Terrace Garden Progress

I recently showed you that I transplanted some iris onto the terrace near the strawberries:

I have since transplanted some coneflower, introduced some salvia, and added a few stones and some mulch. I also got rid of a candytuft plant—it was obscuring my new garden and was kind of leggy anyways. The stuff hanging off of the wall is phlox.

The salvia's not very happy—I think I damaged the roots in transport. I hope it rebounds!

Next I think I'll add some short daisies here and there and call it good. So glad not to have to worry about mowing this part of the yard anymore!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

You may recall last year my kid and I decided to try our hands at raised bed gardening. We built two boxes with left over 2"x4"s from another project and only planted one of the boxes. In it we planted five strawberry plants and two mini yellow squash plants. Being overrun with squash later caused me to reconsider my plans for the second garden box.

This image intentionally posted in black and white for dramatic effect to convey it's an image from last year. : P

Well I'm happy to report that we finally got the empty garden box planted! I found a basket of 10 strawberry plants on sale for only $6 and my kid helped me get them in some new dirt. I realize the box will be overrun with strawberries and I'm okay with that. We can always transplant them elsewhere later.

Ten happy little strawberry plants.

Big Goonie and her pup pose with all of the strawberry plants!

Big Goonie shows off the happy strawberry plants we planted last year.

Another part of last year's plan included placing 1-3 blueberry bushes in the vacant space between the left garden box and the stone wall. While I haven't completely abandoned that idea, for the time being I've decided to transplant some iris that were overrunning some day lilies and bring in some more flowers instead.

I finished getting the iris in the ground well past dusk.

Ideally I'd like to put in two more garden boxes on the terrace. That will help complete the space, but most importantly, it will eliminate an awkward place we have to mow! Now, off to find more boards!

I'm Still MARRIED!!

We knew when we bought this house nine years ago that there were hardwood floors under the carpet, and so I've been wanting to rip out our home's carpet for a while now. I came close a couple of years ago, but my baby played downstairs and was learning to walk so it seemed like a better idea to leave it for the time being. Well, my baby's six years old now, primarily plays upstairs, and has mastered walking (although one might question her abilities based on the band-aids that currently adorn her knees) so it seemed that the time had come.

Hubs, however, did not agree. In fact, I believe his exact words were, "I swear to God if you pull up the carpet that will be IT!" I have always been known to push my luck, and one recent weekend when hubs went out of town, I decided to find out what "IT" was.

I started ripping up the carpet at the bottom of the stairs first. Enclosed is my "before" picture. However, true to form, I got so into my project that I neglected to stop and take pics along the way. So, here's before...

And... VOILA! Here's "after"!

Photo shot from the stairs. You can see I still need to pull up carpet from under the TV. The furniture it sits on is pretty heavy and will take a little extra motivation before that task gets accomplished.

Surprisingly it didn't look too bad for an 87 year old floor. You can see a halo here and there that indicates where a previous area rug had been, but the scratches and overall condition isn't too bad. I think it will refinish nicely!

The area rug pictured here is one I've had for many years. Unfortunately it doesn't really go with my other decor (bedrooms, etc), so it's been waiting patiently in the basement for this day! The colors and pattern really go with this furniture nicely.

"So, how did hubs respond," you might be asking? Better than expected. When he saw the carpet rolls in the front yard as he pulled up from his weekend away, he continued to sit in his car seemingly dumbstruck. I thought he was surely contemplating driving away, but finally he emerged from the car. He didn't talk to me for an hour or so, but eventually told me that it looked better than he expected and that he liked it. So all's well that ends well! "IT" wasn't that bad!

A Special Gift for a Special Teacher

It's hard to believe the end of the school year is upon us already! As such, our kindergarten class had our last get-together today, celebrating with ice cream sundaes and a fun craft/gift for our teacher. I took on the task of coming up with the craft/gift and wanted to share the results with you!

First, I scoured the internet for ideas. I wanted to come up with something really special for our teacher! I found this really cute painted flower pot that really inspired me. How cool would it be to have a pot similar to this one and have it "planted" with tissue paper flowers made by the kids?

This is the inspiration piece I found on the internet.

A quick trip to the home improvement store yielded a terra cotta pot and matching saucer. I got them home and hit each with a coat of spray primer.

Time to get creative! I painted the outside body and inside lip of the pot with black crafting paint... 

 ...and the saucer too!

While those dried, I got to work on painting some kabob sticks in a shade of green similar to the pipe cleaners we'd be using to fashion our tissue paper flowers.

Fast forward a few days... I get so into what I'm doing that I often forget to stop and take pictures of the process to share with you here!

