Front Garden

Well... I've been rather MIA from this blog for a while. But it's summer, so I suppose that's okay.

We've almost finished the front garden we started last summer. I say almost because it's 92% done, and Charlie and I always have a hard time finishing that last 8%. Of any project. Either way, the plants are in (and have been for a while!). It's nice to be mostly done.

There are hydrangea (my favorite), boxwood, catmint, dead nettle, hanging baskets with purple petunias, a mini arborvitae tree, and tall white stalky flowers called larkspur (I think, lost the tag- someone confirm this?) that Charlie refers to as "the corn" since it looks a bit like a corn stalk.

Is this last one larkspur? I think so. Either way, apparently it attracts bees.

The catmint has quadrupled in size. It's taking over it's part of the garden, and I think I'm going to have to split EVERY plant, probably EVERY year. I love catmint, but it's a bit invasive.

Here was my original idea:

And here is what we did. I might take out the corn and put in alium (like in the photo above). I'm not in love with it, and it was cheap. Wasn't our grass nicer back in April? I suppose it IS always greener somewhere else.

There you have it. The front garden, almost done.

Kitchen Updates

I've been holding out on you. We've been doing some cosmetic kitchen updates, and I meant to post the finished product a few weeks ago. Except that we're still not done, so there's no "finished" photos, and instead of waiting till whenever that is, here's what we've got so far.

It's blue and tiled and has new lighting. Here's the before:

**Notice in almost all of my previous shots of the kitchen, I tried my darnedest to crop out the light fixture above the table. This fixture has been hated from day one- it looked like a rack of metal antlers with ugly lights protruding. Isn't the new one much better? It was a birthday present.

I love the bottom glassy/metel-ness of it. But I'm weird like that.

You know you've jumped head over heals into home ownership when your birthday list consists of things like Home Depot gift cards, cans of paint, light fixtures, etc.

It was Charlie's idea to put in the tile back splash. We finished 2/3 of the job last weekend (first time tiling, woohoo!) and we'll finish this Saturday. And hopefully grout.

You can see the wall we haven't finished yet. But doesn't it look better?

Recent Inspiration

It seems the ol' blog has been a bit neglected as of late. But the front garden hasn't! We're almost done and I should have some photos soon.

In the meantime, I've been playing Mario Kart Wii (with Charlie, an "I finished the first year of my MBA" gift to himself, (much more fun than anticipated!)) dogsitting, and spending way too much time on Pinterest. So here's some fabulous and inspiring photos. Enjoy!

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Goodnight.

DIY Roman Shade

I've got a great DIY project for you- make your own roman shade! Making your own shade is great because:

1. When curtain panels won't work in a space, a fabric shade beats mini blinds every time.
2. Having a custom shade made professionally cost anywhere between $65 (for really ugly ones with only a few fabric color choices) to the upwards of $1000.

Everything included, my shade came in at $50, and I was able to pick fabric that I loved.

Here's what you need:

• Cheap, plastic mini blinds the size of your window (make sure the width matches, if the mini blinds are too long they can easily be shortened)
• Fabric (how much depends on the size of the shade you're making)
• Fabric glue

That's it! No sewing required if you don't want to or don't have a machine. Three side comments and then we'll get going.

1. If you do anything, make sure, and then doubly sure, and then triply sure that every single stinking part of your shade is square. No eyeballing things.
2. Don't use thick or heavy fabric.
3. Make sure your fabric is cut square. Wait, I already said that.

I say these things because this is the second roman shade that I made. The first one:

1. Wasn't cut square
2. Was made up of thick indoor/outdoor fabric

It hung all wonky and looked very homemade. After numerous attempts to fix it, I threw in the towel and started over.

Okay, enough ranting. But really, please do learn from my mistakes.

Start by letting out your mini blind and laying it out on the floor.

Carefully, locate and cut out all of the ladder cords. Do NOT cut the lift cord. The lift cord is what pulls the blinds up and down, and the ladder cord is what holds all of the slats in place. The ladder cord is thinner than the lift cord and resembles a ladder. Duh.

I was super paranoid about cutting the WRONG cord (cue horror music). This link (which I used as a tutorial) has more pictures of said cord, and could be helpful as well if you're OCD and paranoid about this like I was.

Pull off all of the slats except five (more or less depending on how many lifts you'll want in your shade).

Set your jumbled mess of deconstructed mini blinds aside, and get out your ironed, cut to size fabric. That's right, I'm assuming you've already done this.

*A side note: the width of your shade will be pretty standard (whatever the width of the mini blind you bough). The height is negotiable: I mounted my roman shade about six inches above my window to give the illusion of height. Add whatever inchage (like my new word?) you need. Of course, add an additional 2"-4" of fabric both height wise and width wise to your entire piece to incorporate a hem (I had a 2" hem on each side).

Here's my hemmed fabric.

You can either sew your hem in place, or you can use fabric glue. I sewed mine.

Now pull your deconstructed mini blinds back out, and glue the mechanical top to the top of your fabric, making sure the lift cords are hanging down. Make sense?

Evenly space out your slats on the fabric, and glue them down. Make sure that the holes in the slats are lined up with each other vertically, and thread the lift cord through.

Now get out the heavy bottom slat. Thread the ends of the lift cord into the holes in this slat, and tie a knot in each cord to secure it in place. The knot should hold the heavy slat in place. I totally forgot to take a picture of this. Whoops!

Glue the heavy slat one to two inches from the bottom (depending on how much you allocated for your hem). I obviously left too much fabric here.

 

And then glue the excess fabric up to hem.

You're shade is almost done! Now let it dry for at least 12 hours.

