Front Garden Update

On Saturday my mom and I had a garden center day! We spent the morning visiting a few local garden centers and then had a lovely lunch. We had such a great time and both of us kept commenting on how nice it was. I love spending time with my mom and now that I have gardens of my own I actually enjoy going to garden centers, something that has long been one of her favorite activities. She managed to do a good job at passing down her love of gardening to both my brother and I because we both love to buy plants and see nice looking gardens!

I picked up five new plants on Saturday and a little garden friend! Since our front garden is in the sun 90% of the day I always try to pick plants that do well in full sun. The plants I picked up were; Russian sage, Iberis in pink ice, a pink azalea, a dwarf butterfly bush in pink micro chip, and a dwarf Alberta spruce. Tim and I had a gift card from his parents for a local nursery Clark Farms so I was able to pick up the azalea and butterfly bush there. I actually picked up the other three at the Walmart garden center and they were all on clearance! I have no problem buying clearance plants and trying to make them work in my garden.

Now for a quick look at the garden...

This was on Saturday evening and you can see the Russian sage and iberis on this side of the garden. I needed to fill that middle area and am hoping that since they are perennials they will come back each year and fill this area nicely. I can foresee adding other plants in here in the future because a garden is never full, but for now I am really loving have a couple of plants to fill the void.

On the left side of the garden you can see the dwarf alberta, the butterfly bush and the azalea lined up nicely here. My mom has the same spruce in her garden and it doesn't get very big at all but adds a bit of green in the wintertime which is exactly what I'm looking for. I love the colors of the butterfly bush and the azalea and know they will get larger in time and I am looking forward to seeing them take up more room in the garden. Also, you can see my little hedgehog friend who I picked up from HomeGoods for only $17! I was looking for a little garden friend and was thrilled when I found him because everything else was too large or too strange looking for me. 

Some closer looks at the new plants. That azalea has the most stunning pink color!

I also checked on our little garden near the road and am happy to report that everything I planted last year came back and the evergreens are still in good condition. I think we might need to limb up the tree though so it looks less like a bush. I am hesitant to do it though because it's been so healthy and I really don't know much about taking care of trees!

Yesterday Tim helped me bring the bird bath around the front and it's now living next to the spruce. It looks a little tall for the area currently, but once the spruce grows a bit and we fill in more areas I think it will look so nice out there.

Next weekend we plan to mulch (it got up in the 90s this weekend and we just couldn't bear to be outside long enough to get it done) and then hopefully the front gardens will be complete for the season. 

As for the backyard? Well, that's a work in process which we hopefully will complete soon too!

Have a great day everybody!

 

Under Bathroom Sink Organization Project

Happy Christmas Week!!

I can't believe it's the week of Christmas- this month has flown by! Today I just want to share a quick organizing project I did recently. Under our bathroom sink has looked like this since we moved in:

A total disaster. I literally would just toss products in here because there was no place for them to stand upright. I had no idea what was in the back and it was just a nightmare trying to find anything.

So I did what I always recommend everyone to do- pull everything out, organize into categories and put everything back in! Remember it always gets worse before it gets better. 

I picked up two new organizing products from The Container Store to help me organize.

The first is the Silver 2 drawer mesh organizer which is a reasonably priced container at $25. I feel like sometimes organizing products can get a little ridiculous, but $25 doesn't seem bad for the amount of products it holds!

The second product is the iDesign Linus Deep Turntable  which I think is another reasonable product, the large one I got is $19. I decided to use this to store all my cleaning supplies.

The only other product I used was a basket that I bought at Target years ago. Everything fit back in the cupboard neatly and having just a few places to corral products truly made a huge difference! 

It's definitely not "pinterest worthy" but not every organization project has to be about that. Most of the time you simply need to be able to organize in order to make your life easier! Every day I benefit from this project and I'm so glad I finally completed it!

Guys, I have so many projects (organizing/cleaning/redecorating/renovating) that I want to complete in the near future, so make sure you stick around!!

Have a great day!!

 

Our Fence is Complete!!!

 Yesterday was a very special day around here.... our backyard fence is complete!!!

