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!!!

New Solar Lights

 You guys, I finally ordered some solar lights to light up our front walkway! OneFrugalChick on Instagram posted a deal for Amazon for these solar lights and I was able to snag them for only $13 a 6-pack! I ended up needing 18 lights total so buying three packs worked out perfectly. Although I wish they were more of a white light instead of yellow I am thrilled with how they look for such a cheap price! I had been previously looking at Walmart for clearances out lights but they still weren't getting clearanced out. I was so happy to find these because I knew I wanted to get some in the garden before summer ends. 

The other night I noticed that the lights were starting to turn on one by one at twilight (ayo Twilight fans) so I headed outside to snap some pictures. You can see that some of the lights haven't turned on yet but I love the gentle glow they give off!

Also, the walkway is looking great! A round of applause for Tim on that one!

I think at this point I was just waiting for two or three lights to turn on. They are just enough to give off light if you are coming up our walkway. I'm picturing pumpkins lining the walkway this fall, leading kids up to the door for Halloween. If there is Halloween this year, who knows at this point!

One more light to go! If you head to my instagram (balancingonmytoes) in my home story I have a little video of walking down the walkway towards the house. You can hear the nighttime sounds that we get here in Rhode Island. I love the sound of summer nights here, it's so peaceful with all the wildlife sounds. I love where I live!

When all the lights were finally on I was so happy! It just looks so nice!

These lights are plastic, not glass. I know that may make them "cheaper" but I personally like that they can get bumped around and knocked over and aren't going to shatter. Mostly I prefer things that aren't too precious.  I worry less about Sophie running around like a bull in a china shop when things aren't breakable.

Look at that precious little face in the window! Also, this just reminds me of how far we've come. There were very few gardens, no walkway, no evergreens. We've come so far in such a short time!

Just ignore my heart eyes over here. I'm a little obsessed.

The design on these lights is so pretty too. Look at the glow it sends across the walkway. 

Okay, that's all for my new solar lights! What sort of outdoor lighting do you have at your house? I would love to add some solar lights in the backyard too, but we are still working on our plans for the backyard so we will see what we end up with back there. Tim recently finished part of a project he's been working on and it looks so good, I cannot wait to share it with you all.

Also, I am going to work on my plans for this front garden for next year....and what other plants and plans I have for the yard next spring. Oh, the projects just keep on coming to me!

DIY House Projects: Creating a Garden and Covering a Well Pump

One garden down, a few more to go!

My mom has always loved to garden and her parents always loved to garden too. So, I come from a line of gardeners and I think I was destined to want to dig in the dirt. But, I have no idea what I'm doing. I thought I would start small with a little area that is in our yard up by the road.

Want to see where this started?

Believe it or not, you are looking at the same view. Crazy right? When we moved in we had this ugly rusted well pipe that was broken and sticking up out of the ground. A couple of months back Tim made a call and we got the pipe itself replaced. It was bight white and while it looked better and not rusted out, I still didn't want to look at a pipe sticking out of the ground like a Mario game.

I decided my best bet was to pick up a fake rock from Amazon and I ended up purchasing this one. Any one else with weird quarantine purchases? A huge fake rock might be the number one strangest item purchased in quarantine...but I'm not trying to start a contest or anything!

So, I dug up the area and got the fake rock set up and this is what our neighbors looked at for a couple of weeks. 

Then, I got my act together and headed to Home Depot to grab some mulch, top soil and a few plants!

I planted what I picked out and realized I needed more mulch and a few more plants so I headed to Walmart to finish up this area.

My little car can't hold too much but I got what I could fit!

I plan to shape out the area a bit more and add some more mulch on the edges to neaten it up, but I'm waiting for a few more garden areas to be dug out to get more mulch. I am so pleased with how it turned out!

I realize that in the future I may need to move some of the shrubs in the future if this tree grows, but I plan to adjust my gardens as needed. There are a few annual flowers in the front, which I plan to dig out at the end of the season and hopefully replace with tulip bulbs in the fall. Hopefully this will make this area come to life early each spring and prevent me from having to buy new flowers each season.

My main focus was to get some perennials in here so I would have to do less work in the future. I also wanted to make sure several of the plants were evergreen. Our gardens contained zero winter interest, meaning that all winter long all I saw was white snow and brown dead trees. I want to have some evergreens to see all year long!

I also planted some perennial flowers and a lilac bush. I hope these will bring some color to the garden. I mostly stuck with coral, white and pink for my colors. I have seen some gardens with a ton of color and some with the focus on only a few colors and I'm still trying to decide exactly what I prefer. 

