Mulch Madness Part Two

I am back with an update from the backyard.  :) I have been spending every free moment outside, it seems, tidying up from fall and winter and preparing for Spring!  But today I spent some time outside taking photos and enjoying my yard instead of working in it!

Now you can enjoy it, too!

Last time I told you about mulching the front beds, but all the while we have been slowly filling in the English garden which took three loads of mulch! Ack!  It hasn’t been mulched in two years so it really needed it!  And the best part about the English garden is that to get mulch down there you have to drive your wheelbarrow through the woods beside the fence and into the gate at the side of the garden.  Then back up the hill to get more.  It is no fun… but thankfully I had Mama helping me with the process!  And now it is done.  Hooray!

We added some more coral bells along the left of the pathway…

And put some ferns on the right side.

Plus we added fresh rock dust to the path which was looking a little neglected.  Now it is much neater!

We also leveled and relayed the brick patio under the missing swing while we were at.  It got a fresh layer of rock dust, too.  When we finally get the swing hung up again, I’ll show you the before and after of the patio. :)

Ta da!  All finished!

And here is the before and after comparison, just for fun…

And since that is kind of cheating, here is one from last year:

Can’t wait for my snowball bush to bloom again! :) And for all the liriope to sprout! 

I’ll be back with plenty more updates to the yard…  so stay tuned!

P.S.  The English Garden now has its own category so you can follow the progress with one click!  Here it is!  Or find it under “Category” in the right sidebar anytime.  :)

Mulch Madness

Tis Spring, get thee to the mulching!

A few weeks ago my mom arrived with a truck full of pine needles… and then the next weekend, another load (she has friends with pine trees that let us collect the needles for free each year!) and then the next weekend a load of mulch!  Lucky for me she decided to stay and help me unload all those loads, too! :)  Thanks Mama!

We have been sprucing up for Spring around here, cleaning up the flower beds, raking all the dead leaves away and putting out fresh needles and mulch.  Things are shaping up but we still have a couple more loads in the English garden which hasn’t been properly mulched in two years!  Bad!  So today I’ll just show the progress in the front, before all the Spring perennials start popping up!

In front we have daffodils, creeping phlox and periwinkle blooming…

While I spread pine needles Mama dug up all the mess in the mailbox bed.  We had a trailing vine thing that had taken over and was growing into the yard… so she tore it all out and we put some lilies in where it used to be. It’s so nice now! :)

Ahh, so pretty and neat! Now we just wait for tulips, bleeding heart, azaleas and irises! :)  Yay Spring!

I’ll be back to share the progress in the English garden and backyard as we finish mulching it up in the back! :)

Happy Spring! (hopefully Mother Nature will get the message and it will feel like Spring soon, too!)

A Full Length Mirror

It’s one thing every girl needs… a full length mirror so she can check out how those shoes go with that outfit.  For the past four years, I’ve been running downstairs to the den where my full length mirror resides to check out my shoes.  I am a seamstress so it’s important to have a mirror downstairs for my clients.  But I’ve always wanted to get one for my bedroom, too. I wanted one of those giant, leaning monstrosities that costs upwards of $200, but I wanted it for fifty bucks.  Story of my life. :)

Well, my mother tipped me off to a mirror at Big Lots that was pretty large, not big enough to lean, but definitely surpassing the $20 over-the-door mirrors that you see in college dorms.  This one was only $50.  And after hemming and hawing over it and looking at comparable models at Overstock (nothing under $100) and Lowe’s (one I found for $90) I decided to get the Big Lots version.  Lucky for me, Sunday was 20% off everything in the store!  Woot!  So I picked up this bad boy for forty bucks and Mama and I wrangled it into my car with complete lack of finesse. :)  And yesterday I hung it up on the wall beside my closet (even more lack of finesse involved there… evil wall anchors!). 

Anyway, check it out!

It has a plastic frame (I would have preferred wood), but for $40 what do you expect?  The frame is a dark brown color which looks black in pictures and if you are Michael.  (I told him it’s brown.)  The mirror is almost five feet tall and a foot and a half wide which sure beats those crappy over the door mirrors. 

See how the dark brown coordinates with the dark brown frame on the same wall?  Both of those frames are a bit dark for the wood tones in this room, so I may end up painting the mirror frame at some point, but for now I am loving it!