If you've been following along you know that the privacy fence has been up for a few weeks (read more here) but we hadn't fenced up the back part yet. Saturday was a beautiful day so Tim and I headed outside to start attaching the wire fencing to the posts. We ended up getting about half of it done on Saturday and then finished up on Sunday. Guys, it was so overdue. I felt so much relief when it was finally done. We can finally let her run around with just her collar on and no leash trailing behind her. We can finally leave her in the backyard and run back inside to use the bathroom if she's not ready to come in yet. It is a huge relief and I wish we had done it a year ago!!

I have plans to plant some shrubs on the sides of the privacy fence so you will be unable to see the wire fencing from the street. I plan on allowing the woods to grow as close to the fence as it can. I really want it to fill in so I will be encouraging any natural growth that happens.

Wow, my husband is really the best husband around! He pushed through to get this project done for me! (Well for Sophie....)

Once Tim got the hang of hooking the fence up it seemed to go pretty quickly. 

On day two we started on the opposite side of the yard and then used a third roll of fencing to connect the two.

Now, you may be curious how Sophie is reacting. She doesn't seem to notice there is a fence....

Or maybe she has noticed but she just doesn't care. She's a happy girl running around the fenced in yard and she  doesn't seem to care that she's trapped. 

Our yard is pretty big but pretty much full of dirt. Hopefully next year we will get grass but honestly it bothers Tim more than it bothers me. In the above picture you can see our fire pit which next year will be surrounded by rocks and Adirondack chairs. (Side note- if you want Adirondack chairs apparently you have to buy them early in the season- there were none left come July this past summer!!!)

You'll also notice that the posts are taller than the fence which was not intended. However, I think it will work out because I want to put solar lights on all the posts. We have lights on the back of our house but they don't reach all the way to the back of the yard which I would like to have lit up so Sophie isn't afraid to venture all the way back there. If you have any suggestions for solar lights please let me know!!

Isn't this picture adorable?! The only time she seems to care about the fence is when someone is on the other side and we don't intend on hanging out in the woods much, so it should be just fine :)

Phew. Another BIG project done!!!

Have a great day everybody!!!

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!!!

How We Make a 960 sq ft House Work For Us.....And Why It Won't Work Forever

Just over a year ago we moved into our first home! 

Buying your first home is the most exciting feeling, especially when you've been renting an apartment for the previous four years. We were thrilled to finally own our home and be putting money every month towards something that was all ours. We were thrilled to finally have more space and a yard. Everything about it was thrilling, from the time we made our offer to the day we officially moved in I was off the wall excited. 

Don't get me wrong I still love all of those things about our home. I love that we own it, I love that it's bigger than our apartment, I love that we have a yard... but it's not as much space as I initially thought it would be. The day we moved in and I realized that some of the rooms were much smaller then I pictured I was a little disappointed. Which is so sad I know. When we were shoving our bedroom furniture into the largest of the three bedrooms and I realized what little room we had to walk around I was frustrated because I was so sure that buying a home would be the answer to the space problems we always had in our apartment. News flash: it wasn't the answer!

Today I want to share some ways we are making our 960 sq ft house work for us. We've had to get a little creative around here! Then I want to share why it's not going to work for us forever...and what we are going to do about it. Before we get started though I want to say that I am so grateful for the home we have, I don't take it for granted. We are lucky that we are in the position to be able to own our home and a lot of my issues come from seeing huge custom built houses on Instagram, so please take this post with a grain of salt. That being said, here we go!

How we are making our 960 sq ft house work for us

- We are getting creative with food storage

If you haven't heard yet, we don't have a pantry. It makes food storage a little more difficult but we are doing a few things to help. 

1. We installed a behind the door unit that fits on the back of our basement door. The basement door is right next to our kitchen so it allows us to store things like canned goods, oils, etc without having to take up precious cabinet space.
2. We only use one double cabinet for food storage. We pretty much only keep items in here that are open. So open bags of chips, open jars of peanut butter, bread, or any sort of snack items in here.
3. We installed three shelves at the top of our basement stairs. These hold overflow items and other closed containers of items. There's a lot of rice, pasta, and other boxed items on these shelves. 
4. We utilize our home office to hold any overflow drinks that don't fit in our fridge. This includes soda and bottled water. 

