Happy Earth Day!

In celebration of Earth Day we decided to finally start our garden.  After spending most of the day Saturday watching the sun position we finally decided on the best location for the garden.  We decided on the back corner of our yard.

As you can see the corner of the yard already a little bit of landscaping and really is the only part of the yard that isn't really shady.  We decided to move some of the plants that were already back there and extend it out just a bit and put the garden there.  We planted tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, green beans, spinach, kale and onions.  I didn't get any in progress pictures but here is our final garden:

The pots to the side are the herbs I planted a couple weeks ago and referred to in this post. They have already started to sprout so hopefully we will have lots of fresh herbs soon.  

 We also re-potted this little plant.  A few years ago my mom gave me this plant and it was probably a quarter of this size. I have no idea what the plant is, but let me tell you this little guy is hardy.  I very rarely remembered to water it and really just left it alone and it seems to flourish- that is my kind of plant!  Yes those stones are a Cardinals stone and a Cubs stone. They were housewarming gifts from a good friend of ours.

The last thing we did yesterday was replant one of the plants we removed to plant the garden.  When we moved in there were 3 of these bushes along the back of the house They were still green then but looked like they might have been on their last leg and unfortunately they don't seem to be making a come back so we replaced one of them with a plant from the corner of the yard.  We hope to replace the other 2 soon, maybe with a flowering bush or two.

Hopefully that bush (We have no idea what it is) will make it and fill in that space nicely.  

There is still lots to do outside, but we feel pretty accomplished after this weekend!

Getting Our Spray Paint On!

Lately our house project focus has moved outdoors. We have been busy cleaning up all the leaves and discovering plants that the previous owner planted. Spring is such a surprise at a new house; you just never know what might appear.  In addition I recently planted an herb garden and plan to plant a vegetable garden soon as well.  This past weekend, however, we took on a couple projects that just needed a little refresh job!

Unfortunately I forgot to take very good before pictures so you won't get the total transformation.  The first project was a new fire pit that our friends weren't using anymore and donated to the cause.  It was a bit rusty so we decided to give it a fresh coat of paint.

We also found a great patio table at a garage sale a couple weeks ago for much cheaper than we could have bought the same thing new.  It was however a forest green color and the chairs we have are all trimmed in black so we gave our cheap table a new look with a can of black spray paint.
The process:

The After:

Probably can't really tell in the picture but I promise
it looks brand new with the fresh coat of paint

Since we had the spray paint out and still had a lot left Nick decided to give this chair a new color as well.

Before

After

 I really don't know where the chair came from and it didn't really look all that bad, but now it fits in nicely with our new chairs and "new" table.

Those are our outside updates so far.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks I will have some details about my garden and our other outside updates.