Mini Pick-Me-Up: Mailbox Edition

Hello. Meet my mailbox. He is white and somewhat rusty and only a year old. He was a cheapy... as the cash flow has been tight the last year and we needed to plug up the one built into the house due to mold issues in the winter. 

So. I  decided I needed a little pick- me up at the entry to tide me over until we can paint our house... hopefully next year. A little steel wool, a little left-over white spray paint and a little Hello (you may remember my cousin shared this...and I loved it just as much as she....) and Voila, a mailbox that will even make the mail man smile... 

Enjoy the day! I hope I am here when the mailman comes....

Alyssa

Backyard Update.... Stain adds a bit of warmth...

Newly stained wonders of happiness. Stained to match the wood along the fence.

The Backyard.. Basically complete. Mini Pick-Me-Up #2.

Well. At long last the backyard is basically complete. We have a few more plants to get and areas to touch-up other than that we are basically complete. Yay!

Thanks to Eric, my Dad, Kai, and George the college student who helped out on this monster pick-me-up.

 Roll and cut. Repeat.

 Done. 

 Laying out the area for the fire pit... Someday soon we will be digging one into the ground. For now though we are using the one that my friend Lisa so graciously donated with the dog bone leg.

 Noodling some more. 

 Cypress Mulch graveyard. 

 Ella watching the labor in her typical uninterested look.

 The mounds get dumped begin. 

 Post raking. Nice..

 Our new outdoor living room/dining room. 

 We moved some plants on Saturday and the rest yesterday. I'll take some more photo's after everything bounces back. Hope for some heat please!

Saturday night. A very tired Eric. 

 Tilling the weird triangle where we are going to move our hosta and lillies that are shown behind him.

 The grape vine grown in.. you can see it here dead from winter.. ... and the hosta planted. Nice. Now to get our morning glory going again.

 Now that the hosta and lillies were moved we can have our herb garden near the backdoor and kitchen! Yay!

 The plants all moved and getting soaked.

Now back to my living room! A painting I will go.. a painting I will go.. 

Have a  great day! 

Alyssa

To get to the next post in this series... click here. 

Backyard update - Mini Pick-Me-Up #2 almost complete

We are almost finished with our backyard project. So exciting, I know. We can hardly wait and we can almost feel the cypress mulch under our feet.

It's flat. It's flat! I can hardly believe it is flat!

Check it out from this perspective. Flat again. Amazing. Ok, I know you are not impressed.  If you could see it in real life you would be impressed.

Well, with this much flatness in our world we decided to have a little christening with the fire pit. (Eric added the first pass of black fabric on our main walkway.) My good friend Lisa came over earlier in the night.. The Laura and Bear stopped by a bit later. We had a few bottles of wine a fire and some laughs for a wonderful evening. 

The fantastic fire we got started from the first swish of the match.

Trouble & Hazel enjoying the new digs.

Peek. from behind 67 bags of Cypress Mulch. Yup. 67.

Later in the evening the fire was so hot we had some amazing blue flames.

 

 Finally some s'mores... Lisa made a run home for the fixin's and I think it is going to be a must around our house as well. 

Thanks for joining us at our inaugural fire in new backyard. This was last Wednesday. We have since added the mulch and have placed the furniture. Today we are moving all the plants later in the day and then I will post the final reveal tomorrow! Have a great Sunday.

Alyssa 

To go the next post for this project click here. 

Glutton for Punishment. Yep. That is me.

So. Do you remember that post in which I shared all the things I did not get done? If not. Click here. If you do. Read on. 

I finally got around to painting the trim post new door installation. Only 9 months since the door was installed. Not bad. I had this feeling this was going to end up being a bigger project, which is why I kept putting it off. Well as you can see below. It is a much bigger project. I am now painting the whole darn room. Since I was doing touch up on the door I thought I would do some touch-up on the walls as well. Unfortunately for me, I did not have any of the paint left from the living room. Boo. I tried to match and of course was unsuccessful. Also the trim paint came out tons darker than it is. Which I did not like. So I threw caution to the wind and in complete frustration I decided to paint the whole room white. Trim and all. The old trim color is white with a little grey tinge to it... not cool. Just go true white if you are painting the trim white. It makes life so much easier! Anyhow.. enjoy the show.

