My garden grows way too green

Ok, remember our super cute baby garden, way back when it was first planted?

This is what the garden monstrosity looked like about a month ago:

Yeah, believe it or not, that is actually our garden.  Though it looks like a giant man/dog eating weed patch, it actually is a ridiculously generous vegetable garden.  Last weekend Matt and I took a pruning shears to the garden and cut back all of the tomato plants because they had grown 2 feet out farther that the above picture shows.  Yeah, our tomato plants tried way too hard this year.  Freaking over achievers.  (And I realize we should have used those tomato cage things, but I was too lazy and cheap to pay $6 each for them)

Check out the mini bell peppers though!  They stayed a nice normal size.

And here are SOME of the tomatoes and other peppers we picked:

Ok, so take a good look at the above photo.....now times that giant bowl by 3 (got that mental image?)  3 GIANT bowls of tomatoes, that is what our 6 tiny little plants produced.  And we didn't even use Miracle Grow or anything!  Just organic potting soil, and our dirt already in the backyard.  And not to mention, we had a pretty dry early summer and my lazy butt only watered the garden maybe 3 times.  The above bowl went in my belly (yep, almost all of them...which is why I no longer like tomatoes quite as much as I used to).  The second bowl went to my best buddy Courtney's house...you remember her, right?

She is obviously the photogenic one in our friendship. :)

And the third bowl went to our lovely wonderful neighbors...whose yard our garden was taking over.

Next year, we're going to move the garden into our yard more, so the plants don't move into unwelcome territory (aka not our property) and I plan to only plant 3 tomato plants, and space them out a bit more...and cage them in. :)

How did your gardens do this year?  Did you end up with psycho plants?

~S~

Don't pop the hutch

Ugh, I need to work on my blog post titles.

Anyway, we have a built in hutch in our dining room.  Which was  painted an ugly puke green color when we moved in, so Matt and I immediately painted it white, to match all the doors and trim in the house.  It houses Matt's pint glass collection, cookbooks, and paper plates.  It also acts as our bar/liquor cabinet area.  But the thing is, Matt and I don't really drink at home unless we have people over or if we just did a bunch of yard work.  Neither of which happen very often.  So it pretty much just sat there collecting dust.

I figured the booze would probably be better hidden away, since we never use it anyway.  So I pulled out all this crap from the cabinet below:

And put all the a-a-a-a-alcohol in there, and organized the top shelf a bit:

Notice I said a bit.  At some point I'm going to paint the inside white, so it doesn't look like your stepping through time when you open the doors.  (but how cool would that be?....hmmm...) 

 Here's the display area afterwards:

Here;s a rundown of all the items, for those of you nosey types (I love nosey types!) 

The "K" was a cheap find at Marshall's, which used to be red, but I used some of the left over mirror paint to change it to dark brown.  The framed photo of the sexy beast Kendalls was from somewhere around 2004, when we had only been dating a year or two.  I took Matt to the greatest place on earth The Minnesota State Fair.  We were eating corn on the cob, not to be confused with Ty Cobb.  The pear was from Marshall's and had been acting as a door stop in the office.

The stack of books were picked by moi mainly for the color of their spines, but they are some of my current favs too.

I left the champagne out, because champagne is awesome, obviously. (And the bottles were a birthday present and wedding present)  The little bottle in the middle was a gift from Matt's parents at our wedding.  We're planning to drink it on our 5 year anniversary.  The art print used to be on the blue wall to the left, and the blue glass is from Door County.  Nothing spectacular or special, but I'm liking it so far. 

This is what the drawer looked like, because Matt insists on having a junk drawer:



And that's actually what it still looks like, I wasn't in the mood to tackle that monstrosity yet. :)

Here's the top cabinet:

Which I just left as is, since we only use those glasses when we have company.

Anyway, just a little something something for you all to have piece of mind that I haven't just been eating bon bons and sitting on my butt all these weeks.  Well, not the bon bons anyway.... :)

~S~

Slight living room redo

Are you there readers?  It's me...Steph.  I am probably the worst blogger ever, seeing that my last post would be 3 months ago tomorrow.  Yeah, pretty bad.  I would like to place all the blame on the new job, but it honestly has just been laziness.  Thank you sososososo much to all of you that have not forgotten about me and have been demanding more updates...this post is dedicated to all of you. :)

Ok, back to business.  There hasn't been a whole lot of changes going on around Casa de Kendall, but there are a few.  First up, another living room redo.  On a day off recently I suddenly went nuts and spent about 5 hours (yes 5) rearranging and switching up the living room.  After 5 hours and about 4 different configurations, I ended up with a slight change from what you all have last seen.  This is what I started with:

And here is what 5 hours of moving/lifting/dragging/vacuuming/dodging puppies gave us:

WOW!  Quite the major change, huh? :)  Yeah, not really, but I'm actually loving the little changes I made. (New throw pillows are on their way as you read too!)  First off, obviously the basic layout remained the same, but I switched out the two awkward pictures over the couch for that long mirror.  The mirror was an awesome find at Walmart (of all places) for only $44!  I have had my eye on a similar one from IKEA for about a year now (which is larger, with a wider frame) but was around $100.  So, I figured this 1/2 the cost version will do a-ok for now.  Hanging the mirror took me almost an hour (sad, I know) because it had to hooks on either side of the frame to be hung with, but since I of course needed it hung that second (and knowing it would take Matt's help with the two hooks) I used picture hanging wire to have the mirror hang off of one screw in the wall, instead of two...Cross your fingers it doesn't come crashing down some day.  I pulled the coffee table into the middle of the couch/seating area instead of having it smooshed in like I usually do.

 I moved the dark brown bench (that had been our coffee table) over to the wall on the left to act as extra seating.

The pillows dress it up a bit and also match the colors in the Breakfast at Tiffany's art too. 2 points to Steph.

The coffee table we're now using was the one we bought when we first moved to Madison, back in 2006.  It had been acting as our TV stand until I moved Grandma Dottie's desk to act as the new TV stand:



Sorry for the bad picture.  I brought the lamp down from Matt's bedside table, since it has been unplugged and unused for about a year.  The white pineapple thing came from the entry way table, and the rocker was Matt's grandma's too.  I folded up a table cloth we already had to cover/protect the top of the desk and to add a little lightness to the TV corner.

The circle end table that used to be in the corner of the room, moved to the other side of the nice couch, and I brought an unused end table (that had been collecting dust in the office) in for the corner of the room.  I set the lamps on top of some hardcover books to give them some height.  And for you super creepy observant people....check out the new table accessory I found at Marshall's for $12:

Haha!  Isn't he a hoot?!  (Too much?  Too dorky?)  I think he's supposed to be a vase since he's hallow, but I like him as a casual observer form the corner of the room.  I have a thing for owls lately...I'll show you some more owl decor another time.

So, to give youan  easier before and after view, we first started with this (waaaay back):

Then went to this:

Then this:

And fiiinally this...I think I'll let it stick for a while:

Thoughts?  Are you liking the new living room set up?  Are you happy I'm back, or maybe wishing I would have stayed away?  Well too bad Sally.  I'm here to stay. :)

If you have any requests for blog posts, please don't be shy!  I'm always happy to hear your ideas!  Also, stay tuned for a garden update, and also some dining room updates as well!

~S~