updating hanging baskets

A while ago I put up these hanging baskets.

They have definately prettied up a rather plain backyard.

But it has been quite some time and the coco liners in them have definately seen better days.

Yikes not very pretty anymore, and the flowers werent growing so well either.

The potting soil was very hard, I'm sure making for not happy plants.

Yikes they look awful.

No, need for new hanging baskets, I got some new liners for $1.08 from Walmart.

Taking the old ones out was a dirty task, they were so brittle.

But I got them out and kept the flowers.

I put the new liners in and they already look good as new!

Put in some potting soil.

And then I replanted the flowers that were in there.

I had impatients growing and the great thing about them is you can break off a stem and stick it back in the soil and they will grow again!

That's the kind of plants that I like!

I gave them a good watering and hoping they do great in their new homes.

Wow, looking so much better!

Cost for each hanging basket - $1.08 plus tax

Total project cost - $5.62

Yay!

Weekend Gardening

So I mentioned last Friday about getting fit and being more active, boy I didnt know what I was saying at the time!

Saturday was a beautiful day and we all got out in the yard and worked hard!

First off we have our garden box right under our kitchen window.

It has provided us with gorgeous veggies for our table as well as family time planting and cleaning.

Check out the cucumber from 2 years ago...

I know, so wrong right?

Well it also has been a source for dust and dirty kitchen screens for some time and lets not forget the new puppy in the backyard... someone didnt give me the memo that they CHEW EVERYTHING!!!!!!

First we had to move most of my plants into pots and the hubby made a bench to put them on that I told you guys about here.

So since then we've been left with an empty planter box and a nice place for the dog to get all dirty!! It was time to go.

We dug out all the dirt and kept it on the side since it was good dirt.

I need to replant my hanging baskets soon, like 6 months ago soon. haha

When we pulled out the wood we found this against the house.... yuck!

NASTY!

It reminded me of when we were young we would put salt on slugs and watch them melt.

So you know what we did right?

We told the lil guy we were going to do an experiment.

We gave him salt and had him pour it on the slug and watch it melt.

He was sooo excited to do a 'sperment'

Vanilla was sure curious too.

My son watched intently on what would happen next.

Well, what happend was he was occupied long enough for us to finish leveling the ground where we took out the garden box and then we decided to move his toy box in that spot.

While we were at it, I also finished painting the trim around the window.

Again another project we started oohh... 2 years ago.

 

I plugged some grass in the bare spots around the toy box and hopefully they fill in quickly.

Also the bald spot we left taking up the toy box.

Grass... let me tell you will be the bain of my existence!!!

We worked hard and took a nice little nap but our work didnt stop there!

My mom called on her way to work and asked if we had time she wanted the hubby to mow her lawn as well. Well when the lil guy got up from his nap we packed up the truck and went down to her house.

I used the lawn mower for the first time.

Yes, I've never mowed the lawn before.

Sorry no pictures... that is one look I do not want floating around the internet!

LOL

Saturday was a great and productive day!

And I sweat my butt off!

 

yes... that dreaded topic!

This New Year's I found a lot of people had resolutions to get fit or loose weight.

I gave up on that idea a long time ago, but I did want to get back into shape and be more active.

I want her behind....

source

And Carrie's legs would be nice too!

source

Well, last night I was feeling particularly bloated from a day of over indulging and I did something terrible... I jumped on the scale!

YIKES!

Why did I have to go and do that!?

It got me thinking I have less than 2 months to get into bathing suit shape for our BIG family vacay!

Ok, time to kick my butt into gear!

This weekend I plan on getting in my yard, working hard and sweating!

If its nice and sunny I would love to take my boys and the dog to the beach, maybe swim off some pounds!

Clock starts today 50 days till vacay can I do it?

Oh yea and remember my lamp project?

I'm FINALLY done and I've actually been enjoying my lamp for about a week now.

I must get my post done so I can show all of you.

Hope you guys have a great weekend, what are your plans?

more backyard-agains....

While I'm on the subject of our backyard, I thought I'd let you know about all the other things I got knocked off the to do list as well.

