Dumb as a Rock...Garden

The proverbial rock garden is a beautiful, natural place. 

The real rock garden is a nightmare to weed.

Our home came with a rock garden bed that the previous owners had intended to be a water feature. Although I like the idea of a water feature (much like I like the idea of a rock garden), I have decided our front yard needs a tree much more. 

So we started moving the rocks today. Argh, back-breaking work. Jack was my little trouper, moving more rocks than anyone but me. Picking up rocks that even Malena wouldn't touch. Go, Jack!

My little helpers: Jack, Malena and Collin.
That might have been the only rock Collin picked up.

It has taken this long to move the rocks because I didn't know where to put them. Light bulb today: around the house's foundation! It's a very boring foundation, so this will add some sort of feature without being too much of a weeding nightmare. 

Before

After

I can dream, can't I?

Doug's Trip with the Boys

Doug finally took off with the boys, although only for a few hours instead of for a weekend.


He came home with these pictures:

Jack and Collin happily posing in the truck bed

Nose down in a ditch

From the rear

After the rescue

Yes, that is his piece of junk truck. Luckily, no one was hurt. They just slid off into the ditch, so there wasn't even any damage to the truck (not that you would notice anyway).


Jack didn't want to go with him. When I asked him why, he said "Daddy is scary". I knew he was talking about the four wheeling, but now I completely understand. Although he actually said he had a great time after the fact.


Thank heavens for random people with tricked-out Land Rovers that just happen to have a winch. 

The Garden Room

Continuing with the girls' rooms...


Malena wanted a garden room. She's not convinced we're done painting - in fact, she wants me to add clouds this weekend. And a sun.


Didn't happen. 


She does have rolling hills and blue "sky" - the same color blue as used on the ceiling in Bonnie's room. Convenient. 


Did I mention that all this painting only got done because my sister came to visit AND my husband took the two boys for the weekend? Normally it would take months to paint two bedrooms around the children's schedules (and needing me for other things).


She also has stickers, but I don't like them as much as Bonnie's stickers. I do love the fairies (from Wallies.com), so they will definitely stay.

The stickers here are a little more haphazard than in Bonnie's room, which is more Malena's style

The cat catching a butterfly...the fairies are so cute!

Maybe those clouds will appear someday while she's at school. You never know...

The Coral Reef

My poor girls have never had a room they wanted. 


Since we moved so much, we were always prepping the house to sell. So, all the rooms were neutral. They once had a yellow room, albeit a soft yellow, and once a relaxing green.


Not their choice, though.


So I promised them that this house would be different. Since we are going to stay here (hopefully) forever, they were welcome to choose a theme for their room and help me paint. Yup, I'm still in charge of the colors. Major control freak over here.


But anyways! Bonnie wanted a coral reef. So we started with blue - a darker blue on the walls and a lighter blue on the "sky". The transition between the two colors is actually at the top of the walls in "waves". Then we added fish stickers.

Need to change the curtains...eventually...sadly, Bonnie nixed the floaty white curtains

More waves and fishes

In case you're interested: I added tick marks about 12" down from the ceiling all the way around the room, then drew the waves freehand. I made sure to hit the tick marks every now and again, going higher and lower as I felt like it. So even though it's really free-form, it doesn't look lopsided.


That's as far as we've come on her room...but with the painting done, the rest is mostly just shopping, right? And that's the fun part!

The Naked Chair

After pulling a lot of staples, yanking out metal strips and creating many divots in my left hand, the chair is finally taken apart.


This is the chair I bought at the yard sale for $15 (well, I got two of them, so $30). 

The pillow needs some work, and the fabric is a little old-fashioned

Here's what I have learned about taking apart upholstery:

• You need pliers, a flat screwdriver and a lot of patience
• It takes quite a bit of time, which is happily passed while watching the newest Phineas and Ferb movie (over and over and over - hey, I have kids)
• Taking notes and pictures is recommended, although I will find out what kind of job I did there when I try and put the thing back together
• Taking apart an identical chair is much easier - no notes or pictures needed!

Well, the next step is to figure out how much material I need to recover the thing. Luckily, the batting is in fairly good condition, so I'll only need to make minor patches there.  Another lucky thing - Joann's is having a 50% off sale on their home decor fabrics. When I showed up in the store, I even found some funky fabric for $6 a yard. Unheard-of! I'm very excited.

