Landscaping Weekend Project

This past weekend, we postponed a trip to see my family in Virginia because both girls started showing signs of a cold.  I wasn't feeling the best on Friday either.  We are all well, but the weather was perfect for some outside work.  I didn't feel like doing much inside...
Greg and I had talked about what we would do with the landscaping and the bottom line is that a large portion just needs to be removed.  It's overgrown and has been unkept for at least a year. 
HINT: to built up your man, buy him a chainsaw.

This is just the beginning and it's just one side, but it's a start...
Before:

This is the view from the front door.

View from the lower driveway toward front door
21 "burning bushes here....21!
AND
10 boxwoods flanking the Japanese maple.

view from lower driveway toward the back garage

view of one REALLY tired guy after cutting down lots of bushes and shrubs...

AFTER: view from lower drive toward front door
That is a non-flowering ligustrum to the bottom right of the window. 
There were 3 and we decided to keep 1.
The row at the right is a project for a different day. 
NO, I don't like all the ground cover....I'm not 100% sure what to do with it b/c it will need some due to the slope.



AFTER: lower driveway toward back garage

Don't judge the job too harshly...we have a semi-clean mess that took 2 days!  I was seriously thinking we'd find a snake den in all those bushes.  It was crazy!  AND there is still so much more to take out.  We do plan to add some color and crossing our fingers the trees will come back healthy.  They were WAY too tall for their variety and caused some clogging in the gutters and were dropping leaves in the AC unit.  Any ideas on flowers/flowering shrubs?  (please don't say knock out roses...we have a ton of those already....future post.) 

 

Dining room update.  The painting is finished, but I'm still unsure about decorating it...so I'm hesitant to add any pics just yet.  AND it needs curtains. 

 
Have a blessed week!
jmh





The Foyer Reveal

I LOVE the foyer.  OK, confession...I'm not 100% done, but I think I'm about 85% done and I can't stand it any longer.  The jury service is not over :-/, but it will be Friday and during the days (weekend mostly) that I don't sit in the courtroom, I'm painting!  The foyer ceiling trim was very time consuming as I was up and down the 10 foot ladder several times, moving the drop cloths, moving the ladder and trying not to spill the paint! AND making sure I didn't fall, but turned out beautifully.  Here's my 3 4 future plans to complete the foyer:

• paint the front door chocolate brown
• add an accent chair and houseplant
• remove/replace the folding doors
• remove/replace the light fixture!!!

Please give me your feedback on the chocolate brown door and the folding door replacement.  I'm thinking a solid French door that's painted to match the front door.  What do YOU think??



Before:

After:

The accent chair will go to the left and what kind of houseplant is robust for one
who doesn't have a green thumb??

 

Your comments and critique are welcome!  Thanks for any input!

 

P.S.  The Dining Room is next!  I have finished painting it!!!

 

jmh

Jury service.

Back in September I received a summons for jury duty.  I quickly wrote a letter asking for a postponement because we had just started homeschooling and I didn't have anyone to help with the girls.  They replied and gave me a new date of May 14th, 2013.  Little did we know that our house would actually sell this time and we would be moving into a new home smack in the middle of trying to wrap up our first year of homeschooling.  We had about 8 days left after closing.  We took off a week to move and then the letter came that my jury service was still May 14th.  I showed up at 9am and by 10:30am, I was listening to opening arguments.  I had been selected.  We finished by lunch the following morning followed by "call the number on the back of your jury ID to see if you need to report tomorrow."  I knew this was an easy, no brainier answer that we would not be needed since we had just heard a case.  There were plenty of other people in the jury pool.  Nope.  After jury selection of 10am to 3pm, I was yet again not chosen to leave.  By 3:30ish, we were listening to opening arguments.  I'm sitting there today thinking...."is this seriously happening again?!"  So all this to say the foyer is almost done!! But progress came to a screeching halt Monday night.  For 2 weeks I'm on call for jury service....a service that should I ever need, I would want to have.  So, I'm doing my duty and hanging in there.  Just a little sad that I can't give a grand picture of my finished foyer :-(

The Foyer and a mouse

The Foyer:
I couldn't wait another minute.  I had to get some paint on the wall somewhere in this house! I really want foyer to be like several of the pins I have seen on Pinterest.  I just have it in my mind to be a certain way!  I had already picked out the color and had it mixed before we even closed last week.  So late yesterday afternoon, I began...dragging out the haul it takes to paint a wall.  
Here is the before and you'll have to wait a day or so for the after....then I'm going to need some decorating ideas for the large wall opposite the coat closet.

