Someone Lives in My House!

First of all, it is 11/11/11 and I am posting this at 11:11am.  By the way, this is officially the best day (and minute) ever because 11 is my favorite number.  Who cares that it was a full moon last night and my students are nutso?  Anyway...

I will be the first to admit:  I'm not much in a garden.  I'm not much of an "outside your house" decorator.  I wish I could do better... maybe next spring and summer.  But it occurred to me the other day as I was driving up to my house on my way home from work that someone could literally walk by my house and assume that it was abandoned.  There is absolutely not one personal "thing" outside our home that would make a passerby assume that someone lived there.  I hope to eventually put a bench or some rocking chairs on the front porch with a tiny end table so I can sit out there in the summer and drink my morning coffee.  Wouldn't that be nice?  But for now I was on a tight budget.  So I thought a wreath would be appropriate.  I love wreaths.  Outside only.  And I would love to have a collection of wreaths that I can swap with seasons/moods.  This is officially Wreath #1 Post.

I was inspired on Pinterest by a bunch of felt rosette wreaths like this one:

and this one:

And believe it or not, I did it! And it cost me less than $6.  I bought one grapevine wreath and 5 pieces of felt, spent about one hour on the floor with scissors and a hot glue gun and I came up with this:

It's so easy.  Cut out a circle of any size.  I chose a few different sizes.  Cut a spiral from the outside and keep going until you get to the middle.

Simply roll it up from the outside in.  Glue it at the end and glue it to the wreath.  It's that easy.  And now it looks like someone lives here:

I love it.  Even Josh loves it.  And he usually thinks that my DIY/craft projects turn out like kindergarten art.  And now it looks like someone lives here.  And I am on my way to having a multitude of wreaths that I can switch out whenever I want.  By the way, did you notice the porch "ceiling"?  Look, it's beautiful:

Beautiful hardwood!  It's awesome and we love to look at it.  We want to stain it next spring. It needs to be kept up so it will stay nice.  Happy weekend!

Here's The Mail, It Never Fails

...finish that song!

In addition to getting a sunburn today, one of my projects was the jungle that was our mailbox:

There was an enormous giant plant growing from beneath it.  You could barely see the numbers on the side.  To top it off, the name on the mailbox was from TWO owners ago!  Not us, not the people we bought it from, but the people who built the home!

So, obviously it needed a "haircut".

I pulled the plant out.  That took about 35 minutes.  Then I realized that if I didn't dig the roots out that it would probably come back.  Ugh.  I literally spent the next two hours digging every last root from ground.  I also discovered that if I dig 4-5 inches down I hit pure sand.  I knew our soil was supposed to be sandy and all on the shore, but geez I didn't know it was all pure sand below the surface!  I ended up with about 40 pounds of roots, weeds, and dirt.  After all of the digging was done, I was left with beautiful loose soil on top. Then, I planted two new flowers that I got from Lowe's.  I bought yellowish Chrysanthemums.  Mainly because they were cheap.  But also because they are perennials and they can stand the sun all day long.  And also because I love that book by Kevin Henkes:

  

Have you read it?  If not, you definitely should.  It's an excellent children's book.  Anway, after I planted the flowers I added a layer of brown mulch.  Last but not least, I scraped the letters off the front and spray painted the mailbox after sanding the rust away.  Here is the mailbox before:

 And the finished product:

Before:

And after:

Not too bad, huh?

My First Attempt at Working in the Garden

Yikes.  It was scary beforehand.  Here is what it looked like in the front of our house just a few short days ago:

eww.

It was supposed to look pretty...

...but it doesn't.

...it's very overgrown...

...and is full of fungus.

 So, I gave Josh a list of stuff to get at the hardware store that looked like this:  Get stuff for the garden.

Yep, I had no idea what I was doing.

I took these things (big scissors, shears, trimmers???  WHAT DO YOU CALL THEM?) and trimmed up the overgrown bushes to make them look more circular.

Doesn't look too bad...

...but they are all different sizes still.  At least they aren't overgrown.

Now that my back hurts like h*ll...

This mess presented itself... 

...and after removing all this... 

...it turned into this.

After a few more HOURS of weeding, trimming, and not really knowing what I was doing, here is the final product:

Still not too pleased with the overall look of our front garden...

...but it's definitely an improvement.

Next year, after some research, I plan to take out most of the flowers in the front garden that I don't like and replace them with stuff I do like.  I also want to make the bushes smaller, re-mulch, and make it look more spiffy in general.

I also took some hydrangeas from our bushes and brought fresh flowers inside!

 Now....

...what to do with all of this?