Spring Blooms

Spring has finally sprung! And as you know I have been busy outdoors working on my flower beds.  Well I’m glad I did, because this week they’ve been putting on a flower show!  Nothing like a row of pink tulips and purple creeping phlox to brighten up your day… enjoy!

Pink creeping phlox… my favorite!!

Pink and red tulips

Some lovely blue flowered thing in the wooded front yard bed.  Sorry don’t know what you are called. :)

And I just had to share the world’s tiniest azalea.  And it’s blooming!  :)

And my periwinkle is really taking off this year and spreading itself around the front bed and over the rock wall. :)  Love!

And last but not least, the cutest flower bed ever is sporting some pink tulips, too!

Next week the star of the show will be bleeding heart which is making a preview here:

and the azaleas are just about to pop!  Can’t wait… Hooray Spring!

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! :)