Circular Drive

Our house has a circular drive, and in the middle are pine trees, dogwoods, and an open center that once had two benches and two swings.  I've been working on getting it looking nice this week.  This picture is a before picture.  I've been using any extra daylight when I'm not at work to rake the center of the island.  Since our house had no one tending it for around 4 years, there were at least 5 inches of pinestraw over the whole thing.  I did manage to get all the pinestraw into one giant pile, probably 6'x5'x4'.  Two nights ago I started burning it all.  My husband said it would burn super fast, and extremely hot.  I guess that would have been true if most of the pinestraw weren't slightly damp.  I stood outside getting it to burn for about 2 hours, then put it all in the middle and covered the flames till it was only embers burning through.  It worked really well because the next morning, it had burned down to about 1 or 2 inches high, instead of 4 feet.  If you look carefully you can see the red concrete pavers I'm going to put in the center, sittin around the pine trees on the left.  I had them placed in the middle, figuring out how I wanted it to look but had to move them to rake. 

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The pavers are these ones from Lowes.  I originally bought 15 at $1 a piece, on sale.  They were by far the cheapest option and I really do like them in our yard.  The red color looks really good with all the green around.  They are 12"x12" and not too heavy for me to move them by myself. 

We are going to keep the placement for 2 benches and maybe 2 swings.  Might just start out with one swing and see what we need.   Around the trees, we'll plant some green ground cover.  Something that grows really well in shade.  I like how this pathway looks. 

It has a stone border like our driveway, and we will someday get a big truck load of gravel to go on the drive way but that will probably be one of the last things we do.  It's thunderstorming right now so I can't show what the island looks like right now, but I'll keep posting the progress.

Now that's what I call progress

My husband and I have been renovating our house for almost 2 years now.  I'm going to be honest; this process has been rather unpleasant.  I had no idea, I mean, absolutely no clue, how much goes into the building or remodeling of a home.  When we started the process, I was oblivious to the fact that walls went up in different pieces.  I didn't realize what went into mudding and sanding, priming and painting.  I had never layed tile, grouted, torn up brick.  Didn't know what a pain it would be to scrape 3 bedrooms worth of carpet padding and glue off of our concrete floors with a one inch blade.  The hours upon hundreds of hours we have put into this house, doing nearly everything ourselves still kind of blows my mind.  But it is so nice to be able to look at pictures, like the ones below and feel that sense of accomplishment.  I think I forget sometimes how far we have really come, because we've been living in this reno since the get-go.  Anyway, Matt and I are truly blessed to have such a beautiful home now and proud of the work we've put into it.

(This room still isn't finished, but I need the reminder that we're finally getting there so I wanted to post it anyway)

DIY Bench

Right beside our front door is a cedar closet and a coat rack.  I wanted to eventually get or make a bench to go under the coat rack so I could take my shoes off when first coming in the house.  I had looked at options online but everything was far more expensive than I wanted to pay.  I also looked on Pinterest for ideas in case Matt ever felt like building one.  Saturday, we talked about making a bench after dinner, and I remembered that we had the teal painted boards that used to be in our kitchen's pantry.

I picked one that I wanted to be the top piece then tested it out under the coat rack.  Seemed like a good fit so Matt got to building it.

Below is a view of the board I chose.  Yes it has strange stains, but for some reason I felt like that gave it some extra character.

First Matt cut the remaining boards into 3 inch strips for the legs of the bench.  I was able to help some because he'd bought me ear plugs a while ago, and I wore safetly glasses.  Power tools make me insanely nervous.

Next the legs were measured to be 18 inches long.  It takes two pieces to make one leg giving it extra strength and stability.

 After the pieces were all evenly cut, Matt started piecing together the legs.  Finishing nails were used to hold it together.

Here's a view of the underside of the bench.  I like that it still has old floral shelf liner on it.  And this is how Matt put on the lip of the bench.  The two long pieces were nailed on first; then the two end pieces were fitted in between.

Next the legs were screwed into place, completing the bench.

I'm really loving it so far.  I don't know if later I'll do some other treatment on it, like a white wash or using milk paint for a thin over coat.  Until then, I'm just enjoying my robin's egg blue bench.

Here comes Peter Cottontail

All of these beautiful dogwoods are in our yard.  I can't take any credit for them since they were here when we bought the house, but we really have enjoyed them the last two years when they've bloomed.  And yesterday afternoon I saw this rabbit in the backyard, munching on some weeds.  He didn't take much notice of me as I went outside to take his picture.

N 34

Yesterday I went with Amanda, my friend from work, and her friend Elizabeth to City Thrift in Tupelo.  I scored the Lemony Snicket series of books for $1.48 each, a sky blue skirt for $3, and my favorite purchase, coming in at Just 99 cents was this little beauty: 

A bingo rolling cage thingy!  It has wood balls with the letter and numbers carved into them. 

I want to make some really awesome cards for it, using the letters and numbers I actually have, and yes I did sit for a while rolling the cage and writing out what each ball has written on it.  Best 99 cents ever?  It's at least in my top 10.