I think when I do get tulip bulbs I will try to get only pink and white tulips to keep this area fairly color-coded. (See I'm even organizing the plants.....out of control over here!)

My plan is to stay far enough away from the well pump that if they need to dig it up for any reason it won't disturb the larger plants, but if they do it's okay. Nothing that I purchased is super expensive, so if it was dug up in the future that wouldn't be the end of the world. 

I took far too many pictures of this area and I apologize for that, but I was just so darn excited to do this area all by myself!

Up next? Gardens around the walkway, which I hopefully will be able to share with you soon!

I hope it's sunny where you are today! After some intense rain on Saturday, the sun has been shining the rest of this long weekend and I love it!

DIY House Projects: Walkway Progress

After an unintentional week off, I'm back! Guys, this is the beginning of week 9 of me working from home. I can't believe that I've actually been working from home all this time, I never imagined. I did assume I would get so much done if I worked from home each day but I never thought I wouldn't be able to walk outside without a dog attached to me. Leaving her inside means barking, yelping and pawing at the windows so unfortunately if Tim isn't home I'm not able to get outside to get any outside work done. On the weekends Tim has been working on the walkway so I wanted to share the progress with you guys today!

Please note that I am not able to help Tim with this project because he is a perfectionist and I have no patience. If I did the walkway it would come out much less perfect because I wouldn't be taking the time to make things perfect. Lucky for me with this perfectionist husband of mine it will look perfect :)

Tim spent this past Saturday getting all the stakes in and measuring out where the walkway should line up. He wanted to make sure that the walkway sloped away from the house so we won't get any water pooling near the house. 

That perfectionist hubby of mine spent so much time leveling everything out and making sure all his measurements were perfect. I would've probably just said that it looks good and been done with it, which is why I'm not helping :)

Once everything was all lined up it was time to fill in the gravel!

Sophie and I supervised the process. Tim was seriously kicking butt this past weekend!

Progress with the gravel!

We borrowed the tool seen above from my parents and it really packs everything in. See the difference between the left side and the right side?

This was almost the end point!

After all the gravel is in then Tim will lay the pavers and use sand to keep them in place. I am so excited we are getting to the end point of this walkway project and I'm sure that Tim is ecstatic as well but he's also probably wondering what is next for him :)

Sophie is checking out what her dad is doing! Also this is why I have to keep her on a leash while we are doing anything because she will stick her face right in whatever you are doing, making a project like this difficult!

But it doesn't stop her from watching like a true fan!

Now are you ready for what the walkway looks like as of today?

....

The crushed gravel is in!! 

Guys. I'm pretty sure the next time I update you it will be completed! I will be sharing before and after pictures of how this changes our front yard, I'm so excited!

Once the walkway is complete, I plan on making the front garden surround them. If you look at the picture above I am going to pull the garden all the way up to the walkway and plan on getting boxwoods to line the walkway on both sides. The garden that you can see in the back I plan to wrap all the way around the walkway. I also want to get solar lights for the sides of the walkway.

I can just picture mini pumpkins lining the walkway during fall :)

So those are the plans! Do you have any ideas that I haven't mentioned? I would love to hear them!

Paint Touchups

It is a really rainy Monday around here today! We are supposed to have rain and strong winds that could potentially cause a 72 hour power outage so that should really add some interest to this whole quarantine thing! If I don't show up on Wednesday you'll know why :)

Today I'm just sharing a quick project that made our kitchen look a little more put together!

In the kitchen, under our microwave there was a strip that wasn't painted. This is left over from when we moved our cabinets and microwave up a bit and hadn't been touched up since. 

It just looked dirty and gross and needed a quick touchup.

I not only had this gross area to touch up (luckily the previous owners left us all the paint that was used- the whole house was repainted right before we moved in), I also wanted to touch up the baseboard where Sophie chewed up a storm.

After I sanded the area, Sophie was very interested in the area again but luckily she wasn't biting the area anymore, just sniffing.

I want to point out that the floor is dirty from the sanding and I didn't vacuum up till after taking pictures so you'll have to ignore my dirty floor!

Now it's not perfect but it's painted and blends in much nicer now! I also had to paint the baseboard opposite of it where she had bitten the baseboard but not nearly as much as the other one.

All painted!

And here is the area below the microwave...

So much better! My painting isn't amazing or anything but as long as it blends in that works for me! Also it's driving me nuts that the dishtowels are uneven in this picture. I will show you why I was distracted during this time....

Someone is a paint sniffer :)

This girl makes me laugh so much and keeps us on our toes every day!

Have a great day everyone!