- We use multiple closets for our clothes

My husband has a lot of clothes. I personally think the amount of clothes I have is pretty average but my husband has more then the average guy. (At least in my opinion)

Right now all of his hanging clothes currently live in our bedroom closet. All my hanging clothes currently live in the guest room closet. I recently moved all of Tim's sweatshirts to live with our jackets in the coat closet by the front door. I am constantly rearranging items trying to find the best system.

- I am constantly decluttering

I love to organize and declutter, I think it was just something I was born loving to do. I find myself constantly donating items and looking for junk to toss. For example the other day I moved some items around in our home office and I found myself testing all the pens and highlighters to see if any no longer worked. By constantly looking through items and getting rid of things that we don't want or need I am consistently opening up space in our home.

- We dream up and complete projects 

Any projects we do bring our house closer to being our dream home. Also, every project we complete makes the resale value of our home go up. We got a great deal on our home and know we will make a profit on it if/when we decide to sell. Doing projects makes this house more appealing to us and everyone else. Win all around!

- We are embracing the crazy

We know things won't be like this forever. Some day (hopefully) we will have more space then we know what to do with. We are doing our best to enjoy this chapter of life and feel very at home with our current house.

....and why it won't work forever....

We know this house, the way it is right now is not our dream "forever" home. We didn't purchase it thinking it was our forever home, it was simply a starter home. We live in a coastal town in Rhode Island where the taxes are much lower then the surrounding towns and buying a house in this particular town was our top priority. The neighborhood we bought in was one very familiar to me, one of my best friends grew up just down the street from our current house and her parents still live there today!  It seemed like a perfect situation for us but we've learned a lot since moving in.

Despite having a basement for storage we are very lacking in space. I can think of a ton of rooms that I would like in a future home (whether that be adding them on here or moving to a different house) including; a pantry, laundry room, master bedroom/bathroom/closet, mudroom, garage, dining room.  Not having these rooms make simple things difficult. Not having a dining room means it's pretty much impossible to entertain. We can have a few friends over but we don't have a place for everyone to sit and eat which is frustrating. Without a mudroom we walk directly into either our kitchen or living room meaning there is dirt all over the floor constantly and it's a constant battle to get coats and shoes put away in the closet. 

If we have kids we will be giving up our guest room which is fine since we don't ever have guests but the bigger issue is I will no longer have my own closet. We will somehow need to move all of my hanging clothes back into the closet that Tim has filled in our bedroom. If we have more than one kid, I don't know where we would put them. In the same room together? Give up our home office that I currently work in every day? 

The bigger question is what our future plans are and I honestly don't have an answer for you! I am not sure if we will plan to add onto this house or if we will build/buy a new house in the future. I am personally on team build a new house but that is because I'm spoiled and want to plan the whole thing out and make it perfect for us. I also would love to have more land and have our house more hidden from the road. Right now everyone can see if we are home and see if we are in the front yard. I always dreamed of living in a neighborhood but honestly I think I would prefer living on a back road with more land. I like to spend time hanging around the house and would personally prefer a lot more privacy then we currently have.

I also am hopeful that we will have kids and would love to have a second floor with a playroom for them to enjoy. 

I could sit here and make a wish list of everything I hope we have in a future home but the main point is that we will end up doing something in the future, I'm just not sure which way it will go. For now we will just make improvements that work for us now but will also work for resale if we decide to go that route.

Tell me about your home! Is it your forever home? What is the square footage? Do you ever feel like you need more space?

My Slightly Organized Kitchen Drawers and Cupboards

Hi everyone! Today I am sharing my "slightly organized" kitchen drawers and cupboards. I am labeling this "slightly organized: because BOY do we have far to go. This is a starting point and I truly hope that one day my drawers and cupboards will be Home Edit worthy but for now at least we know where to find everything!

For now we just have random organizers inside the drawers but I definitely want to create a more uniform look in the future but will be buying items slowly since buying a ton of product does get super pricey. Also, I feel like we filled up this kitchen super fast! We have been in this house for one whole year at this point and when we moved here I felt like we had so much room and now I could use some more space! My mom keeps telling me that everyone feels this way about their home, that there's never enough space but I know our house is on the smaller side so we will have to figure that out one day!

Anyways, let's take a look at what's going on in those kitchen drawers and cupboards and what my plans are for this kitchen in the future.