Rock Creek

On Sunday, Matt, Buck and I went to Rock Creek to look for round river rocks to be used in this pinterest project.  When I finally make them I'll post about it.  The water was ice cold and I had to carry Buck across the creek initially because he wouldn't go in.  He eventually warmed up to the idea and was walking around in a few inches of water.

I did end up finding some rocks that I think will work pretty well for the project, and a bonus: there was beaver wood.  Meaning beavers cut down the stick, then chew off the bark.  It looks really neat in person so I saved the ones I could find.

It was a very successful trip on one side of the bridge, but after going under it, things kind of went down hill.

Matt was ahead of me, and kind of slipping around.  He warned me the mud by the water was a bit slick but I guess "a bit" should have been said more accurately as dangerously slick.  I fell, probably soon after taking the picture below, and landed in mud, all down my left side.  Of course I didn't find it as amusing as Matt did.  By that point I was pretty much done with our little adventure and ready to take my muddy self back to the truck but Matt wanted to go farther around the bin where we'd gone the last time we visited Rock Creek.  I climbed up on the safe sand and waited for him to come back.

He did finally return and as we go back under the bridge we'd just come under he says again, "Careful, the mud is a bit slick here."  I don't really know if he got the whole sentence out before I fell, again, on my backside this time.  I'm now half coated in mud, getting a bit grumpy and ready to go.  We did leave then, without any other incident, but went back to his parents house to have dinner.  I changed into the only clothes available that would somewhat fit me.  Much too big and baggy jeans, and acid washed t-shirt....nice.

Loving Husband

Matt picked some flowers from the yard this morning and hung them up before going to work.  So sweet.  We have azaleas and dogwoods galore.

DIY Curtains

I love this tutorial from Apartment Therapy.  It looks pretty basic and very time consuming which is usually in my opinion, what makes for a great "wow" project.  I could do this for any room in the house.  He used the wall color paint from the room he put them in but really any color combinations would look great.  I'm putting this on my possibility list.  found via Strawberry Chic

Strawberry Chic

I came across a new blog I'm enjoying reading through the archives of:  Strawberry Chic.  The link that initially drew me to it was for this great pencil holder, shown on How About Orange. 

This will sound silly, but she seems like the kind of person I would be friends with in real life.  Same style and seems to have a very sweet personality. 

Bedroom update

The headboard we used to have was one my husband bought on his own years and years ago.  There wasn't really anything wrong with it, except that it wasn't my style.  So I used the wife veto power and decided to upholster a headboard.  I took a 4x8 piece of plywood, drew off the shape, got Matty to cut out the shape with a jigsaw, then it was all up to me from there on...mostly.  I bought the foam at Joann's with a 50% off coupon because if you've ever bought foam you know it is absurdly expensive.  I had to cut it into three pieces, one that ran straight across the bottom half, then two small sections I pieced together for the top.  I traced the headboard on the foam then used a bread knife to cut it at an angle.  Next I glued the foam to the plywood using spray adhesive.  Attached batting over the whole thing using an electric staple gun and what felt like hundreds of staples.  I then laid the whole thing face down on the back of the fabric and stretched and stapled for hours until I felt like it was all on their good and tight.  Lastly I measured and drew dots where the nail heads where intended to go and Matt hammered them all in.  Added legs off our old headboard and attached it to our current bed frame.

This is the finished headboard, without any pillows in front of it.

Here is a close up of the nail heads.  I used a nickel colored head to match all the brushed nickel details in our house.

The pillow sitting in front is one I picked the fabric for, and my mom finished sewing for me.  It was actually inspired by this pillow from Cup of Jo.  Her room makeover was done by Jenny Komenda from Little Green Notebook, which is another one of my favorite blogs.

This is a close-up of the fabric.  I really love the colors, the pattern, and all the detail it has.  Next on my list for our room is new, fancy sheets, possibly changing the curtains, fixing up the side tables, husband finishing the dresser he started building me, and bookshelves in the corner of our room.  Oh, and some kind of art.



Our Sunday in New Orleans

My husband, his sister, brother-in-law, niece, nephew and I all went for a day trip Sunday to visit New Orleans.  Matt had never been before and I have been more times than I can count.  We started the adventure eating beignets at Cafe Du Monde and it was as delicious as I remembered.  I failed to take a picture of the beignets before we devoured them.

Cafe Du Monde

We then proceeded to walk for a couple hours around the French Quarter, admiring the art and people watching.  We stopped for photo ops in Jackson Square where I took far too many pictures of this giant tree.  It was just so grand and majestic I couldn't stop myself.

I love all the balconies of the French Quarter.  They make me feel like I'm somewhere totally different, a more romantic country where everyone speaks French or Italian and eats delicious, exoctic food every meal.

 

 Here's the whole crew walking along the street, my husband's wearing blue.

I saw this lady and her amazing bike and just had to take a picture.  Isn't it bambootiful?  I know, cheesy, but really I love that bike.

We ended the day at the Riverside Restuarant where I had the shrimp po-boy.  It was delicious.  Again, I didn't think to take a picture before enjoying my meal.