Baby Steps

While we were building up the funds to purchase patio railing materials, we made a few small changes around the yard and house, so I figured I would share those changes.

First, we just happened to glance at the price of new doorstops while at Home Depot a few weeks ago. They were around $1.75 or so. We thought about buying some because our current ones were (like all the other hardware in the house) brassy gold. Except the ones in the bathroom. Those were...rust colored. Ew. Anyway, we needed to run by the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store later that day, so we held off on buying the ones at Home Depot just in case they had some at the Re-Store. To our delight, they not only had new shiny silver doorstops, but they were only $0.30 a pop! So we now have all new shiny doorstops for only a few bucks. Woo!

Next, we decided that we wanted to get rid of the jellybean shaped flowerbed in the corner of the front yard and replace it with the weeping willow tree from the backyard. We haven't transplanted the tree yet, but we did pull up the concrete pavers that were outlining the jellybean bed and put down a circle of bricks to go around the tree, which matches the brick circles around the four Bradford Pear trees in the front yard. We're on the corner, so there are two in front of the house and two on the side. The jellybean bed was in the corner.

We also still need to get as much of that extra mulch up as possible and plant some grass seeds in the old jellybean shape.

Lastly, we decided that our old living room light fixture (from our old apartment, which weirdly didn't have any overhead lighting) would look best over my laptopping/reading chair in my craft room, so we hung that up. Here are some photos of that.

 Before

After

We still have lots to do in there. Soon, actually, because I volunteered to show it off in a studio tour hosted by the local art league. Gulp. If a bunch of strangers coming to view your space isn't motivation to get it finished, I don't know what is...

And in closing, here are some photos of flowers that recently bloomed in the yard:

 I pruned this rosebush back A LOT recently. I'm pretty sure I got rid of more of it than I kept, but it looks a lot less wild and mangy now.

I got four of these hanging baskets and four kinds of flower seeds to put on the existing hooks on the fence in the backyard. I'll post more photos when (and if) they bloom.