The fabulous chandelier (insert sarcasm) will have to hang there a little longer and so will the folding doors to the closet....that's another entry on another paycheck. 

A mouse:
Sometimes bedtime for the girls can be up and down out of beds and in and out of rooms.  Kind of like the Walton's except they want to say "Good Night" in person. Lights were out and TV off somewhere around 10:15pm.  (Don't judge me, we just moved and yesterday was a long day!  They don't really have a set bedtime right now....or ever I guess.)  At somewhere around 11pm, I heard what I thought was one of them getting up....Again!  I was in spank mode, but when I reached their room....it wasn't them.  It was Felix the cat!  Ok, I was then in spank mode for him!  He gets very playful late at night, but usually around 8:30 and he typically under the girls' bed asleep when they are.  The home school room is fairly put together and he was in there in and out and jumping and really ticking me off.  Until....I saw a ginormous roach.  Well, I thought it had to be a large insect of some sort because it was basically mach1 across the carpet under desks around a box.  No wonder Felix was freaking out.  This was the most fun he's had in a very long time!  To envision our house set up...At the end of a long hallway, there is a master suite, but just before that there is a suite for the girls.  Two bedrooms and a bathroom with it's own tiny hallway.  One of those bedrooms serves as a home school room for now and the girls share a room.  They have always slept together anyway....so that works for us.  Stay with me.  The critter left the room and Felix was hot on it's trail when I realized that it was a mouse.  Holy...bananas.  "GREG!"  Ok, the girls are asleep and I'm in their hallway, whisper shrieking.  That mouse is now under the bunk beds and Felix is in the girls' room chasing that thing all over the place.  There are still 3 boxes in there yet to be unpacked.  Greg hadn't seen the mouse yet, but he starts moving stuff to the middle of the room so the mouse can't get behind anything.  He moved something and quickly located it.  He jumped and I am not kidding you, it took everything in me not to just hee-haw laugh out loud.  I didn't want to wake the girls.  He asked me to run and get a broom.  I did.  Not sure what he's going to do with a broom, but ok.  He is sweeping around the girls room and says something like, "ok, shut all the doors in the hallway and I'm going to sweep it your direction.  You ok with that?" Um....NO, I'm not ok with that!  But, I shut all the doors and he swept it my way, Felix close by and that stinker when straight under the door into the main hallway.  Frickitydoda.  (That's my twitter name, BTW....just for instances like this.)  We closed off the girls' suite and I saw the mouse in the corner of the hallway just outside the master.  Great.  I know where this is going and so do you and it did.  That fool critter is now under my dresser.  I am just hysterical in a whisper voice, with an occasional yelp that I truly can not hold back.  Greg is in front of the dresser with a broom holding it sort of like "little John" in the river holding the stick in Kevin Costner's RobinHood....sideways.  Whatever.  Felix is beside himself and decides he's going after the mouse under the dresser, but he can't fit under there so I guess his paw shoos the mouse out.  Greg jumps like he's just been lit up with a taser gun and I am....on the bed.  The mouse goes into our bathroom.  Greg yells for me to get a box.  So, I get a box.  (Keep in mind that every time Felix gets his paws and eventually teeth on this little guy, he tossed him in the air and thinks this is a fun game we are having here at....11:30pm while the kids are finally asleep.) Felix has the mouse cornered under the counter, I get a box and he literally chases it straight into the box.  Who is the hero?  Greg or Felix?  I don't know, but the teamwork caught the mouse.  What to do with the mouse?  He's perfectly fine.  Seeing Light bulb moment:  The recycling truck comes tomorrow and all of our empty boxes are out by the curb for pickup.  I told Greg to take the box and mouse to the curb to be picked up with all the other boxes.  The trash people can have the mouse.  So at almost midnight, the mouse is hiked to the curb for trash pickup.  I am laughing so hard I can hardly breathe. 

Enjoy your day...
Jana