First of all AGAIN back to the project list for this year.

It seems like all I've been talking about but I'm so glad to be getting these projects done, thats the purpose of goals right?

And it feels so good checking them off this list.

First off we have my pavers!

I got these pavers from a jobsite we worked on. They are really nice in person.

The hubs and I quickly put them out and within 5 - 10 mins we had them in just the spots we wanted.

Seriouslly only 5 - 10 mins. Made me wonder why it took me so long to do this.

And then it was time to level them out. I had to dig in some areas and fill in others and I was reminded why. Ugh..

Since we had extra lumber from our Pergola project, the hubs built a little bench sort of thing to raise up our potted plants from being on the ground.

It's actually been really nice not having to bend down to work on the plants.

Also keeps the puppy from chewing it up!

AND speaking of chewing things up....

Remember meeting my maple?

I almost threw that puppy over the fence!

She thought my precious maple was a chew toy, NOT GOOD.

We put up fencing around it to keep her out and hopefully let the maple heal it's self.

See not good!

We lost a good 3 feet on her :-(

Of course, just because I'm loving our new addition to the patio here it is again!

Hope you all had a great weekend... why do they always have to end so soon??

It's about darn time....

Pretty much since we first moved in to our home almost 5 years ago I have wanted to put up a shade over our back patio.



The back patio faces west and in the afternoons the sun is just horrible, pretty much making the back yard unusable. Well, thats just unacceptable, especially with a very active 3 yr old.

You see our backyard is fenced and what better way to keep em entertained?

Go out in the backyard and let them run off all that energy!

That's why this project has made it on my project list for 2012

So, do you remember when I told you I was so excited I could almost pee my pants?

Yay!

Yes we finally got working on our pergola, here is the before.

And after so much hard work, sweat, tears.... ok fine we hired a contractor!

(so worth it!)

I couldnt be more excited! Yay!

Still more work to be done, we have to finish the roofing and paint it, not to mention get some yard work done, yikes! Can't belive I'm actually showing this picture, yuck.

BTW, this sucker is HUGE! It really feels enormous!

Our weather is cleared up now since all of the storms and it has left our backyard all torn up. Majority of our grass died, although it looks awful right now it's not too heartbreaking since we're in the process of changing out the grass anyway.

Hey, anyone up for a painting party?



Once upon a time, a long, long time ago...

well more like August of 2010, I picked up

these chairs

from Craigslist.

I loved the shape of them, the idea of the challenge to turn them into something I was gonna love and I loved how comfortable they were too.

It took me a while to get started on this project and when i finally did, YIKES was it time consuming. I spent hours and hours removing staples.

The more and more I took the chairs apart I found damage, termite damage.

:-( sad face

I had to do what was best and so lets have a moment of silence for my loss of those chairs.

Farewell friends.

I'm so excited I could pee my pants

Do you remember that list of projects for 2012?

Work has started on one of them, can you guess which one?


~ Squeel ~

Projects for the New Year

Last year, I was just getting used to doing my own home projects.

This year, I'd like to really go for it!

Starting with this project.

We have only ONE water spicket in our front yard.

Its such a pain to drag the hose all the way to the side of the yard, either side of the yard to water the grass or plants that I used to have there. I say used to because they have since dried up and died from lack of watering!

Our plan is to tie into the one existing water spicket and run a  water pipe along the slab of our house and make another water spicket on the other side.

See below:

In theory, it all sounds simple... but we'll see.

This second project has been on my wish list since we moved in.

We have a fenced in backyard which is perfect for my son to run around and play and I dont have to worry about him going too far. Problem is, our backyard faces west and in the afternoon it is soooooo hot that I can't stand to be out there. When we have friends come over to BBQ we sweat so bad and its so uncomfortable. We need a pergola or some sort of shade above our back patio.

This is a big project for us, we need to watch out for our roof line and cannot permanently tie into the house or we'll have to get permits and drawings and inspections, blah, blah... all stuff that is just too much trouble for a little shade.

