Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Spring is in the Air

Well spring is definitely at our house.  The weather has been so beautiful lately.  We've been spending lots of time outside (which helps explain my blogging absence lately) going for walks, playing at the park and enjoying our yard.  On Saturday we got the garden boxes all ready to go, so all I need to do now is get outside and plant.  Most of my planting has to wait until May, but there are several things such as peas, spinach and broccoli that I can plant now.  Unfortunately, starting tomorrow we're going to have rainstorms for the next week, but I suppose that's springtime in Utah.  I'm just happy it's not snow.  Hopefully I can get my planting in tomorrow morning before the rain comes.  Anyways, I always love springtime and rebirth that comes with it.  I love watching the flowers and shrubs start blooming.  There is such a refreshing and energizing feeling that accompanies springtime.  Maybe it's because we've been locked up for several months and are experiencing severe cabin fever, but I don't think so.  On Thursday we start our backyard remodel, which makes me a little sad since everything has really started to come alive in the last couple of days and the thought of ripping out "alive" plants as opposed to "dead" plants is disheartening, but we're keeping all my favorite shrubs and trees and I even get to add a few that I want such as peonies and hydrangeas so I'll continue to be happy about this backyard project.

My gorgeous magnolia that the landscaper convinced Andrew to keep.  Can you believe he wanted to just rip it out!?!

I love my lilacs!  I always look forward to the smell of lilacs in the spring.

Oh how I love my japanese maples.  I knew I had two of them back there, but when walking through everything thoroughly with the landscaper, we discovered that we have four of them in our backyard.  Needless to say every single one of them is staying!



I don't know what kind of tree this is, but it is beautiful!  It has the most gorgeous tree trunk and these flowers are wonderful.  We weren't living here at this time last year and so these flowers were a total surprise to me when I went outside this morning.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

2010 Home Projects and more...

I know I've been MIA again, but I just really haven't felt like I've had anything to blog about.  I'm in a creative rut.  It doesn't help that Mr. Handsome is teething and has SIX teeth coming in at once, so I'm constantly exhausted from lack of sleep on both our parts.  Exhaustion really has a way of wearing on any creativity you have or at least pretend to have.  So I thought since I haven't done anything fun and crafty lately I would post the list of projects I've decided to tackle this year.  I know I should have done this in January, but instead I'm going to do it halfway through April.  I thought that maybe posting it on the blog would give me a little motivation to get started.

-Paint and decorate the laundry room
-Start the munchkins bath- strip wallpaper, paint, board and batten
-Finish the munchkins bath- paint vanity, add knobs, frame mirror, new light fixture
-Master bedroom
-Master bath- paint walls and vanity, add knobs, new light fixture, frame mirror, decorate
-Toy room- strip wallpaper, paint, decorate and organize
-Ella's room- redo baby room to little girl room
-Front/sitting room- new window shades, finally get a rug
-Living room- finish decorating walls, find end table for sofa
-Kitchen- decorate walls, paint barstools
-Garage- clean and organize, make room for freezer, create attic storage space
-Back yard- redo the whole yard
-Front planter- I'm still not sure what to do there
-Plant garden
-Finish painting trim throughout the house
-Paint hallway stripes
-Paint front door, new outdoor light fixtures, house numbers, generally add a little more curb appeal

In addition to this I would love to add crown molding to my kitchen cabinets, paint them white and add some beautiful satin nickel knobs and pulls, but I just really don't see that happening this year.  Maybe next summer... sigh.

Since the weather was so gorgeous here today I was finally able to start working on scraping paint off some old windows I found at an antique mall recently.  I'll show you where I plan on using these soon.  I just need another couple of nice days to finish up this project.

I was also able to get out in the garden today to start prepping for planting season.  I have several things such as peas, spinach and broccoli that are just waiting to go in the garden, but the majority of my planting won't take place for another month, so until then everything can just continue sitting in little seed starter kits on our front window sill.  I was able to get about half the garden prepped, but then I ran out of soil.  I suppose I'll be making a little trip to Lowe's.

In other yard news, we've finally decided to take the plunge and redo the backyard this year.  Now normally I would be pushing for us to DIY this, but our backyard is out of control and just way too much for us to tackle given our time restraints and skill level.  So we are contracting with a landscaper to come and rip out just about everything, lay new grass, transplant several large shrubs and trees that we want to keep, but don't like the current locations of and add some curbing.  I think we'll be starting next week so we're super excited to have the yard we want and can maintain this summer.  And since we're redoing the backyard I've begged and pleaded and finally gotten my way to plant berry bushes.  I was told flat out that I was not allowed to even think about having fruit trees of any kind, but dear hubby finally let me have my way with the berries.  I was of course ecstatic.  It only got better when I went to Lowe's yesterday for other stuff and saw that they had all their bare root plants for 50% off.  SCORE!!!  I got 10 raspberry bushes, 6 thornless blackberry bushes, 2 hydrangeas, garlic bulbs and red potato bulbs for $50.  Now I just hope that I can keep up with picking that many berries, but I've done my research and these are supposed to be great varieties and since I'll be getting my freezer eventually I'll be able to stock the freezer with them, and who doesn't like raspberry anything.  So I think that's about all for now. I'll take some before pics of the yard so I can show before and after pics when all is said and done.

Wish me luck with my list!