The orange is for the piping. Hurray for contrast!

Oh, by the way, here's the site that inspired me to try this in the first place:
Mother Earth News, Reupholstering Furniture


So now I have a naked chair. What's funny: the kids love these new chairs so much, they could care less if there isn't any fabric on it. They have absconded with the pillows, and always fight to use the naked chair for viewing TV.


Their fashion sense has not developed as fast as their love for comfy chairs, I guess.

The best seat in the house...I might have to replace the foam now that the kids have been "loving" it!

Spray Paint, My Hero!

Actually, Doug is my hero - for doing all that painting that I didn't want to do!


He tackled the railing outside our back door. Here's what it looked like:

Rusto-matic

 He applied a rust inhibitor, and let it work for about an hour before washing it off with water. Then he primed it, let it dry, then painted it, and now it looks like this:

Beautiful, no-rust railing

It sounds like a lot of work. And this is why spray paint is my (actual) hero. It was about five minutes of taping to make sure the paint didn't get the cement, and five minutes for each application.


The hardest part is remembering that you're working on the job, since you have to take so many breaks to let things dry. But when it's done, it's a beauty!!!

The Door, a Bore

Hate the door, gotta paint it.


Okay, gotta replace it, but until we have the funds for that...(there are soooo many projects!)

Two-tone nastiness

What on earth am I going to do with these obnoxious screws?

So, as I said in my last post, we're definitely going red here. This is a leftover from living back east. The color red means welcome in New England. We'd love to have a welcoming home, so there you go. 


And - Doug is taking the boys Friday night til Saturday, so I actually have time to paint! This week is prep week, so I can get it all done before they return. Wish me luck!

Trim, Baby, Trim!

It constantly amazes me how painted trim can update the look of a house.


Doug spent Saturday turning our cracked and weathered trim into primed trim. Now the house doesn't look quite like the "handyman special" we bought.

This trim around the garage doors actually doesn't look as bad as some of the other doorways

But Doug was faster than I - he had the bad ones painted by the time I got the camera out!

I love having a handy guy around the house. 


I am thinking that perhaps white isn't the right color for our trim, though. Any ideas? We're definitely going to have a red door, but everything else is up for grabs. Dark blue? Green? Since the siding is a yellow beige, I definitely don't want yellow! Grey, maybe? 


Let me know what you think - and I'll take it under consideration!

De-plastering

The previous owners of our house had some cute ideas. One was to plaster cement "blocks" around an opening leading to a hall and the stairway.

Stain was never added to make them visible - you can just barely see the block pattern here

The fun part will be getting the plaster off the textured ceiling of the hall

Cute, but not "me". So, I am trying to remove the plaster.

My first idea was to sand it, but Doug nixed that idea. It would be very messy. And, you can just scrape off the plaster when it is wet. I went to town getting it wet and scraping it (also a very messy process, but more containable than sanding), and have so far removed three of the six surfaces. 

When they're done, I think matching sconces on each side of the opening would look nice, don't you think? And what about an archway instead of the rectangular opening?

A No-Labor Labor Day

For Labor Day weekend, my family and I went to visit my sister Debi and her family. After five hours of driving, we were exhausted, but ready for fun.

Here was the best part: I scored a dill plant and several seeds for dill, cosmos, and marigolds. Wahoo!  And I learned that if you wait until the flowers are brown and "crispy" (Debi's word), you can pull apart the flower and find the (free) seeds. How did I never know that?

Crispy is a very good description, no?

And there are the seeds!

Unfortunately, my dill plant looks a little worse for wear. Hopefully I can coax it back to life - otherwise, I will have to start the dill seeds and get that going. 

Grow, little dill plant!

So what did we do this weekend, other than play with seeds?

The family went canoeing, swimming and fishing on the reservoir...though not all at the same time. We picnicked with extended family to welcome my nephew's baby into the family. We bought pies (Veyo Pies) and thoroughly enjoyed eating them.

The kids fought...a lot...and spent many long time-outs in the corner. The boys especially were so tired. But they powered through it. And so did we.


Honestly, I loved it. The fun times were WAY more fun than the bad times were bad. I spent an entire evening being giddy with my sister. What's more fun than that?