And most importantly, this mirror is big enough for me, or my 6 foot tall husband, to see ourselves in (even our shoes!).  Oh and Riley can see herself, too.  She likes to stand in front of it and look at the room backward.  She’s a funny girl. :)

Valentine Love Birds

I don’t usually decorate for Valentine’s Day… which is a shame because I have a pink obsession!  My hoarding of pink stuff could really be an advantage when February 14th rolls around.  While I decorate obsessively for Christmas and Halloween, most of the rest of the year I keep my decor the same… neutral/spring/summer flowers, butterflies and birds.  Well… this year I was inspired to create a little Valentine’s scene.  I saw a “classic romance” vignette at Less than Perfect Life of Bliss which was the jumping off point for my creation.

I decorated the top of my flatware cabinet in the dining room, starting with a silver tray topped with photos of me and my Valentine.   I threw in a pink candle (Pink Sands by Yankee Candle—the BEST fragrance!) a tiny heart shaped trinket box, and a silver creamer filled with white roses and a single red rose from my hubby that I saved many years ago.  Then I used Scrabble tiles and spelled out a sweet Valentine’s sentiment (for thirteen points).  :)

The corner cabinet across the room also got a little “Love Birds” vignette.  I created a trio of dimensional paper hearts using a printable from Hymns and Verses.  Two of them went into the little love nest and the other one I made into dimensional art with some scrapbook paper and a sticker that reads “Love is a beautiful dream.”  The tiny love letters are actually floating candles that my mom had.  She gave them to me for my cute Valentine’s displays. :)  Thanks Mama!

I continued the love birds theme in the kitchen on my tiny shelf.  A second bird is guarding another love nest.  A tiny pink heart is nestled inside.  More love letters and a few pink and yellow flowers round out the display.

So far I haven’t had any complaints about the abundance of pink stuff in the house, so perhaps I can keep these up until Spring.  :)  Nothing says Spring like birds and pink flowers!

Cloudcover Quilt

Happy February!  I finally found some time to photograph our new comforter that I ordered for Christmas.  After Riley destroyed our beautiful cream Pottery Barn essential quilt I had to replace it.  And since the PB one was sold out and discontinued ::wails of despair:: I had to find something else that I loved.  So I scoured the internet in search of something light and beautiful, made of cotton in cream or blue.  What I finally discovered was the Diamond Stitch Cloudcover Quilt from West Elm.  I was worried about ordering something blue because I had past experiences with the blues not matching my impression of them online.  Luckily this blue was the PERFECT shade to match our paint color (Going Gray by Olympic).  It was love at first sight!

It is more like a comforter with tufted quilting and navy blue topstitching.  I wasn’t sure the topstitching would look right in our bedroom, but I think its just the right touch of contrast.


Yay new quilt!  Let’s just hope that “Riley the Ripper” doesn’t get ahold of this one and that it will last for a long time!  Maybe even long enough that I’ll iron it one day! :)

Closet Under the Stairs Makeover

I bet you didn’t know there is a closet under the stairs.  Maybe you’ve been to my house and you do know. :)  Maybe you guessed there was… maybe I’ve mentioned it?  Anyway there is!  It’s right across from my laundry room and adjacent to the garage and den, so it’s the perfect space for storage.

It’s fairly large as far as closets go, but it’s not big enough for Harry Potter.  And it’s cut into the staircase so the back wall angles up and hits you in the head about three feet into the closet.  I tried to make it work for a while with some cabinets and shelving that I already had.  I basically stuffed every piece of organizing furniture in there and filled them up with fabric and supplies and then shut the door on it!  Here’s what I am talking about:

That’s a bad picture from 2010, but still you get the idea—it was a mess!  It has been through various stages of “makeover” and organization over the past few years.  At one point there was even a file cabinet in there!  But it wasn’t until we had to empty the closet to lay new flooring that I really decided what I needed to do with this space. 

We cleared it out and tore up the carpet.  Before the new floors went in I painted the walls a nice crisp white.  The trim and door also got a refresh.

