple fabric to the bottoms.  We also made the two large purple frames using molding and purple spray paint.  Talk about inexpensive custom frames.  We intended to put pictures in them, but once they were up, we kind of liked they way they looked.  They may get pictures eventually.  We'll see.  If you look really hard, you can also see the pillow I posted about a while back.

Some of you may have heard me tell you that painting the ceiling is never a good idea.  This room is the reason why!  The sitting room off the master bedroom had a lovely children's scene painted on all four walls and the ceiling.  We had to paint the ceiling three times to cover the tree branches.  NOT fun!

Office

Another project we're really in love with is the office transformation.  We added three built-in shelves to hold our eight boxes of text books and notebooks as well as our computer equipment.  Chris modified the front face of the cabinet (where the keyboard pull-out used to be) to create a great desk drawer.  We also LOVE the orange color we chose for the walls.  It may seem a little crazy, but it works perfectly with the color schemes I have planned for the adjacent rooms.

Spare Bedroom

Just a small change in here.  Goodbye pink, hello pretty steel gray.

There are still lots more finishing touches to do all over the house, but the bulk of the hard work is done.  It feels great!!  Now... we get to start on fun outside projects.  That might be the only good thing about winter in Texas - it's never too cold for yard work.

Pillow Making

Over the past couple of weeks Chris and I have been busy painting, unpacking, and generally trying to make our house look like we live here.  The room that has been our main focus so far is the master bedroom.  We always start our decorating efforts here because we want our space to feel complete and settled as quickly as possible.  We decided to vary our traditional green and white color scheme just a little bit in this house, so I went in search of some new pillows and window coverings!  Have I mentioned that I LOVE having actual stores to shop in?  After much searching, lots of purchasing, and a fair amount of returning, we still couldn't find just what we wanted.  Que the sewing machine!

I used a pillow cover that we purchased for the living room as my pattern,

found some fabric on sale at Joann fabrics (love that place), and went to work cutting, pinning, and sewing.

About 10 minutes later, we had the perfect new accent pillow for our room!

I'm excited to do some more sewing for our house in the days and weeks to come.  I'm also really excited for the arrival of our new duvet cover (someone ate a hole in our old one...).  Once the whole room is put together, I promise to post pictures of the before and after!

Where did June go?

While I was writing frantically about all of our vacation adventures, the entire month of June sped by. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Touring the island caves and sulfur pits with the Girl Scouts

Celebrating Lindsey’s birthday with a ladies' wine night
Here's a link to the delicious Rasberry Chocolate Torte I made for her birthday cake.

Taking in a bull fight on the beach in Praia
These street bull fights are usually very fun to watch, but these bulls weren’t very feisty, and the crowd was doing nothing to egg them on. We left after the second bull.

Finding a hedgehog in the back yard
This one got the puppies really excited.

 Enjoying the beautiful flowers blooming in my yard (and on the rest of the island)

Going on a walking tour of Praia
Kudos to Outdoor Rec for a great morning!

Painting our bedroom a lovely shade of green

Making ice cream cake
Oreo and hot fudge crust with vanilla, chocolate, and butter pecan ice cream; Oreo, hot fudge and toffee between the layers; topped with whipped cream and hot fudge.  It's really good for you.  I promise :)

Taking the puppies to the dog park

Making homemade pizza

I had a bunch of friends over from the CE squadron and made four different kinds of pizza: pepperoni, tomato-basil, red pepper-onion-mushroom, and Thai chicken.  All of the pizza sauce was courtesy of Lindsey’s simple and delicious marinara recipe.  Two of the pizzas had plain homemade crust and two had homemade crust with sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and rosemary.  They were all amazing!

Solving a murder on the prairie with the rest of the ladies from the spouses club
Way to go Jacki and the rest of the planners – this was a great event!

Enjoying Mediterranean night
Lindsey made baklava, Jacki made meatballs, and I made humus.  All the food was excellent, but nothing beats baklava!

Chewing on rocks in the yard

That was Roxie, not me.  She was trying to get a little lizard to come out of the rock so she could chase it.

And… you’ll have to wait until the next post for the final event of June. I’m going to be welcoming my wonderful friend and fellow blogger Lindsey over to guest blog about an exciting event in both of our lives! If you've been paying attention, it will come to no surprise that there's food involved.  Until next time...