Garden: Front Yard

The front yard used to be so sad.  The crooked short arborvitae looked like they were always trying to run away so one morning this summer we obliged by digging them out of the ground.  The soil around our house is so compacted with sand and clay that the roots had barely spread despite being probably about 15 years old.

 After clearing the shrubs from around the base of our taller arborvitae we could see a large bare spot which is going to take several years to fill back in and the grass had died long ago.

New soil mixed into dirt, edging pounded into the ground,

baby gem boxwood planted.  I bought them on super-sale.

To my delight the local plant nursery had the exact flowering shrubs I was looking for,

Little Lime dwarf hydrangeas.

 In the fall the hydrangeas changed from a delicate pale color to a deep auburn shade.

As you can see, the new grass seed we put down was nicely established.

The brown things sticking out of the ground are iris bulbs that will hopefully bloom multiple times next year.  I also planted a bunch of tulips and hyacinths in front of the boxwood.  Can't wait to see what happens in the spring!

Build: Spare Room Closet and Upgrades

It started with the closet project.

For the first two years that we were in this house the third bedroom became a combination cat litter box / dumping ground site and it was getting a bit embarrassing.  Last winter I made plans to make it livable and also make some major changes to the closet, which was pretty non-functional.  All of the closets are shelved with cheap builder-grade wire racks that aren't attached to studs and it's my eventual goal to upgrade all of them with nice boards.  I thought that this small spare room closet would be the perfect project for practice.

The shelves were easy to remove.  I was appalled to discover how many of the drywall screws and brackets had fallen out over the years.  Patching up the holes was fairly easy.  Then it was a matter of painting the inside to create a nice blank canvas.

Once the walls were nice and clean the ceiling looked yellow by comparison, 

so it got a coat of paint too!  No one will ever see it once I put in the new shelves lol.

 New shelves with support boards attached to the studs.  

These babies aren't going anywhere!

And now for the rest of the space! 

 None of the bedrooms had overhead lighting when we bought the place.  Instead, each room had a switch that was wired to an outlet.  That is so annoying!  Before I did anything else I had an electrician run a wire from the switch to the ceiling and install an overhead fixture in each bedroom.

After that, it was a matter of painting the room and hanging window treatments.

The space is so much more enjoyable now.  I love to sit in the armchair and read.

We have an air mattress for turning this room into a small guest room as needed.

Most of the time this room is a kitty hang-out spot 

Halloween! (a very belated blog post)

It started when I broke one of my cheap plastic deck chairs this summer.  We've had them for eight years and one of the back slats finally gave out.  I wasn't feeling very inspired for Halloween this year given that we expected a low turnout of Trick O' Treat-ers (who scheduled Halloween on a Wednesday?!).

I thought it would be fun a simple to go with a glow party theme.  But because I'm me, I always need a ghoulish twist so I decided to go with a cannibalistic skeleton BBQ!

The deck chairs were painted with neon glow paint and I ordered a small UV floodlight.  The rest fell into place nicely.  Later we'll take the chairs to the landfill.

I made a "grill" from a cheap foam cooler

and hooked it up to my fog machine.

Check out those hors d'oeuvres!

Party time! 

Interior decorations 

My desk at work

Carpooling