Privacy Fence is Up and Future Garden Ideas!

Friends, the privacy fence is fully installed! No thanks to me, but lots of thanks to my wonderful hubby! Now we just need to figure out how to continue the fence around the backyard with the wire fencing we purchased. Hopefully it's fairly easy and the rest of the process can be completed pretty quickly (fingers crossed).

On Saturday Tim got to work finishing the final two panels for our privacy fence.

Sophie and I watched. We are the best helpers around! 

Sophie has no clue that her freedom is slowly being stripped away from her. She continues to run around the fence and thinks it's a fun game to disappear behind it. Soon she will be trapped in the backyard....poor Sophie! 

Now, you might be looking at this picture thinking the fence looks slanted. Well, it is.

Our lot is sloped on both sides. There is a hill on the side of our house that isn't technically our property and belongs to the people who live behind us (the former owners of this home too) and while that piece of property used to belong to our house, before they sold it to us they split the property in order to allow for a driveway to be put in there someday. It's only 50 feet, which isn't much and they say they have no "master plan" which we are choosing to believe but that explains the slope that we can't really do much about. 

Also, while we are on the subject I am cautiously planning out what we will do if we ever hear that they want to put in a driveway...or if/when we go to sell the house. I am thinking of planting trees/shrubs along our property line to make sure we would still have privacy if they did decide to clear the wooded area.

Nevertheless. I love our new privacy fence. I am so happy we went with the final fencing and love that we now have some privacy in our backyard. It makes it much nicer when I head out there in my pajamas with Sophie in the morning!

Now, let's talk about gardening...because that has been the topic on mind recently!

I picked up these tulip bulbs from the Christmas Tree Shop and decided to plant them in our front garden by the street.

You can see the disturbed mulch area where I've planted them and I hope that it will be a nice beginning to spring. Keep your fingers crossed for me that they take and we see them in March! You can see my tree that the previous owners planted is changing colors, and the evergreens I planted are still doing well. The lavender I planted has gone past, and the annuals are long gone. I'm anxious to see how all of this will do through the winter and am keeping my fingers crossed that the evergreens make it through!

Other than the tulips I don't have any plans for this small garden. I may purchase annuals again next Spring or maybe some new perennials, but I haven't decided yet!

Now, by having the new fence it means I am given the opportunity for new gardens! I am thinking of getting evergreens for this area so there is always something colorful in front of the fence. I might do an arborvitae on the corner where the vinyl fence meets the wire fencing, but I don't want to completely cover the rest of the fence by planting tall evergreens along it. 

I am thinking about mixing some conifers with possibly rose bushes. I can't wait to play around with this area. It is tucked behind a Siberian elm tree the old owners planted so it's a little secret garden area. We aren't having a gate or anything over here so I could really bring the garden out as far as I want it which is dangerous. I need to not go crazy or I will spend all my money on plants.

The picture I just showed you meets up with this one. Along the side of our house in front of fence is a skinny area we dug out and mulched in the summer. I planned originally to just fill this with hostas but Now I'm not sure, I definitely want to include hostas since they do well in our area but I am thinking I might bring in some other plants to enjoy. 

Also, don't judge us for still having our AC in....my husband runs it almost every night and it will certainly be in until November... I just pile on the blankets over here!

Now on the other side of our house we have the vinyl fence with our gate. There is only a tiny sliver of area between the driveway and the fence so I'm not quite sure what we will do here.

It definitely needs something, but it will have to be something that doesn't need a lot of space to spread out. 

However on the back side of the fence I have lots of room to play! You can see my bird bath here as well and my plan is to fill this area with a mix of evergreens and perennials to keep it looking amazing and colorful in the spring and summer but still have enough winter interest in the fall and winter. I also would love to add a bird feeder here and want to add bird feeders and house around the yard. I might be turning into my mom....

On the back side of this fence I am thinking along the same lines as the other side. Evergreens and perennials, maybe some grasses? I need to figure out how to get all these areas filled without spending a million dollars...

I'm not even going to show you the back of the house because although eventually I would also like that to be a garden, right now it's storing extra bricks, fencing, etc... and is a disaster. I couldn't resist sharing this little face though! She was watching me out the window and just looked so sweet!

Any ideas for my new gardens? I might do a post with some inspiration pictures I've found on pinterest...so keep an eye out for that!

 Also, can you believe that two years ago tomorrow was our wedding day?! It's flown by and I am still so in love with my sweet husband! Although two years ago I never imagined being in a global pandemic on our second wedding anniversary, I am happy that through it all I have someone reliable, kind, and amazing to wake up next to every morning! Happy anniversary Tim, I love you!!!

One Year

Guys. It's been ONE year that we've been in our house!!! Can you believe it?! 

One year ago yesterday we started moving in but we actually reached the one year mark of owning our home on September 12th. Let's recap some of the changes that have happened in the last year of home ownership, shall we?

