Thinning down

No, not me. Though this home improvement task did cause quite a high level of exertion so I wouldn't be surprised if I sweated out some water weight. Our front garden had seen quite a bit of growth this summer. In fact, it was getting a little out of control. When we first bought this house, I had no idea how hard it would be to keep up with gardening. Not that I have to do it all the time, but it takes a lot more work than I thought. As exampled today when I spent 4 hours weeding and thinning out the ground covering greenery in front. Our back area doesn't get hardly any sunlight, so I haven't even had to weed out there. We are planning to fix up the back much more thoroughly next spring so we can have a fun area to entertain, but that shall have to wait at this point, especially with J and I being so busy this fall. Back to the most recent task... As can be seen from the picture below, things were getting a little overgrown.

So, today, I did the following:
1. Thinned out the monkey grass on both sides of the walkway but focused mostly on the left hand side
2. Removed the no longer flowering lilies, saving the bulbs and bulb offspring(?). I can only imagine that this is what happened because 6 lilies were planted, and I now have much more than 6 bulbs (10 I think). My mom told me how to store them over the winter by first letting the leaves die out and then wrapping the bulbs in a brown bag.
3. Weeded (which was needed due to the high amount of rain we have been getting)
4. Mulched areas of exposed dirt or high levels of mini-weeds

I also have added some mums in the front in honor of autumn. I hope to put out some pumpkins soon too. I love fall!

Anyway, below shows the results of this afternoon's gardening effort.

I have to thank J for helping me with the last bag of mulch because I got too worn out to spread it and also for the volunteers at home depot who helped me get the mulch in my cart and then into my car (wet mulch = really heavy).

I would still like to thin out the right side a little more, but maybe in the spring? It's hard to get up the grass without also hitting tree roots. That's all for now!

Trim part 2

Wow! So, I know it has been a while since I last blogged. I think it probably had something to do with having lovely guests here every weekend for the past 4 weekends (which by the way has been great). We love seeing our friends and finally have a place for people to stay when they come over. Between all of the visits, I have been slowly working on finishing up the trim in the master bedroom. I had my big post on trim earlier, so this is more or less a continuation of the same theme.

Here are some before shots. You'll want to note that I did actually pre-paint one of the windows (see first pic). What had happened is that I did this while I was working on the master bathroom trim and then realized I needed to get the guest room done before concentrating on the master bedroom, so switched tracks after I had the window complete.

So, after many hours (and lectures since that is my favorite way to paint and learn at the same time), we have fresh new trim paint in the master bedroom. I personally love the way it complements the gray tones in the room. The peachy white just wasn't doing it for me.

I do have something to confess. (And what more private place than the internet?) I did not move the actual bed or dresser since they are really difficult to move (even with multiple people). I have enough paint that if we ever do decide to move our furniture around, it shouldn't take me too long to touch up those areas. And in the meantime, no one will ever know the difference... I hope to get more projects done soon. I am taking a class (well auditing actually) this fall, so I have had a harder time keeping up with everything, but I like doing small updates when I have the chance. Stay tuned.

Spicing things up

On my list of to-dos was organizing our pantry, specifically our collection of spices.

It was hard to find the spices. After some looking online, I borrowed the idea of using magnetized metal tins on a metallic cookie sheet for the organization. My bff, Jen, was in town this weekend so she helped me clean out the shelves in the pantry and put the spices into the containers. I used adhesive-backed dry erase material that I found at AC Moore in order to label the spices. I used command sticky stuff to adhere the cookie sheet to the back of the pantry.

I picked up the tins at BB&B. In practice, I didn't have space for all of my spices and I wanted to keep the Penzey's spices in their containers since the jars are a nice glass. But this is how it turned out in the end.

There are still a fair amount of spices in their own containers, but it is a little easier to see the spices. And our pantry is organized for the first time ever.

By the way, I am in love with the Iced Starbucks Via packets right now. Yum! Anyway, a special thanks to Jen for helping me with this post! So glad that she is back from Scotland!! This project took actually very little time. We had a great time visiting and doing fun things in the area. Hope everyone else had a great Labor Day weekend!