Feeling Green

I have been missing the bright colours in our old house lately.... I miss our old bright green walls in the living room and our bright yellow kitchen. Don't get me wrong I LOVE our new house and I love the colours in the new house but its missing that POP of colour!  I have plans for the inside of the house to bring that POP into every room but I just need to find the time.  SO on the weekend I opted to bring that bright pop of colour to our front porch!!! 

We had this black Ikea planter from the last house and it has been hanging on our front porch for a few weeks.  I decided it was time for a change!!!

We found this old metal bucket in the shed when we moved in and Ryan wanted to pitch it (the bottom is just about rusted out). I thought HEY that would look GREAT on the front porch as a planter if we paint it and put plastic lining on the bottom of it. 

I hummed and haaaed about the colour I wanted and finally opted for a nice key lime Rustoleum outdoor spray paint!!!! Here is planter #1 after one coat of paint (the sun was making it difficult to get the true colour of the paint... it looks more yellow here)

And planter #2 after the first coat!

And after 2 coats of paint here they are on the front porch!! I LOVE the look of them . I love the contrast of black and green! Now I just need to fill them with pretty flowers!! 

This made me smile this morning on my way to work!  A nice bright green welcome to my day!

Next step, fill them with dirt and flowers AND get a new welcome mat that matches better!!  I like our mat for the fall/winter but it isn't bright enough for summer!

 

Using What You've Got

It was nice and sunny yesterday... not exactly warm but sunny.  Ryan and I had been debating what to do with our front garden.  The problem with it was that it was about half a foot higher than everything else so when it rained all the dirt ran onto the front walkway and the driveway and ended up being tracked into the house. First we debated getting rid of the garden altogether... but it has really nice perennials in it that I didn't want to retransplant.  Then we thought lets frame the garden in.... but with what??  Thats when we remembered that we had a huge pile of rocks behind the big tree in our backyard. I have no idea where they came from but its was a big ugly pile that we wanted to get rid of anyway. Thats when we realized we could redo the front for FREE!!!! 

This is our front garden before.

So using Norah's wagon we brought many loads of rocks around front and started digging away the dirt a bit to set the rocks in place.  After about an hour we had managed to make it this far and were LOVING IT!

And about an hour later we had this pretty little garden!

Now I loved it but I knew I wanted mulch in the front to help keep it moist and to try to keep away some weeds if possible!  Luckily Canadian Tire had a sale on the black mulch for about $4 a bag, so we picked up 5 bags of mulch for just over $20!  And mulched the front garden!

Then our tree was looking a little bit sad...

So we put rocks around it and mulched it as well!!

It was looking MUCH BETTER!

BUT we couldn't stop there! We decided to mulch and put rock on either side of the front steps to tie it in as well!

And there we have it! Our $20 front yard makeover!  Norah was VERY helpful... she took all of the black mulch OUT of the garden one piece at a time!! :-)

Our Weekend!

This weekend was a slightly relaxing weekend where we decided to do not much on the house! Its nice to take a break every once in awhile to just chill out.  Saturday we had my parents and my one brother and sister in law over for brunch.  My sister in law is 9 months pregnant so I was calling it the 'Labour Inducing BBQ'.  I told her we would get her gardening and squatting and that baby was bound to come out.  WELL IT WORKED!!!! As of Sunday night I'M AN AUNT!!!!  I would like to introduce little Henry Joseph!!! HE IS SOOOOOOO ADORABLE!! 

 Ok I may be beaming a little bit much in this photo but ohhhhh he is the cutest!!!!!!  I'm SOOOO happy for my brother and sister in law!!!  Good work you too!! HAAHAA!

Little Henry made an appearance Sunday night, but Sunday during the day Ryan and I were temporary parents of 3 girls!! We were watching our friends kids for a few hours and had a lot of fun! We did some arts and crafts aka painting pine cones!! (always fun). We coloured. We went to the park and fed the ducks and had lots of fun!!  Norah LOVES playing with these girls.

Overall it was a great weekend!!! Now I just have to make it through the week.... I have a few projects I want to get done this week... hopefully I can post them soon.

Stain or paint???

I finally got around to recovering all of our dining room chairs and I couldn't be happier!!!  I had previously mentioned that 3 of our chairs are different than the others but only slightly.  Below you can compare the 2 types of chairs, one is ever so slightly taller with a different back rest. But only when they are side by side can you actually tell. 

So this is the dining room as it stands today!

The table needs to be refinished this summer and the chairs do as well.  I'm now in the debate whether I should restain the table and paint the chairs a creamy white or just restain everything....

 

I love the look of white chairs with a dark table I'm just not sure if I'd LOVE it in my dining room.... I found these photos at http://www.livecreatingyourself.com/2009/09/kitchen-table-redo-dark-table-light.html and love the look. I just love the light airy feel to the white chairs!

I think creamy white chairs would look amazing and would bring out the green/blue in the chair pads but before I paint over wood I always have to think long and hard about it! What do you think??

Yes Ryan popped into this picture to say hello!