Garden Time

We decided to plant a garden again this year and hopefully it is a bit more fruitful than it was last year.  Last year our herbs did awesome but everything else was kinda blah.  We did end up with about 30 tomatoes at the very end of the season that I had to pick green.

So we learned to love friend green tomatoes and green salsa!  We are hopeful that this year we will have a better return.  The tree we cut down last year will allow for more sun and I am praying it isn't as hot and miserable as it was last summer.  

We spent one Saturday cleaning out the bed and getting it ready for planting.  

Then the next weekend we planted and Nick built this awesome fence.  Much nicer than the ugly chicken wire we used last year.

The space is a little bit bigger this year because we removed some bushes from along the side fence so we have a few more plants.  Here is hoping we get some good "free" produce!

SNOW!

It is probably no secret that I love snow and wholeheartedly believe it does not snow enough in St. Louis. I may or may not be secretly jealous of the giant snow storm hitting New England this weekend.   I am also pretty sure I have not seen measurable amounts of snow in St. Louis in about 2 years (since the snowmageddon that wasn't)  so last weekend when we came home to beautiful snow falling from the sky I couldn't help but spend a little time enjoying it even if it was almost midnight!  Nick even indulged me and played in the snow and helped me build my very first snowman (don't ask I have no idea how someone who loves snow so much managed to make it 28 years without ever performing such a regular snow activity).  So for my dear friends surviving the storm this weekend do a little of this for me:

Yes I am skipping in the snow!

and then I made a snow angel

building a snowman

Me and our fabulous snow man

I also realized the next morning that we don't have any pictures of our house with snow because we didn't get any accumulated snow last year so I ran outside before it all melted and took this pictures.  Unfortunately our snowman was not the best constructed little guy and he took a topple overnight.

And this is all that was left of the snow when I got home from work Monday.  

poor mr. snowman

I am still holding out hope for an awesome winter storm, but I know better than to get too hopeful in this town cause it just isn't likely. 

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Well it is December and that can only mean one thing....Lots and Lots of Christmas decorations!  As always our house is done up from top to bottom in all things Christmas.  We have made a few new purchases and I think our decorations are finally starting to come together in a much more cohesive way.  You may also notice a few new pieces of furniture that I haven't blogged about yet.  I have been planning on doing a House post 1 year later but haven't had the time to get the pictures done and now that all the decorations are up- it isn't quite what our house looks like all the time so I promise after the holidays I will work hard on getting that post done.  So without further ado, our house in all its Christmas Glory:

A Fall Refresh

Yikes...I have again become a delinquent blogger.  We have been busy just living life lately; nothing too out of the ordinary just everyday life and I just forget to blog.  We did recently do a small house update that I think is worth sharing.  Last spring we replaced the front door on the house and the front of our house went from this:

when we moved in

to this:

new door that doesn't match

after a little of this:

Turns out replacing a door is not as easy as it sounds, but we managed to get it done.  After we lived with a mismatched front door and siding for far too many months we finally decided we needed to take advantage of the little bit of nice weather weekends we had and finally get on painting the front door.  In that discussion we also decided to paint the shutters and the trim around the windows.  Nick did all the painting, well all the work really so I can't take credit for that and I think it turned out pretty darn great!  

It was a pretty small project but it was nice to cross it off our list  

Bye Bye Mr. Kookaburra

or at least your sweet gum tree.  If you don't know that reference it is from an old preschool song (this was the least annoying version I could find!):

Anyway we have 2 sweet gum trees in our yard, one in the front and one in the back.  If you have never experienced these annoying little trees in the fall they drop these prickly little balls all over the yard: 

They are a pain to clean up in the yard and they really hurt when you step on them.  Basically they are very very annoying.  I'm not usually a fan of cutting down trees but this tree had to go.  So a couple weeks ago we hired someone to come cut down the tree in the backyard.  (the one in the front yard we think might belong to the city so we are still working on that one)

Here is what the yard looked like when we moved in:

The sweet gum tree is the one on the left.  It did provide a lot of shade which we enjoyed but the annoyance was enough to make it go.  The guy that we hired does this as a side job so he broke the process up over a couple of days.  First, down came the branches

Even Nick helped:

The next morning all the branches were gone

but our yard was a bit of a mess

Nick and I cleared the yard a bit and made a nice big pile of branches 

and we had a nice clean yard

and the branches were all chopped up

then it was time for the trunk to come down

and finally grinding out the stump

Our yard went from this

to this

Lots of ground up mulch so we still need to plant grass and make it look like a yard again but at least there will be no more gum balls all over the place.  

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.