I shared the news that we had officially bought our house and I shared when we moved. 

Our first project (before even moving in) was painting all of the kitchen cabinets.

We brought Sophie home.

We went to Ikea and did a few small projects with Ikea organizers. and purchased some Ikea furniture. We bought some new kitchen appliances from Home Depot.

We decorated for Christmas, bought some new decor, and figured out how to deal with having no pantry.

I made extensive to-do lists for our house interior and the exterior.

I straightened up our office.

We updated our wall decor and bought some cool wall art for our kitchen. 

We installed new blinds- finally some privacy!

I organized some kitchen drawers (check back on Wednesday to see inside all our kitchen drawers and cupboards!)

Some small house updates were made, did some yard work, learned all about gardening, and Tim built a walkway all by himself!

Once that was completed I created some new front gardens. I managed to keep everything alive that I planted! I have been loving having gardens this summer and can't wait to add on next year!

Can you believe we completed all that stuff in our first year here? Tim is currently working on a project right now and I will drop a little teaser picture right here....

Any guesses what we are up to?

Cheers to another year of projects in our first home!

Fire Pit Built By Tim!

 Tim finished a huge section of our fire pit recently! Before I show you what it looks like now, we have to flashback to what it looked like before...

This is the fire pit we inherited when we bought the house. Clearly a DIY half thought out fire pit. It worked but wasn't very pretty looking. Since we had extra pavers after the walkway project Tim got to work building a new fire pit where the old one was. 

We wanted the fire pit to be larger so we could easily fit a pallet on top if we wanted to. Also since they were bricks and not fire pit pavers, it was a bit harder to line them up. (I mean, I didn't do anything...it was ALL Tim...but I did practice lining them up before we actually started and it was difficult).

The pavers Tim used were these ones. They look great and we bought them when they were 25 cents a piece which was a great deal! Tim used Loctite to glue the pavers together. 

We also had crushed gravel left over from the walkway project so really the only cost was the glue to put this together. However we will be adding a steel bottom to the fire pit and adjusting this slightly because after finishing this Tim announced that pavers can explode due to heat. Scary stuff that we didn't realize before starting this project! We will get the steel insert and then surround the fire pit with white rocks. I really wanted to get Adirondack chairs ordered this year but I cannot find the cheap plastic $20 ones anywhere they are all sold out! So for now we will get the fire pit all set up and next spring I will order the Adirondack chairs.

Here is an inspiration picture for what I want it to look like next spring.

Source

Obviously our fire pit won't have expensive Adirondack chairs and it will be brick based instead of huge rocks but I love the white rocks and white chairs. I may go with a different color though, I'm not sure yet!

I just love how it turned out! I'm lucky that Tim is so OCD and is very precise. He really takes pride in these projects and they end up looking so amazing! I know it's not his choice of weekend entertainment but I love when he works on projects around the house. 

So, still quite a bit to do, but this is shaping up to be a great backyard hangout area! I can't wait for some chilly fall nights by the fire pit! 

Do you have a fire pit? Have you ever built a DIY fire pit? I want to know what your backyard looks like, what features does it have?

Mulch, Mulch, Mulch

Good morning and happy Monday!

Today I want to share how we finally finished mulching and now the sides of our house and deck look so much better! We had mulch leftover after we finished the front gardens so Tim suggested we dig out the side of the house so we took a day and got that done!

I shoveled, moved and spread almost seven yards of mulch all by myself. Tim helped with the side of the house but I did all the gardens and around the deck by myself. I am super proud that I did so much on my own and know that this was the most difficult year for getting things done in the yard. Hopefully next year we can mulch the back of the house and maybe do some planting but it will be far less work than what we've done this year!

Here is what the back of our deck looks like now. We need to cut the lattice and hang it up but for now it looks so much nicer with the mulch in! The black crate has Sophie's outdoor toys, if you were wondering!

Here is the side of the deck. Our deck is in super rough shape and we know we will need to redo it at some point soon but that is a project we are putting off for now. Not only is the paint chipping but the whole deck seems to be tilted to one side. I wouldn't walk out there without shoes because it's splinter central. Overall we just need a new deck and have big plans for our house and this area in the future.

Another picture of the back just because it looks nice!

Here is the side of the house. This area will be a garden eventually. I'm thinking of putting hostas here so they stay small and do well in an area that gets both sun and shade. You can get a glimpse of the mess at the back of our house on the side of this picture. We need a shed or maybe a temporary little shed to hold all our outdoor tools. Another project/expense!

Here is the other side of the deck near the bulk head. We mulched this area too since we can't get in here with the mower it is easier if it is just a mulched area. 

Some last looks at the area! I am so happy it looks so much better. 

Project by project we are getting things done! What projects have you been working on lately?