Oh spring, how I love you. But I know you'll never last long here in WI. Soon it will be sweltering hot days and I'll somehow be wishing for winter again. So for now I think we should get our butts in grove and start on some of the landscaping we've been talking about.

This is a sketch of what I'd like the front of the house to look like.  We would like to do raised flower gardens in the front, but that's gonna have to wait because that crap is expensive.  We're going to hold off on the raised beds for a year or two, but we will have them someday.

We've decided just to do a regular flower bed (well I've decided this is how the front of the house is going to look soon, J hasn't had too much imput).  We're going to edge the garden with a fun little walkway from our neighbors driveway to ours.  We don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood, so the mailman walks on the grass.  We don't really mind, but we also don't really want him to wear a path in the grass.  So the solution, make a concrete path for him to walk on.

We've found a mold that looks like cobblestone that we like a lot.  We even kinda like the idea of the grass eventually growing up between the pavers.  It should be cute.  Our local home improvement store has these and they have the cement stain, so if we want, we can color the concrete to match the house.  We'll see about that, we haven't really decided if we want to color or not.

We plan on doing a short winding path across the front of the house.  We plan on using this to edge the flower garden (as stated before).  J has warned me not to go overboard on the flowers, so I'm trying to keep it modest.  I bought some little white flowers that will be the ground cover (I can't remember what they're called), some bright heirloom poppies, a mix of oriental lilies (gotta love lilies), some hyacinths (because I love how fragrant they are), and maybe some gladiolas.

I've been watching a lot of PBS's Create as of late, trying to absorb as much home and garden info as possible.  One of the shows were talking about not planting flowers in rows, but in little bunches of color, so that's the plan.  I'll plant the bulbs and seeds in little bunches and fill in with the ground color.

In my mind this is the most fantastic flower garden in the world, we'll see what it looks like once we're done.  I'm sure it will be far from the most fantastic garden.  But anything will increase the curb appeal of our house.  That is one thing that it is lacking.  I'm make sure to post some step by step pictures when we start.  And I'll show you the lack of curb appeal and how wonderful it will be after I work my magic.  Hahahaha, that's funny.     

A Little Here, A Little There

So our list of things around the house seems to be growing, but we just don't seem to be crossing anything off.  I know, I know we were sick for over a month, and J's band had a million shows last month, and I have two large beady projects that need to be finished.  But, I still am a little sad because not a lot has gotten done around the house. 

The weather is finally starting to pick up a bit and the temps are starting to show signs of spring and summer.  We did finally get our butts to the home improvement store and pick up some shovels, rakes, plants, etc, etc.  Hey, we didn't have these things called trees at our last place.  The whole raking leaves thing is a foreign idea to us.  We started cleaning up the yard and planning a little bit of landscaping, but we're trying to hold off on the big projects for a while.  Just to try and save a little money this summer.

I did manage to make it to two different farmers markets, a thrift store, as well as Hobby Lobby (which isn't hard, it's 5 min from our house) this weekend.  I picked up some yummy spicy cheese bread, smoked Gouda, flowers, an old school Betty Crocker Cookbook, some LPs for J's man cave, and some wreath making supplies.

    
I put together this wreath Saturday afternoon.  I wanted something simple, but pretty for the front door.  It's just a grape vine wreath with some faux flowers and some fun bead stems.  The best part was everything was on sale.  This wreath cost me less then $10 to make.  Yeah, that's pretty awesome.  Even J likes it, which I wasn't sure how thrilled he would be with a wreath on the door.  He actually thought I bought it premade, which made me happy, because I guess I might have a little bit of talent for throwing some crap on a wreath and making it presentable.  So we're both happy with it and it sort of hide the hideous door.

I'm also making some progress on our art wall in the living room.  I only plan on adding two or so more picture frames to the mix, but I haven't found any I like (oh damn, I guess I'll have to force myself to go to more thrift stores).  I've started to add a few other things here and there.  The top thing is a rod iron trivet I picked up last month.  The little fleur de lis hook at the bottom I picked up at Hobby Lobby for 50% off this last weekend.  I also have two letters that need to go up there, but I'm having difficulty figuring out how to hang them, so they are sitting on the entertainment center for now. 

This is not the artwork that is going to stay in these.  I just grabbed anything I could find to fill the frames.  We plan on going through our photos and getting them printed in black and white.  But, I want to wait until I get all the frames and mat board before I order pictures.  Hopefully these will be filled with family moments before the end of summer.

We are also planning on building a little side table for this wall to go under the art.  Just a simple design that will match the sofa table we are also going to build.  Then I can put my fun lamp I picked up months ago as well as some of the candle holders I've been hording.  Then hopefully this room will be almost complete.  I can't wait to see it all finished.   

Where Have I Been?

Well I haven't been around much lately, it's been a busy month for us.  And unfortunately we haven't gotten a lot done around the house.  We both been fighting off one monster of a cold.  I think (knock on wood) we might both be over it.  I mean it's only been a month of continuous sickness, what are we complaining about?  Now we can focus on getting our house ready for our house warming party this summer.  WooHoo.

I have some plans to go thrifting with a friend this week.  Hopefully I'll find some little things for the living room wall and maybe a piece of furniture for here and there.  And then there is the task of starting work on the yard.  J has promised to help me with my garden beds in the next couple weeks.  So those should be up and ready for plants by the end of the month.

Some good house news, we got rid of the southwest couch and chair that were on our porch.  A friend came ans snatched them up for their apartment.  They said that free was always the best looking and was happy to have them.  I'm just glad they're gone.

And because I want to leave you with some pretty pictures.  Here are some of the butterflies at the Milwaukee Public Museum.  We went to the Mummies of the World Exhibit for our anniversary (Seven years).      

The little orange butterfly wouldn't stop flying in front of the camera!

I love the butterfly house.  The last time we went there weren't a lot of butterflies, but this time the room was filled.  It was so much fun, even if I discovered I had a slight fear of butterflies.  Don't laugh, they were freaking me out!