More Spring Cleaning!

So last post, I talked with you a little about our garage overhaul this past weekend. As previously stated, the garage was our catch-all for the many home improvement projects we've done this past year. It has definitely seen the worst of everything. Here are the pictures of our clean-up just to prove that it actually happened...

Before:

After:

Messy:

Clean:

I close my eyes when I walk through the garage:

I skip, sing, and cry tears of happiness when I walk through the garage:

We've even accumulated enough home improvement supplies that we have our own mini Home Depot right at our fingertips:

Wow, that was a lot of work....but SO worth it. We also managed to go through all of the junk drawers last night and throw away/ file away/ put away every single item in them. It took almost 2 hours, but I actually know where all the information on our student loans, mortgage, and taxes are now, so I'm breathing a little easier :).

Have a great Wednesday!

The Junk Room is NO MORE!

It's true. I can't believe it, but I decided to tackle the scary room whose door remains closed 99.8% of the time. The room where all things go to die. The room that must not be named...

Until now, we didn't mention the junk room unless it was absolutely necessary, but now I can talk about it without feeling the big ball of stress that usually comes along with it.

New to the blog? Don't know what I'm talking about? Well, let me fill you in with this very pretty image:

As I've mentioned before, I'm usually an over-the-top, obsessive compulsive, clean FREAK...with one exception. Until today, the junk room was my exception, but with a little help from The Black Keys (looooove their newest album) and some determination,  I took it from the disaster above to the image below in about 2 hours:

A little bare and boring...but I'll take it. Oh, and in case you didn't know, this room will eventually be my craft room! I'm tired of making messes for everything crafty that I like to do, so I figured I might as well try this whole craft room thing out now since we have an extra bedroom to spare. :)

Anyway....

Where did all of the ahem, crap that was originally in there go? Well, it was either thrown away or boxed and bagged up for our garage sale that we'll be having in 2 weeks (I think)!

Speaking of the garage, that has been an..."issue" as well. When you're the kind of couple who has a different DIY construction project going on every week, the garage tends to see the worst of the mess. So, in the middle of my crazy-girl-cleaning-frenzy, I also decided that we needed to organize and clean the garage if we wanted to have a garage sale. So, we did--but that's for another post!

Happy Monday! Go clean something, it will make you feel better!!

Our Backyard And Some More

Happy Weekend!!

This week really flew by for both of us....don't you just love it when that happens? Bryan and I are about to head out for date night (we're seeing Limitless, so excited!), but I had to do a quick blog post before we left. Bryan has instructed me that I have 10 minutes to write this, so I'll make it quick.

We finally finished mulching the backyard....well, we're still short one bag of mulch, so I guess we didn't technically finish, but I wanted to post pictures so it's finished for now.

Here is the back corner of the yard when we started out (and a very candid moment of Bryan):

And here it is now. I love the little baby plants and I go outside everyday to look at them! Excuse all the willow branch twigs, I didn't feel like picking them up so this is what you get. I can't wait to document their growth!

Here is the front corner of the yard before:

And here it is now (still being mulched). Exuse the mulch bags in this picture. I suppose I could have waited for it to be done and cleaned up, but I'm just not a very patient person.

We actually still need to add several more plants to both beds....3 Hostas, 3 Snowball flower/bush things, and some more grasses. I know it's not very impressive or showstopping right now, but trust me, in a few months everything will be big and pretty! I plan to give you a garden update every 2 weeks or so.

You may also be wondering "Why the heck did they need HUGE beds in the yard, couldn't they have made them smaller?" Well, no, we couldn't have. Those willow trees make it almost impossible to grow grass back there, so our solution was lots and lots of flowers instead! Now we just need to make grass grow where it's sunny. As you can see, that's still mostly dirt and weeds as well. Unfortunately we have to wait until May to over seed....but the sprinklers are in and we will be good to go once the seed is on the ground.

I can't wait to see everything in the backyard transform to what I know it can be. I hope you are excited too!

And since I'm on a photo editing kick this week (I just learned how to use Photoshop actions), I'll leave you will a few more unedited/edited pictures.

Love them! I hope they don't look too edited. That's one of my pet peeves, so I tried not to do too much....

I have a really pretty picture of Bryan too (he's actually really mad at me in the picture, but he looks serious and very "model" like haha), but I was specifically told not to put it on the blog because he didn't want to be made fun of :).

And on a very random note, I wanted to say "hi and thank you" to all of the new followers I've gotten recently! I don't know any of you personally, but you seem so nice and I'm very flattered that you think my little blog is worth reading :). I always get SO excited when I see that I have a new follower, so thanks!

Have fun this weekend!

I Finally Learned

I think I'm finally beginning to understand how to edit photos in Photoshop! I watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to adjust curves and levels in my images, and ta-da! They look SO much better.

For example...

Before: (I loved this picture to begin with)

After: (but now I love it even more!)

Before:

After:

Yay...and so a new era begins on the blog....edited pictures :).

The Front Yard and Sneak Peeks

Hello! I am a plantaholic.

