Spring planning, yo!

I've decided it's time for Spring.  Enough is enough.  Even though Madison had the most mild winter BY FAR since we moved here 6 years ago, I am ready for this snow winter business to be done.  And thankfully mother nature rolled her fat butt off of the right side of the bed and gave us some beautiful early Spring weather.  Now our front yard looks like this!

Pink tree!!!!  Though this tree looks kind of haunted most of the year, it has a one to two week period when it flowers and looks gorgeous.  Totally worth it.

I put away our winter wreath and hung our Spring/Summer wreath on the front door, along with this snazzy new doormat from Target. 

I love it.  So cheery and friendly, like maybe people will think "Wow, I bet those Kendalls are nice and friendly even though their dogs bark like they want to kill me every time I walk by."

("Us, killers? No way Jose")

Ok, now our landscaping has actually come a long way since moving in almost three years ago.  We added this stone retaining wall last Summer.  Matt found an ad on Craigslist for 100 blocks for $75.00.  Normally in the store you may have to pay up to $2/block, so we were pretty excited about the deal.

The hostas in the above front garden bed have just started peeking through, and we're going to start mulching everything this weekend.

And here are a bunch of yard/landscaping "Before" photos, with no afters, just all the planning we want to do this year.  I know, pretty jerky of me, especially since I have complained about people doing this before, and now I have become one of them.  One of those, wait for it....wait for it...wait for it....ok and keeping waiting because I have no grand finale for you people.  What a tease.

First off, a side of the house you've never seen before (unless you're one of my favorites and have come to visit...and if you haven't, well....), the right side of the house (when you're looking from the street).  This is by far the ugliest side.  We have done zero to it since moving in.

OK, not completely zero.  See that bald spot up front?  That was an out of control bush that Matt ripped out last year.  And see those stumps?  We cut down a couple trees last spring, but otherwise have not done a single thing to try and look non-Bumpas-y to this side of the house.

Ughhh, did you throw up in your mouth a little bit?  I know I did.  We're planning to lay landscaping fabric over the semi-defined weed area, edge it in, plant some small bushes, and then cover the area with mulch.  I think it will actually be a pretty quick and easy fix.  I would like to build something to hide the AC unit a bit too.

Keep walking forward into the backyard...

The window is one of the dining room windows.  It looks directly into one of our neighbors windows, so some more curtains are in order ( at some point...)  The fence is kind of ugly, but gives us some great privacy, since our neighbors are so close.  If you're thinking that those trees seem to be a bit close for comfort in relation to the house, well you would be correct, sir.  Though they are close, they're very narrow and offer the kitchen/dining room a lot of shade.  At some point, we'll dig up those stumps too, but in the mean time, we'll continue the edging and mulch up to the edge of the fence.

If you pivot back towards the front yard you see this.....

Ok....now if you look back at the backyard again (got that?) you would see....the backyard.

The telephone pole on the top left side is the top corner of our property.  The brush spanning the length of the yard is ours (it's about 6-8 feet deep) and goes over to the right until the green bush ends.  The tree on the top right is our Apple Tree...which sounds awesome, but has really just proved be annoying because it produces 457,349 apples every other year.  At least it's every other year though...and when it blossoms, it turns a beautiful fluffy white. :)  It just started flowering too.

(I attempted to be artsy...)

Once at the top of yard, if you turn back down towards the house you get this trashy attack view:

Yikes.  The black blob on the left side of the deck is our grill and the black blob in the center is the portable fire pit that we had to have (and have used 2 times in three years).  Our old mailbox is propped up behind the garage and the patchy weeded area behind the garage is....a patchy weeded area.  This is actually our big summer project this year.  We're going to enclose that whole patchy area with some stone blocks and then cover the area with Pea Gravel to create a casual patio.  We're going to DIY a stone fire pit and DIY some stone chairs/seats around it.  SOOOO excited!!! :)  We're hoping to rip apart the deck this year and redo that too.

Ok, we're getting there, I promise.  Almost done.  If you're standing on the deck and you look over to the left, you would see our Lilac bushes...which are blooming too!

We're also going to edge out and mulch this weeded area too.  And maybe plant a Birch Tree to the left of Ty Cobb.

And fiiinally, the garage side of the house.  Quite simply (and probably predictably) we're going to edge out the weeded area and add some plants and mulch.

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Suggestions???  We have a lot of work to do this Spring and Summer, but we're excited to maybe have a classy yard for once. :)

~S~

The only reason I hate Fall

First off, one of the main reasons I love Fall....the gorgeous changing leaves on the trees.  Seriously, that is one major thing I would miss sososo much if I ever moved away from the Midwest (besides I guess my family and friends).  Here's a couple pictures I snapped of the giant tree in our backyard on Thursday morning.

Here's Casa de Kendall looking rather Casa de Carrot Top

Notice anything else amazing above???  The tree bush is gone!  Matt and our neighbor took a chainsaw to that mo-fo a couple weeks ago...and we have not missed it's scraggley butt for one second since.   Here's a close up on the extent of my fall decorating ( If you know me at all, you would know that I am not much of a seasonal decorator)

Notice anything else amazing in the above two pictures?  We're putting in a stone retaining wall!  Stay tuned!

Those mums started off a nice deep red color...but then I sort of forgot to water them...like not even once since I bought them weeks ago (I did water them after this picture though).  We've always hated our front door, mainly because it looks like a side door, or a door that would lead into the garage, not the main door of your house.  We've thrown around the idea of purchasing a new one, with a higher up window for more privacy, but I think for the time being we're going to paint this one (weird, I know) and maybe do something to the glass for more privacy...possibly foggy a stencil design?  As far as paint goes, I am in love with all doors yellow, but alas a bright yellow door would clash pretty badly with our red shingles, so I'm thinking of a deep burgundy, like the house numbers.

Another reason I love fall?  Cute puppies playing in the leaves.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering the answer to what I hate most about Fall?  Well, all those beautiful leaves have to go somewhere, don't they.

That's only about half of them too, the apple tree is still full and green.  Here's our neighbor's yard for a comparison.

Seriously, not fair.  Our's again:

Raking is one nasty annoying job, but someone's got to it...And that someone's name is Matthew.

Oh, and you should stop by my good buddy Moe's blog too TheParkland Project (She's also fixing up here house and blogging about it).  Happy Fall!

~S~