I painted the outer lip of the pot yellow and used a Sharpie to write dash marks and numbers, giving it the appearance of a ruler. The top rim of the pot and saucer are highlighted with a splash of red. The saucer also features a yellow pinstripe of color and small white polka dots to add detail. Next I hand-painted a thank you message and adhered the saucer to the pot with Liquid Nails.

I lined the pot with Saran wrap and sprayed liquid expanding foam into the pot. My plan was that the sticks (aka "stems") of the kids' tissue paper flowers would be stuck into the hardened foam, however the foam expanded more than expected and ended up looking like a souffle'!

 Lining the pot with the Saran wrap would allow the contents to be easily replaced later if desired.

No worries! I simply removed the pot's contents, relined it with Saran wrap, and sprayed more foam into the pot—this time taking care not to spray as much as before!

Next I painted some little flowers and leaves on the backside of the pot...

 ...and, VOILA!! It's ready to go to the party!

I literally worked on this project down to the final minute—some of the paint on the pot was still wet as I walked out the door to go to the party!

 And, finally! The finished project revealed!

Each kid attached two leaves to their flower stems—one had the child's name, and the second had something about their teacher that the kids especially loved (ie. her hugs, smile, etc).

The kids were particularly intrigued by the foam in the pot. Everyone had fun stabbing their flower into it!

The kids had a great time making their flowers. Some found doing the accordion fold of the tissue paper challenging, but thankfully we had plenty of parents on hand to help everyone get their flowers assembled!

Another successful party down in the books! And the teacher loved her personalized gift to boot!

Get Rid of Those Ugly Brackets!

These are my bamboo roller shades on my porch. I think the hardware is ugly. I've been contemplating how to disguise them when all of a sudden an ideal solution landed in my lap!

These shades are in the process of going from natural to white. I experimented with brown first, but white is by far the better choice.

My neighbor had a long strip of moulding she was getting rid of and let me have it instead! It's 5" wide, which is perfect for what I need! So tonight I trimmed it to the length I need, will get it cleaned up, primed, and painted in the coming days, and will hang it from the soffit near the top of the bamboo shades with small "L" brackets. Pics to come!

This will work perfectly!

"You're Not Cool..."

That was my husband's reaction when he saw what I'd been up to while he was at work the other afternoon.

You see, my husband is afraid of what condition the wood floors are in UNDER the carpet and has expressed that he thinks we need to leave the carpets alone (I believe his exact words were, "I swear to God if you rip up the carpets that will be IT!"). On this particular day, however, I decided to dip my toes in the water (so to speak) and gauge how upset he'd be without carpet—I'm working up to ripping up the carpet in our living room and dining room areas (how bad can "IT" be??).

This is carpet on the upstairs landing outside of the bedrooms that I didn't take up when I removed the carpet from the stairs a couple of years ago.

Carpet's gone! Now on to the pad! Someone went berserk with the stapler!

And... VOILA! Look at that floor! Wood grain is so pretty!

Now I need to deal with the threshold in the door opening that goes from the bathroom to the landing. Currently we have linoleum in the bathroom and the bright metal toothed carpet/transition strip is no longer needed.

Look at those teeth!

After a quick trip to Lowe's we're all set! A nice oak transition strip between the bathroom and the landing!

The strip came in unfinished oak, but I had a can of spray stain/ lacquer that I hit it with to better blend in to the rest of the floor color for now.

Do you think it would make my husband feel any better to know that the carpet didn't leave without a fight? Those darn staples drew blood THREE TIMES! Grr...

Don't Tread on Me (the paint's not dry)!

The weather has been pleasant and it's time to get the porch opened up for the year! Let's get BUSY!

First I decided to put a finish coat of paint on the fireplace. I primed it last summer, but never got around to finish coating it. Can you tell which part is primed and which part has finish coat?

Top 1/4 of the fireplace is finish coated.

Next, on to the floor! Despite a thorough cleaning, a dingy grey floor remains. I want something that will look better suited to my furniture and decor. Red? Brown?

Here the floor is in the process of being primed.

Initially I was leaning towards the same shade of red as the pillows I made for the porch last summer. A quick mock-up in PhotoShop proved that that was the wrong decision! I decided to go with a sand color that echoed the color of my porch's rug.

I'm too lazy to remove all of this stuff from the porch to paint. Instead I painted a third, waited for it to dry, and moved things around. Took me longer to do it this way, but I don't care.

And here's a sneak peak of what it looks like together! More pics to come once I get everything situated...

Need to dig those pillows out of the basement!