Lush Green Weekends

I am so happy it's the weekend. After this past week it's really nice to have two whole days off to spend with the family and to enjoy the beautiful Florida weather. Even though it's supposed to be cloudy and dreary all day, that isn't going to stop us from enjoying our Saturday.

One of my favorite things is the early morning. Especially today, it's overcast outside yet the sun still shines some light through the thin clouds and bit of fog.

It rained pretty hard yesterday/last night and after a good rain it's like new life is brought through to everything. Everything is greener and brighter after a hard rain. Love it.

It's like living in a rain forest with how lush and green everything is around our yard. One of my fav. spots is this back corner. It's quiet and the tree's are abundant back here. Lot's of green and all those little white 'dots' on the ground along the fence line are while little flower petals from all the dogwood tree's that line the fence. It smells gorgeous!

Bright green moss grows all along the base of our large oak tree's.

These little flowers are everywhere throughout the yard. Im not sure what they are but if you do, do tell! Some grow in groups of 2-3 where as others grow in large patches, like in the photo. Their small purple little things with large bits of green leaves that look like tall thick grass. Even if they are a weed, their a pretty weed :0)

Well I hope you all have a fantastic weekend friends! :)

Psssst... Linking up with Lindsay-

Tranquility in all shapes and colors

This weekend I was busy taking in the sunshine. The beauty and the warmth of the sun. Lately I have been on this kick of seriously wanting to take a vacation. Although I would love to go to Bora Bora... Josh and I are not made of money, so that trip is out of the question right now. We have agreed to go on a Cruise though, possibly in August :-D

So in the mean time we will have to settle with our home state of Florida and our very own backyard. This weekend we went out and bought some serious foliage for the backb patio. Just to kind of liven it up a bit and make it feel like we [are] on vacation, right in our very own backyard.

First up before heading to Lowe's, we stopped for lunch at one of the eateries on the Harbor.

Jayden enjoyed the 2 old-guy duo singing songs by Jimmy Buffet and Eric Clapton [they were actually really good if I must say so myself!].

The Harbor is pretty nice. This is the view from the dock, where the back deck to the various restaurants and shops are. We come here often... they have some of the best food around.

Each passing boat made my want to go right out and get a boat myself ha!

So after we came back from our days outing, we started to assemble the various plants we bought. And now our back patio is a world of difference with color, texture and tranquility.

A little lounging in the pool...

Listening to some relaxing music to put my mind on a tropical secluded beach..... We have a recipe for a fantastic weekend.

How about you? Any vacations planned this year? Where is your favorite place to vacation to?

One weed at a time - Part II

I'm back after a week of me not being at my computer [booo]. This time for another installment of some serious outdoor landscape stuffs. There is one corner of our yard, to the right of the patio, by the road, that I really like but has bugged me. Could never really put my finger on it [or get off my butt and do something about it... meh], but there was just something bothering me about that corner.

Here is the specific corner I am talking about. See? It has tons of potential but it's just so -blah-

Of course I decided to take photos after I raked up all the debris [geeez]. But you can still see the total blah factor of this space.

Pool and doggy view.

Well after a few hours of some serious back - breaking labor, we cleaned up this little area to get it ready for some ideas we have brewing for what we want this specific corner to look like.

I keep saying we but who am I kidding... I totally mean ME... Well Josh will concur but he was busy trying to start the wall-area for the doors to go up on the 'garage' [turning our carport into a 2-car garage].

The day, luckily, got a lot nicer. The clouds went away and the sun came out... which I guess being in Florida that can be a good thing or a bad thing. Anyways here is what we have now.

I know it probly doesn't look like much but trust me. I have massive blisters on my fingers to prove it [and to think I even wore gloves!].

There were a lot more weeds and vines in this area than meets the eye and of course I had to dig up -once again- more random gravel [seriously... this is getting old]. I also transplanted some bushes that were out in the middle, over to the corner with the larger tree you see in the photo [which btw is a Plum tree :) ]

So what's the plan stan?

To give it a curve-y bed style with fresh mulch and lots of pretty and colorful flowers. I think once it's all said and done it will really liven that area up. Even though that part of the yard has lots of sand and almost no grass what so ever, I think the new flower bed will help out a lot... at least until we get some grass planted over around that area.

-If your wondering what that little 'storage' part is in the landscape photo. That is the little shed/house that the pool pump is currently residing in. You don't see it in any of the photos because I purposely stood out of the way. Seriously... it looks trashy and that thing is next on our list to get a 'make-over'. 

So that's what we've been up to today. I've been sick so it's been really nice to finally get out and get some fresh air. Hope you-all are having a wonderful weekend!

One weed at a time

I'm back! [Has it really been a week already?]. Well things around here have gotten back to normal pretty quick after the break in. Although that night was a little creepy and neither Josh or I could sleep. Every little creek the house made as it settled or the A/C kicking on and off just woke me right up. We still do not have a T.V or Xbox yet [waiting to give some more info to the Police on how much it cost us for the glass to get replaced in the door, once they have that info we can get a copy of the police report and fax it to our insurance company]. SO.. for now we have been huddled around an old 17-inch TV.. okay maybe not huddled but you know what I mean. [Is it weird that I think it's kinda fun that we have been watching TV on an old, very small screen? lol].

So this weekend we decided to start working on the backyard. It has been so nice out all weekend we just couldn't be cooped up inside the house.

The previous owners, for some strange reason, had different areas of the yard that were nothing but dirt and lots of rocks. These areas were bare with the exception of some funky weeds. Our main mission this weekend was to dig up as much of that dirt and gravel as possible so we could throw some grass seed down.

Here is another one of the patches. Pretty huh?

