More planting.

Another $240 at City Floral got us 3 new house plants, a hanging basket for the back yard and some tulips for the front. Not to mention a couple of really nice ceramic pots for the house plants.

We also took time today (it was 79º!) to plant the rest of the front yard and pot up some of the herbs in the back. Here's the updated photo of the front yard:



For a closer look:

The Gerber Daisies are in.


Ground cover is in (I'm told it will fill in like crazy) around the two trees and the border of the front landscaping.





And we've put two sets of tulips on each side of the steps.


We'll see how it all shapes up through the summer! And you can see for yourself if you come for a visit.

Shrubbery! (And more.)

One of our dissatisfactions has been the front of the house - whatever landscaping might have been there before was either dead - or had been abducted by aliens. And because the house is so tall and narrow, not having ANYTHING on the ground in front looks a bit weird.

So after we got the sprinkler system up and working (took a bit of trying, but it seems to be programmed right - we'll find out tomorrow night at 10pm when the front lawn is supposed to kick on) we went to City Floral and dropped $148 on some outside stuff.

Here's the progress so far:



To show you what we've done (it's not a lot yet) I'll break it down into 3 parts:

First, you'll notice 3 Emerald 'n Gold Euonymus bushes in front of the house. These will grow to no more than 3' wide x 4' tall and should fill out the background of the house well. The little purple flowers in the front were there already, as was any other miscellaneous foliage you see.


Second, we added two solar powered walkway lights (in brushed aluminum) to the front (there are 4 more in the back).


Last, we bought a lovely hanging plant - I don't recall what this is, but it smells wonderful. (You can also see our milk delivery cooler in the background).


We'll be planting the Gerber Daisy's and some ground cover out front next weekend - more pics to come, of course. We also have the makings of a nice herb garden for the back - just have to figure out what we're planting where (and how). It will probably be in pots for easy access from the kitchen.

The Saga of the New Kitchen

It's a little odd to move into a new house - that's less than 4 years old - and want to gut a piece of it, but that's exactly what we're in the process of doing. Don't get me wrong, we love the house. We love the space. Had we built it, we would have just put more money into kitchen and bathrooms. The previous owners put more into window coverings, paint and an optional breezeway (which we love). But I digress.

This is a shot of the current kitchen as seen from the back of the dining room.



Yes, there is a lot of crap everywhere - we just moved, give me a break. And there isn't really anything WRONG with it. It's just not "us."

Our issues:

• The cabinets are very basic oak.
• They're 30" cabinets (we have 9' ceilings) so there is a lot of wasted space.
• Some of the doors open in a direction we find counter-intuitive.
• The shelves on the bottom cabinets are HALF shelves. Utterly useless.
• The countertops are formica.
• With as much cooking as Brian does, we want a solid surface counter top that can take heat, cutting, etc.
• The appliances, though nice, were all white.
• Only the dishwasher on the right and the micro-hood remain. The rest have been removed. We have new stainless versions of those, but they're in boxes waiting for the remodel.
• The pantry looks like a hall closet.

We've met with Home Depot and ended up with Kraftmaid cabinets with all kinds of goodies. Gotta jet for a moment, so I'll update on the NEW kitchen in another post tomorrow.