 

 What a mess. 

 Ahh... some water got in and bubbled the paint.. so I thought I would clean that up as well.

 I tried.. to no avail. AF-96 was close but not close enough. Boo. :(  Now what color.

 Look at those bookcases. Filled to the brim. Should be fun to move! Note: that was sarcasm.

 The dining area.... Usually not this messy, but now...   The "valance" above the window was made by Avery and our neighbors daughter Miranda. They had a ball and the color was so fun we hung it up as a curtain.

Wow. What a difference a true white is. Now to hit the walls.

Well. The white is bright! I can't wait to get this done. To be done and to rearrange some of our knickknacks.

From tan to white. Wow. Wish me luck in finishing this weekend. Good news though. The back yard should be finished and ready for planting tonight! Woot!

Ciao for now!

Alyssa

Backyard update.. Major progress on Mini/Major Pick-Me-Up #2.

 Staining the side boards.. reclaimed wood.

 Digging the trench for the block retaining wall that will separate the living area from the yard.We did have to buy the block for this area unfortuantely. So, our lots of labor/ mostly free project is getting a little more expensive. We also will be building a little mini deck/stairs along the sidewalk by the house. Again, unexpected add expense.

 Leveling said trench.  Egads.. that was painful. 

 The finished product... now for some more grating and a planting and a throwing wood chips we will go. Almost finished! I still can't believe we will have a flat area in our yard after this.. what a lot of work. You will notice us out here everyday rain or shine enjoying this area upon completion. :)

Also, wait until you see my next post... 

Oh, I added some kitchen photos here. I cleaned the floor last night and decided that it was sort of presentable enough to photograph. Scroll down to find them. Keep in mind the make-due nature of my kitchen. Not a design wonder that is for sure.

Alyssa 

To go to the next post for this project click here.

Backyard update.. Mini/Major-Pick-Up #2.

You've missed my stories about my backyard hell, haven't you?  I know. I can tell. Well... work was done today. A lot of work... I can almost see it now...

 We added a new worker. George. The college student.

 Checking out the progress. Pew. Smells like manure. But yes, it is getting flat.

 That would be a 1' drop-off. We will be spending some money here to create a new mini deck. 

 A path. What? Solution to be determined.

 The crazy, bitchy neighbors perfect back yard. They totally hate us. :) That makes me smile. 

 We are so ghetto. It's awesome. Even my dad said we should clean up the driveway. 

Finally, this one comes to ask me for bread so she can go bird watching. Wow.

Yep. There you have it. The backyard update in a nutshell. 

Alyssa

To go to the next post for this project click here. 

Sneak Peak of a project for this week!

 Avery's messy room. Oh, how I miss the days of her babyhood when her room was as I wanted it. Clean and orderly.... not full of little bits of things that make her happy and me crazy! :)

Can you guess what I will be doing? 

This should be a wonderful little clean-up. 

Alyssa

Mini Pick-Me-Up #2 - The Backyard Edition. Day 6. More rain.

 We delayed our weekend trip to the cabin by a day... because the rain was not a comin' until this afternoon. As you can see, hopefully, progress was made. The dirt is almost all moved and almost flat. The next thing to happen will be for my dad to bring the grader over and really level the ground. It did start to rain about an hour ago, so Eric had to finally quit and we are getting ready to head out now.

 My soaked honey... doing a little clean-up. Note the Peony he moved on the left.. Huge.. and deep. When we did the basement finishing we added an egress window and as it was November when Eric was installing said window... he just dumped the dirt near the garage and it happened to be on the peony. Now because of that our peony is the last one out of the ground in the spring. I can't wait to get my garden in when this is all finished... and set up the dining and living area.. Eeee!

I also decided that the Allium had to move.. I was getting too nervous about it getting damaged... They look so cute up here near the front door now.

Alyssa

To go to the next post for this project click here.