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~

What we woke up to today...

Snow!  And probably about an inch too!



Living in Wisconsin has been weird this year, since (until today) we've only had a 1 time snow fall of about 1 inch...about 2 months ago.  Normally by this time of year we should have had to shovel and snow blow numerous times, but this morning was our time having to.  Well, Matt was still asleep, so I was the shoveler.....but mainly only because I wanted to try out my new winter boots. :)  It's finally kind of feeling like Christmas. :)

~S~

Outside Christmas Decor!

I fiiinally decided to do outside Christmas decorating this year.  Though I kept it simple, I love it and it makes me so very happy to come home and see it in all it's Christmasy glory.

Remember when I made the amazing wreath and hung it up outside?  Well that was actually the last step in the outside decorating.  When I bought the wreath ingredients at Michael's, I also found 9 foot bundles of garland on sale for only $2.49 each!  So I bought 6, hoping it would be enough to go around the garage door and front door...and guess what?  For once my impulsiveness did not fail me and it was the exact perfect amount.  So I hung it up and then wrapped some lights around it.  Then threw some on our front mega bush too since there were leftover lights.  Simple as that, really.  Matt watched from inside and then was nice enough to come out and ask me "Aren't you freezing?" once I was almost done.

***Warning....the camera was not happy about taking night time pictures***

I probably should have tried a little harder on the mega bush...oh well.  Here's a close up picture, so you can see it doesn't look quite a ghetto as the above photos make it look.

Here's a daytime photo, so you can enjoy the wreath some more. :)



Next year I promise to try a little harder on mega bush and also do lights around all the windows...I also have my heart set on a giant wreath to hang over the garage, between the two windows.

~S~

A fabulous-o Christmas wreath!

 Now, I am not a crafty person.  I don't really like crafty things or scrap booking, but I thought I could handle making a wreath. So, while at Michael's one night, I found some amazing items on sale, one of which was a plain wreath for $4.49.  I walked around the store looking for things I could use to decorate it and randomly picked up a few things.  I didn't really have a plan besides the colors I wanted to use....Otherwise I just winged it.  Here are the items I picked out to use:

Items used:

• One plain wreath ($4.49!)
• Skinny silver ribbon (2 rolls for about $2.00 each)
• Wide, but see through Burgundy ribbon ($2.00)
• Bendy twig/silver sprig rope ($2.49)
• Burgundy flowers I thought looks Christmasy (I think they were about $3.00 each...and I got 3)

Step 1: Wined think burgundy ribbon around the wreath, while tucking it underneath some of the branches.  I wanted it to be seen, but as a background dancer, not the star.

Step 2: Circlw the twiggy rope around the top of the wreath, while tucking into place.  ( I  just tucked both ends of the twiggy thing into the innards of the wreath, while making sure it was secure by tucking the wreath branches around the twiggy part....so basically lay the twiggy thing on top and secure it in a way that it won't blow away.  Got it?  Good.)

And a close up:

Step 3: Wind skinny silver ribbon around wreath, spacing it between each strip of burgundy ribbon.





Step 4: Tuck Christmasy flowers into the wreath in an artsy-ish kind of way...or at least try to.

Step 5: Be super giddy and way too excited about a homemade wreath that took about 5 mins to make...and force your husband to admire it once it's hung on the front door...while it's raining outside.

What do you think?  Not too shabby for a first crafty try?  I honestly look for it every time I drive up to the house and keep waiting for crowds of people to knock on our door to ask where such a fabulous wreath came from....no seriously.

~S~