Follow the instructions that came with the cheap mini blinds for attaching it to the wall, and you've got yourself a custom roman shade.

Woohoo!

Here's my shade closed:

But mostly, it will be open.

There you have it!

Front Garden Ideas

Spring is here, and we've picked up the garden project again! We had four cubic yards of dirt delivered a week ago Saturday, so now all we need to do is:

• finish the retaining wall
• decide on plants
• plant plants
• mulch

I'm no gardener, so Mom's coming over on Monday to help. She's great with plants. In the meantime, I've mocked up a rough idea of what I'd like. Here it is:

I LOVE hydrangea- it's my all time favorite. Hopefully the garden will also include salvia, boxwood, allium, and some sort of mini tree to fill in the tall spot in the back. We'll see.

Some other potential outdoor projects for another summer may include:

• painting the house (gray) and trim (white)
• a new front door
• different sconces

Here's a mock up:

I'm so excited to jump into this project and get it crossed off the list!

Life Recently

I've yet to photograph some more projects. In the meantime, here's some iPhone pics of life recently.

This picture is for Mom, who thinks our house is always so clean.

It isn't.

I've been paralyzed at the thought of buying the wrong shade of blue-gray. I spent too many hours narrowing down 16 paint chips to these here, and then ended up getting a different color entirely. Charlie's input: "They all look white." Thanks.

I still love my snugly buddy. This is part of our morning ritual:

My brother is awesome and created Giant Jenga. We played this a few months back (yes, not recent, but still cool).

Daniel shows the proper posture for self protection when Giant Jenga falls:

We've also got some of this stuff going up somewhere in the house... sometime soon. Very cryptic.

That's all for now, folks.

Indoor Plants

For those of you who have a black thumb like me, never fear: I've stumbled upon a new way to keep indoor plants alive. Cover them with a cloche to make an instant terrarium!

You can buy real cloches (like here and here), use things that aren't technically cloches like cake pedestal covers and cheese domes, or find a lidded class container and use it as a terrarium. Cloches and terrariums are really popular right now and are very versatile.

In the photo above, I filled a clearance bowl from target with dirt, sprinkled in some grass seed (the type you put on your yard), and poured in a little water. The grass grew within about a week and I haven't had to water since the day I plated the seeds since the cloche keeps the moisture in.

Idiot proof plants! I must kill them by over watering. But this guy (or guys? because it's lots of blades of grass and not just one?) is going strong. He even is growing so well he needs another hair cut.

Here's another version using a glass jar as a terrarium:

I got the idea here. Plop in a plant and you're done. In the last two months, I've only watered him twice. (Apparently all plants in my house are male. Maybe if I get some with any type of flower they'll be considered female).

If I can keep these plants alive, especially the ivy, then so can you.

Pinterest Inspiration

I realize I haven't posted in a while. I've got a few finished projects yet to be photographed, and another one that's still not complete. Hopefully they'll make it to the 'ol blog soon.

I'm also waiting to develop strep throat. On Thursday, two girlfriends and I went to Biaggis, ordered three desserts, and all split them. On Friday one of them emailed to say she'd come down with strep. So now I'm taking Airborne and chugging drinking elderberry juice (don't judge me- my grandma sent me this and says it's high in antioxidants and boosts your immune system). Can you ward off strep after you've already been exposed? So now it's a fun waiting game, and I'm playing psychological tricks on myself trying to figure out if I feel sick or not.

In the mean time, between no projects to share and impending strep throat, here's some fun pictures/ideas I've gathered from the web as of late. Be inspired!

Source

Source

Source


Source

Bathroom Mirror Frame

I've finally framed the bathroom mirror. I say finally because I've wanted to do this for months and months but just never did. And it was super easy!

I searched Pinterest for DIY mirror frames (this blog was the most helpful), found that the style I liked best was a trumeau mirror (as opposed to a picture frame-like one with mitered corners.) And I'm also embarrassed to tell you that I've been calling it a truseau mirror until 30 seconds ago when I googled how to spell it, and realized it's trumeau, not truseau. Whoops.

Turns out a trumeau mirror is the easiest to make- most builder grade mirrors tend to be three by four feet. I was able to buy all of my boards in pre-cut lengths. I needed my two vertical boards a few inches shorter, and Home Depot cut them for me in-store.

For my three by four foot mirror, this is what I needed:

• one 48" x 3 1/2" x 1/2" board (bottom)
• one 48" x 6" x 1/2" board (top)
• two 36" x 3 1/2" x 1/2" boards (sides (I had them cut down to 31 1/2"))
• three 48" long decorative trim pieces
• white paint
• liquid nails
• painters tape

Just a friendly FYI: I'm not usually loyal to any particular home center store, but Home Depot had NOTHING in terms of decorative trim (at least not what I was looking for). Lowes had a lot of options.

Also, I drew you a REALLY fancy picture in order to help explain myself:

I started out by painting my boards:

This is the inside of the unfinished laundry room. And Leo's fluff. Very glamorous.

I then used liquid nails to glue the trim to the frame boards. I glued one piece of trim to the bottom board, and two to the top board. This, obviously, is the bottom board:

After the trim had dried, I glued the bottom board to the mirror and let it dry over night. I then glued on the side boards, let them dry, and lastly glued on the top board. I'm sure you could do them all at once, but I decided to be cautious (for once). While the glue is drying, secure your board to the mirror using painter's tape. I forgot to take a picture of this.

You're almost done! Fill in any gaps with caulk. I haven't done this yet, but I betcha can't tell.

Go upgrade your mirror! You won't be sorry.

I'm linking this post up with Home Stories A to Z's linky party: go check it out!