Here are my first two kitchen drawers. These hold all of our silverware and other kitchen utensils. The silverware organizer is just a cheap one that we picked up from Target back when we first moved into our apartment years ago and it works just fine but I would love one that is lighter and brighter. Also, our silverware is only a few years old but I can see it starting to tarnish. I need to either figure out how to fix that or purchase some new silverware at some point. Anyways let's take a closer look at each of these drawers.

Keep in mind too that our dishwasher was running at this point so some items are missing. I would like to get a slim container to hold all of our chip clips which all just get placed on the side of the silverware. In the back behind the silverware we also need a small container that can hold all the random items that get shoved back there. 

This drawer is full of organizers but also full of a ton of stuff! Tim and I need to go through this drawer together and decide if there are items we can get rid of. When I went through it by myself I identified a lot of items I could get rid of but I never want to get rid of things without checking with Tim since he is the true cook of the house. 

We also have a ton of coozies but I can't bring myself to get rid of some since they came from events we went to. I definitely need to declutter though. After watching Get Organized with The Home Edit on Netflix I feel ashamed that my kitchen doesn't look as pretty as they make others look!

This is our double cabinet that holds some of our food. The rest of our food is on the back of our basement door and on the shelves at the top of our basement stairs. I purged a ton of items in this cabinet right before this picture was taken. We also needed to grocery shop so there isn't a ton in here but honestly I prefer it that way!

This is our appliance cabinet, along with our cutting boards and grilling tools. We have quite a bit and I don't love the look of appliances on the countertops so it's nice that we are able to store them down in this cabinet. 

This is our notorious junk drawer. I don't love the concept of junk drawers, but there is definitely a need to store these types of items. These containers slide around in the drawer and drive me crazy. I need to purchase some museum putty to hold them in place. Add that to the "to buy" list.

This cabinet holds all our Tupperware on the top and our bowls and plates on the bottom two shelves. I love our fiestaware dishes. This is one of the cabinets I feel pretty okay about and there's not much I can do to make it any different!

Our island has two pull out drawers which are great for our pots and pans. I like the way that the top drawer looks with our colanders, pots, and glass trays. It is definitely nice and neat which I appreciate.

The second drawer however.....I'm not sure what to do here. There isn't enough room here for any organizer and we probably have too many pans. Right now it's just a lot of stacking and unstacking items but some day I will find a solution for it!

Also in the island we have three smaller drawers. The top holds some of Sophie's items. We keep smaller treats and some other items in here. 

I am a dish towel hoarder. This drawer is full of dish towels and there are a few molds for dog treats inside there as well. I am not allowed to buy any more dish towels! I always find such cute ones and can't help myself. 

This drawer holds our cling wrap, aluminum wrap, and all our ziplock bags. Honestly we don't use these items all the time so it's nice to have them in a bottom drawer where we don't need to reach for them constantly.

Our corner cabinet holds all of our glasses and mugs. We have far too many for only two humans living in the house. The top shelf looks slightly empty but that's because we had a few in the dishwasher, it is honestly normally full. We definitely don't need anything else in this cabinet!

This next cabinet holds random dishes, measuring cups and mixing bowls. I am in and out of here whenever I'm cooking for the mixing bowls and measuring cups but I honestly don't use any of our serving dishes very often. I love the Disney dishes my college roommate Megan gave us for our wedding but we haven't had much of a chance to use them yet!

Above our microwave we have all our spices. This is fairly organized although I would love to make this look more uniform in the future. I also want to make new labels and have bigger spice jars. 

This little drawer next to our stove just holds our oven mitts. 

We have this little cupboard next to the stove with a super small cabinet door. I just keep a few appliances in here including the blender I use daily.

Above our refrigerator I keep items we don't access every day. Vases are on the left and then on the right we have a ton of water bottles and cups that we received from different events. We could probably go through this cabinet and get rid of quite a bit but that will be a future project.

Lastly, under the kitchen sink! I decluttered this area before taking this picture but I do need to order some products to make this area look a bit nicer. I also plan to put some liner down to brighten this area up. I am thinking about getting some lazy susans for the cleaning products and some containers to hold things like trash bags and sponges. 

So that's a tour of my slightly organized kitchen. I hope that some day my kitchen will be as beautiful as The Home Edit makes kitchens look! I will definitely keep you updated on any updates I make and I plan to get started soon!

Have a great day everyone!