Our backyard also used to be home to my hubby's little crabbing boat. It took up a good portion of our already small backyard and the spot where it sat wont grow grass.

I want to reclaim that space in our backyard and put the boat somewhere else.

Luckily right now, it is at our friends house down the road taking up temporary residence since they use it more than we do.

(I offered permanent residence to which my hubby was not pleased about! LOL)

We want to take down this portion of the fence below and push it back approx 8 -10 feet and create a little parking space for it here.

 

This past year we tackled our garage project and put up a partial wall. Well now the corner to our backyard is super dark. I would like to put a light up on this side wall so that we can light up that area.

This project feels like something I can only dream of doing.

Our kitchen needs so much work, I pray each time I go into Home Depot that I run into the crew from Kitchen Crashers.

I would like to replace the light fixtures, change out our flooring and the BIG one, paint the cabinets.

BTW, my kitchen isnt always this messy. I took this picture during New Year's Day cleaning.

 

This room is SCARY!

It's our spare room and right now is being used as storage for just about everything.

My mom will be moving into a smaller house in the near future (I will explain in a future post) and so in order to get rid of some of her things, I convinced her to do a garage sale.

(my mother is a HOARDER!!)

The catch, I have to store everything and have it at my house.

I would like to make this my son's big boy room. If you follow me on pinterest, I've been posting ideas for the room there.

If I can pull it off, I think it will be pretty darn cool!

He'll be a lucky kid.

For the simple projects, I picked up these palets a while back with the intention to make rustic looking planter boxes for my backyard.

Also I scored some really nice pavers from a demo job my boss guys did a while back and we need to put those down as well. I was thinking a walk path from the side of the garage to the backyard since we cannot grow grass. I dont know but grass just wont grow.

Last but not least, I scored this lamp at the Salvation Army for $5.

I liked the shape of it even though it didnt have a shade $5 was a steal.

I actually was holding it checking it out and a man came from out of nowhere and told me if I didnt get it he was gonna. Oh that settled it, it was mine.

So theres a run down of the projects I'd like to tackle this year. Keep posted on my progress or stick around and stay on me to keep going!

Spring Garden Cleaning

My garden has been seriouslly neglected recently.

Its in dire need of some TLC.

As much as I might complain, we have great weather all year long so my only excuse to let it go this bad was me being lazy.

From left to right we have: Rosemary, remnants of tomato, green onion, nearly dead basil and then more green onion.

Here's my garden box that used to be so beautiful and full of cucumber and lettuce.

As my hubby got to work on the garden box I started thinning out the green onion.

I pulled them all out and look at how much I had! Wow that would last me like a lifetime!

Then I cut them down so that I could replant.

I trimmed my tomato and gave them a tomato cage to climb on and also trimmed the basil. We have yet to see if they will survive the massacre.

My hubby cleaned out the box in no time and I planted some cucumber and bell pepper.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have my own fresh veggies in no time!

Linking to parties {here}

Painting closet doors and a Fishing Trip

We've been passing the sickies back and forth in our house recently and we're finally getting better. How do I know? We've got cabin fever... GET ME OUT OF THE HOUSE!

I'm getting stir crazy sitting around thinking of all the projects around the house that needs to be done and try keeping an active 2 year old occupied in the house for long periods of time... not an easy task.

So we got out of the house. I started painting the doors in the house that are stil that awful base flat paint since we've moved in. No pictures because you really have to see it in person and feel the difference. Didnt change the paint color but atleast now its a semi gloss, amazing what a little sheen can do!

Then we walked down to the harbor and did a little fishing.

Here's the little guy's first fish that daddy helped him catch.

And the one that mama helped him catch.

(My fish is bigger than daddy's, I just was in no shape to be in the pix)

 

We had a nice time and mama came home a little early to make baked spaghetti casserole.mmmm... all that fishing made me hungry.

Sometimes even when you're sick, you have to get out of the house. I think the sun did us some good. And now I've got the painting bug, gonna be taking down all the doors and paint them this week, we'll thats my plan, who knows if it will happen.

2 down and 4 more to go!