Not much to look at yet.  So we added some shelving to the back of the closet to maximize storage space against that angled ceiling.  And I forgot to take a picture before I began stuffing things back in there again.  :(

Anyway, since then I have organized a bit more (not likely to last!) and cleaned up things for a reveal!  You can see the shelving design as well as the upper shelf over the hanging bar.  I use this closet now to store giftwrap, giftbags, boxes, yarn, silk flowers, polyfil and party supplies.  Since I got my cubby bookcase in the den, I have moved all the fabric out of here to those or to the filing cabinet in the garage. 

The hanging bar is useful for storing all my pretty tablecloths so they don’t get super wrinkled.  The top shelf is the shallowest since the angle in the ceiling cuts off the back.  It’s perfect for relatively flat things, so I use it to organize gift bags and boxes.  Christmas and Non-Christmas are separated so it’s easy to find what I need.  The second shelf holds more Christmas boxes on the left and the two pink ones on the right are filled with bows, tissue and tags.  The third shelf has party supplies and yarn.  And the rest of the stuff is on the floor.  The laundry hamper in front holds all of my giftwrap.  I am kind of a giftwrap junkie so I have a lot and this is the perfect way to store it all neatly.

It is so nice to be able to get into the closet now and find what I need easily.  The three levels of storage I had before were just not working because I had to pull everything out to get to the things in the back.  This room has a lot of floor space left and that’s important because this is the space that Michael uses to brew beer when he does that.  It’s cool, dark and can be closed off from the pets, so I let him make it smell all yeasty in here sometimes. :)

Anyway that brings us to the end our quick little tour of the closet under the stairs. :) Hope you enjoyed seeing a secret nook in our house!

New Couch Reveal!

I know you all have been sitting around with bated breath, waiting for the big reveal of our new couches… so without further adieu, I bring you the first of many updates of 2013!

I’m sure you remember me telling you that my mom was reupholstering our sad, tired couches as our Christmas gift this year.  Well right before Christmas they were delivered and I have been waiting to reveal the room until we got our new television hung on the wall.  That was accomplished last weekend (Thanks Mike and Nelson!) so here we are:

The couches are covered in a warm beige colored chenille type fabric.  I don’t know the exact name (wish I did!!) because we bought it at a wholesale fabric outlet.  But it’s a lovely color and very comfy!  The only thing we changed when reupholstering these bad boys was the dust ruffle.  We just left it off and I like how simple and open it feels without it.  Mama refinished the legs of the couches to match all the rest of our furniture.  Bombay Mahogany for the win. :) 

After I took down all of the Christmas décor, I had to decide how to redecorate the room around the new couches.  They are so plain in comparison to our old plaid couches that it was challenging to bring in some color and pattern without a big statement piece to go from.  I’m hoping to bring in more pattern and color with some new draperies.  I am still hunting for the right fabric for those.

I basically stole all of this from the den, where all my beautiful accessories have been gathering dust and being neglected since we are hardly ever in that room.  I stole the blue and green striped pillows which I think look awesome backed up with the brown floral ones from before.  And the teal throw was originally for the guest room but it goes with all the blue accessories in here.  The metal butterfly art on the wall between the windows is also from the guest room.  After Christmas came down, that spot was looking bare so I threw that up there and realized how nicely the blues and greens played in this room.

My antique trunk turned side table is sporting an ivory frame and a potted plant.  Here’s a close up of the couch detail and the pillows!

I still needed some more teal accessories to wrap up the color scheme so I repainted a couple of thrift store frames that were in the office.  I think they look nice but Michael says they are ugly. haha! :)  They might get relegated to the den later on…

The teal blue bird pillow is also stolen from the den (poor den is looking lonely) and it fits perfectly in my “butter chair”.  It’s called the butter chair because it is the color of sweet cream (or something related to butter) and it so soft it feels like butter… or you feel like butter sitting in it!  :)  And here is one gratuitous shot of the new TV mounted on the wall.  I had to move the gallery wall up to accommodate the height of the TV.  I am undecided what to do about the cords.  I haven’t had a chance to look at cord covers yet…  to be continued.

I will leave you with this parting glance at the new space and a before and after comparison of the old and newly refurbished couches. 

Love love love our new couches! 

Hopefully it won’t be long before I’m back with a reveal of the new draperies.  Stay tuned…