Along the back side of the pool, there isn't any gravel however they had put down large amounts of red mulch. This entire back areas is not level at all and when I say large amounts of red mulch... I mean large amounts, especially depth wise. Since moving in last year we have taken out the two large 80's style brick pillars that were towards both ends of the pool [they used to have lights on the top of them. Ugly lights]. And just last weekend we ripped up the 3 small palm tree's that were also back here. Trust me... I would have kept them because hello... their palms and we do live in Florida, but we had a few -below freezing- days this past Winter and needless to say they were pretty much gone, so they had to go.

Side note- This Summer, we hope to transform this back area into another patio. Laying some pavers down, complete with lounge chairs and a fire pit [cannot wait!].

And here is the view standing at the deep end of the pool looking towards the entire backyard. You see where those two chairs are? The two that are closer to the pool edge? Well there are some paver stones we laid down there last summer. Josh's mom laid a few extra we had laying around and they stuck out farther than the rest of them and with my OCD of even-ness, I had to remove those pavers to keep the rest of them looking even.

So I removed the large pavers that were sticking out in a straight line. Dug up the weeds and random sprouts of grass.... tilled the dirt and put grass seed down.

While I was doing that, Josh was leveling out the first large patch of dirt [it had a big hump in it] and tilling the dirt. Than we laid some seed down, hooked the sprinkler up and now we watch and wait.

And at our weekend-ly trip to Lowes, I picked up two ferns to hang out on the two pillars of the patio. They really helped in alleviating some of the boring-ness that's been going on back here.

All in all we have had a pretty productive weekend. We still have the other large patch towards the end of the house to till [we already dug the gravel up] and than we have to work on the large gravel patch the opposite side of the patio. Slowly but surely we are crossing off the projects on the list! :)

So... How have YOU all been this past week?

I'm just so Glad

This weekend consisted of a lot of back breaking work. I know a few posts ago I talked about how we spent a weekend raking up leaves and piling them into yard bags... Well my friends that was just the backyard. Our frontyard still needed some attention and this weekend was it. And on the bright side? We inspired our neighbor. I haven't seen that man touch his yard in the past year, but I guess he saw us out there Saturday morning trimming bushes and raking leaves right over on our side yard [where theirs meets ours] and he was out there Sunday morning raking, trimming and doing all kinds of yard work :)

Anyways another project that I did this weekend was work on the small section of space between the fence and the driveway.

That little space used to be filled with monkey grass when we moved in, but last year Josh's mom started ripping it out [why?... I may never know...] and so I followed suit. It stayed bare for pretty much all Summer. After spraying it with weed and grass killer, the monkey grass stayed at bay for the most part, with the exception of a few sprouts here and there. The photo you see was taken right before I got to work on it Sunday morning. Littered with leaves and you can see my pots from last Summer all lined up and my extremely large and extremely dried out Mum from September [lol].

And there it is all cleaned up. I know... your wondering what the big deal is. I raked some leaves... big whoop. BUT what's underneath the ground is the 'big deal', well at least to me anyways.

Source

Some Asiatic Lilies and....

Source

Some Gladiolus. All in all about 34 bulbs. I'm not only excited to see them start sprouting but im also excited because this is the first time ive actually taken a spaced, gotten it ready and than planted lots of bulbs. Mostly ive always been the 'Go to Lowes and buy a pack of annuals and throw them in a ceramic pot' kind of girl, but this Summer I really want to just plant all kinds of flowers. I just love them, their so pretty and looking at them makes [me] happy :)

As for my pots? Their cleaned up and ready to go... Although I can't remember what they had in them and which ones had [nothing] in them. I guess I will have to wait and see what pops up! 

How bout you? Have you done any Spring planting yet? Also... how is the weather in your neck of the woods? Is it starting to feel like Spring?

Let there be Light

Because we sure needed it. Our front porch light that is... I feel badly that I do not have a before photo for you but honestly it was frightening. Scary and just overall disgusting. We have a very small little 'porch' [if that's what you would call it?] at our front door and since we have done quite a bit of work sprucing up the front of the house [new flower beds, pressure washing, re-did the fence, new house numbers - which are hidden due to my own privacy blog laws, im sure you understand ;) ... and a boat load of other things here and there]. We decided that we needed a new light fixture. The one that was there before was [in all seriousness] a rusted metal plate with a light bulb attached to it. There was no fancy glass fixture, no sparkly pendant... nothing.

So we headed to Lowe's to check out their selection of outdoor lighting. We decided that we wanted something that would hang a bit so you could see it from the street. They had a nice selection of hanging pendant lights and the colors to choose from were white, black or a more 'rustic' brownish color. We decided with black. We thought of the white, however between the white trim and white door, it would have clashed. I didn't want our front entry way to look like the color white threw up on everything [as much as I love white... to much of it can be a bad thing].

We bought our light and headed home. I honestly never knew Josh knew anything about electrical... I don't even think hew knew. He just went with it. He did a good job though :)

As you can see... the nasty outline from the rusted metal plate that was there before. Complete with cobwebs.

And there she is in all her glory. Lighting the way for the many guests that we have come a knockin' on our front door [ya right].

Here is the front around the month of May-June. Just a few small changes and it has come a long way.

Here is the front as of now [well this past weekend to be more technical]. Can you see what other change we have made?? Im not going to give it away but let's just say the roof is looking a lot more 'cleaner'.

Our house right before we closed, back in February.

And today. Im really happy with how far our home has come. Of course now that Fall [yipee] is right around the corner, everything will go 'dormant' and the front won't be as 'colorful', however I am confident that with the few minor changes here and there and a few added fall/holiday accents, the house will continue to look warm and inviting.