We are finally done (well, almost done) with the entirely too long process of redoing our yard. After all of the chaos on Friday, we spent all day Saturday re-mulching and planting new flowers in the front yard, as well as the never-ending process of tilling the backyard beds, putting in an electric fence (sorry Louie), and attempting to put in our own version of a sprinkler system so that we don't have to water the beds ourselves. We also bought 1,130 pounds of sandstone to make paths throughout the beds in the backyard. And I laid them in the beds. ALL 1,130 pounds of them. Which probably explains why I'm in pain right now. We are all so sore and we all worked way too hard!

The fruits of my labor:

My mom and I finally made it out to the nursery Saturday night at about 5pm (which was so fun!) but didn't get a chance to plant much of anything in the backyard until it was already pretty dark...and so the work continued for most of Sunday as well.

On Sunday, we planted, watered, killed weeds, planted some more, and complained about how sore we all were. Then my parents had to leave, which I was very sad about!! They were so helpful and we definitely could have never done this all without them. My mom has been such an amazing help and I am so lucky that she is so great with flowers!!

So...here is our yard:

Just kidding!!!!!! Haha, but that is one of the gardens that my mom designed. And they're all full grown plants. The ones in our garden are still little babies, but I am very excited because I think that all of the plants in the picture above are in our garden as well! So it will look like that...eventually.

Here is a real picture of part of the bed in our front yard:

See? They are very small, but I love them and can't wait for them to grow! The biggest ones are called Nantina, and they will get a lot bigger and will have big red leaves on them. The middle row are all Red Rocks, which are pretty, hot pink-reddish flowers, and the front row is full of Verbena--those are violet flowers that apparantly do amazing in West Texas.

Next are the pots on the front porch and in front of the garage. These have Ginger, Impatiens, Petunias, and a couple of others that i can't remember the names of! These will also be huge by the end of the summer.

This is the bed in the very front of our yard where our Redbud tree lives. Up there we have 3 types of flowers that are are great for West Texas weather--Lantana, Verbena, and Knockout Roses. I'm also hoping that the Periwinkles we planted last year will come back up because they were so pretty and they did so well!

You can barely see the Golden Coneflowers in this picture, but they are surrounding the knockout rose in the middle. The full-sized version is actually in the "fake" picture I showed you above. They are huge, yellow, and some of my favorites! We had all of the Knockouts last summer, so they're still dormant from all the cold weather.

There are several other flowers in the frontyard bed, but they are so little that I didn't take pictures....but I will once they start growing!

Since we haven't put the mulch down in the backyard, I decided not to show it to you yet, but I will give you a sneak peak of some of the plants I'm really excited about!

First is the Winter Creeper. There are several of these in the backyard, and I LOVE the colors on them. They will be about 2 feet high when they're full grown. You can also see a knockout rose in the background, we have lots of those too!

This poor little Hydrangea was in our frontyard last year, but it got WAY too much sun so we moved it to one of our shade beds in the back. Hydrangeas are without a doubt my favorite flower! Anyone who's ever seen a full-grown hydrangea plant knows that get huge as well (I guess you get that point by now, everything will get a lot bigger!).

I am obsessed with Hostas...I have no clue why. I just think that are so pretty and full so I was very happy that we planted 15 of these things in the back yard!

Pretty Shasta Daisies....their lacking the daisies right now, but it won't be long before they show up!

More Lantana....can't wait for these to grow!

I'm also obsessed with Lavender. First of all it smells amazing, even these little baby Lavenders smell SO good. But I also really like that they can get to like 4 feet tall and have a very wild look about them. They're actually pictured in the "fake" garden above as well--the big purple ones!

Here are some others that are full grown in my parent's front yard back in Colorado:

I hope our gardens grow to look as great as theirs! Happy Monday!

Between Naps on the Porch

The Yard: Part One

Hellllllooooo...

After a VERY tiring day for every person involved, I am happy (and relieved) to say that we finished making and lining the flowerbeds in the back yard!

The day started at about 1pm and looked a lot like this:

Lots and LOTS of dirt...and not much else. We made the lines for the beds...

 And headed off to the nursery to get some soil. (And we might have gotten distracted by the pretty flowers)

Mom made a new best friend....

And me, dad, and Bryan unloaded 3,000 pounds of soil. Yes. Three THOUSAND. It was every bit as awful as it sounds, but we got it done!

Then we watered and tilled everything, like 5 times.

And stopped for a lemonade break (which was very much needed by about 6pm)

Mom bonded with her new "toy" as she called it--the tiller. Like seriously, she LOVED tilling.

And I spread all 3,000 pounds of soil around the newly lined beds! (signal the Hallelujah Chorus)

Thank goodness that part is over!

We finished the bed on the other side of the yard too, but it was too dark to take pictures by that time so you'll just have to wait!

After a very long, dirty, sweaty, and pretty hot day we made a quick trip to Lujan's to eat a late dinner and now I am so exhausted I can barely type. Hopefully next time I post there will be some pretty flowers in these beds!