Low Maintenance Landscaping

    I've discovered that as much as I really love a good garden, I'm not so great at keeping plants alive. This realization is pretty disheartening for me because I would love to be able to plant all kinds of wonderful things and have them flourish around me, but that is not going to happen - at least not until I take some sort of gardening class or something. Everything I've tried so far has failed pretty hard, so I decided to try a new approach.
    Our backyard has two flowerbeds outlined with pavers right next to the patio. This area was overgrown with grass and ferns when we moved in, so we removed those and just had empty flowerbeds until about a week ago. I knew I needed to plant something that required little to no care, especially in the backyard where I don't spend a lot of time. I saw a post on Pinterest recently about using newspaper as weed block instead of buying the annoying sheets of that stuff, so I figured I'd give that a whirl and then top it with rocks instead of dirt and mulch.

 First we sucked up the existing mulch with the Shop Vac to be used in the front landscaping later. Waste not, want not. :)

Here are the two beds with newspaper.

    In case you're wondering, the stairs were taken down because we wanted to remove one step in the hopes that it would keep the chickens off the patio for good. I'll keep you posted on how that works out for us.

    After the newspaper was put down, we placed a one foot square paver in the middle of each flower bed. This is where the planter will sit on each side. We borrowed pieces of the monstrous, never-dies-no-matter-what-they-do-to-it aloe plant that has been growing at my in-laws house forever. I really hope these don't die on me. Then I would know for sure that I've got the black thumb of death. Anyway, we put one aloe in each planter and we were done! How's that for low-maintenance?

Change of Plans

So...you know how the last couple of post stated that the hall bathroom was our next project? Well, not so much. I guess I need to back up and explain our backyard plans before I tell you what our actual next project is. Our plans for the backyard include a lot of things that I will probably get into more in a later post. I'll just give a brief outline for now. We want to replace the fence because the existing one is a bit flimsy and already has a few chunks missing. It is also not all the way to the property line so we want to move it in order to gain a bit more yard (even though it will make our yard sort of trapazoid-shaped rather than rectangular.) We also need to find a good way to fully enclose the yard before we get a dog. This will probably happen at the same time as the fence replacement, so that is a big have-to-save-up-for-it project. We also eventually want to furnish our patio and build a porch railing around it. We would like to have a small vegetable and fruit garden and a storage/shop building some day as well.

I didn't think we would really even get into the backyard projects until after we tackled a good bit of the interior, but Alton wanted to go ahead and get the ball rolling on one project in particular. These guys:

Photo from here: http://crunchydomesticgoddess.com/2008/11/22/moving-on-to-the-chicken-crusade/

Yes, we are going to get chickens. We decided that having free, fresh eggs would be nice and after looking into them a bit more we found out that even a small number of chickens can effectively eliminate the bugs and small critters from your yard. (In Louisiana, the mosquitoes are the number two reason not to go outside in the summer. Number one is that it feels like a sauna.) So it seems like a good plan to us. We are going to get another backyard project finished in conjunction with the arrival of the girls, and that is to put a railing around the patio. We don't want them to get up there and leave any "gifts".

We plan to name the girls Scooter, RZR (pronounced Razor), and Rickshaw McGraw. Our cat's name is Vespa so we decided that when we get a dog we will name it Harley to continue the vehicle theme. I wanted the chickens to be included so we named them after various types of vehicles as well. This is the RZR for those who are unfamiliar:

Photo from here: http://www.polarisindustries.com/en-us/ATV-RANGER/2011/RANGER-RZR-Side-By-Side-Vehicles/Pages/Overview.aspx

Alton wants one, apparently. RZR was the name he came up with and was very excited about it, as you can see from the notebook page where we brainstormed for names:

We originally wanted to name them after bicycle brand names to fit our pet name theme, but I liked Rickshaw McGraw too much and then Alton came up with RZR and the rest is history.
So there you have it. Chickens.

Master bath inspiration

There is an endless list of small projects that we will be tackling pretty much constantly such as replacing cabinet knobs, painting, etc. However, I wanted to share the few big projects (and by "big", I mean "expensive") that we plan to take on in the future.

The first big project we want to tackle is closing in the backyard. Our house is on a corner lot with the front facing one street and the driveway on the other. Because of this, you have to walk across our carport to get to the backyard. Alton wants to get a dog as soon as we can (another big project in itself, but not home-related.) So we need to figure out the best way to fully fence in the yard, including going across the driveway.

The second big project we plan to do is to transform the ginormously hugegantic triangular bathtub in the master bathroom into a ginormously hugegantic walk-in shower. The master bath currently has no shower and we are not really bath people, so if we are only going to have one or the other, we would prefer a shower over a tub. We could put in a nice tub/shower combo but hey, where's the fun in that?

If you know me, you know that as soon as the words "bathroom renovation" were mentioned, my imagination was going crazy trying to picture what I wanted. I ultimately decided that as the master bathroom, this space should be a calm spa-like retreat and I've pulled together some inspiration photos to share with you.

I'm really loving white cabinets with marble tops.

This one has a more modern feel with the glass tile in the shower. I like that they did a pattern with the shower tile. I think stripes would look good if they were done in the same color scheme, but alternating between marble and glass.

I'm pretty intrigued by this herringbone pattern. It's always interesting when tile is layed in a way that isn't just a grid pattern.

I'm thinking of going with some sort of small tile on the floor of the shower. Either something like this photo or...

A light-colored pebble mosaic. Very zen.

So that's what I'm thinking for the master bath re-do. Of course, it won't be happening for a while, but a girl can dream, right?

Photos found here:
http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/designer-bathrooms
http://www.decorpad.com/photo.htm?photoId=5893
http://www.zimbio.com/Bathroom+Ideas/articles/1/Great+Bathroom+Ideas
http://thegoodsdesign.blogspot.com/2008/08/when-youre-in-bathroom-european.html