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The past few weekends, I have been working on the yard.

As I get older, I enjoy tinkering in my little plot of land more and more.

Ugh.

I sew, I knit and now I garden...for fun. 

I complain about my arthritis and I'm one of the women that young mothers call for advice in the ward. 

I am so dang old. 

By the time my parents were as old as I am now, I was already grown and on my own. I had children of my own.

 I've never even lived with people in their 40's.

We old folks putter around in the garden and talk to the neighbors about fertilizer and compare garden tools.

My garden has been planted,  a small plot with a lightweight netting on top to try and keep the rodents out. 

I've been working in the front yard a lot, trying to keep it from being the neighborhood eyesore. I pulled out everything that died over the winter and added color. I put in some new flowers, as well as some of the annuals that grew really well last year and I added a trim to my little flower gardens. 

The shells were collected by the Mitchells when they visited last summer. I know they meant to take them back to Arizona, but they forgot and every time we see them- we smile and remember the wonderful week we had together.

The pretty little yellow snapdragons should overtake most of this planter by the end of the summer. They won't make it through the winter, but they will grow and bloom until the first snowfall. They are Romy's favorite, it brings back good memories of time spent with Karin Holmgren, as she taught Roe how to make their little dragon mouths open and snap back into place.

My favorite is the new rose bush.

 It is thriving and I think every home should welcome visitors with roses. 

I put in some raspberry and blueberry bushes near the driveway, I am just hoping that they don't die and establish themselves this year. If the birds and squirrels eat all of the fruit, that's okay. 

Next year, when they come back and are heartier, I'll try to get enough to make at least one batch of jam. 

I also planted some holly along the fence between us and Jacobv and Bronjia. Bless Jacobv's cranky  heart,  but I think a nice hedge will be great. He tried to plant one on his side, however,  his dinosaur poop shaped junipers haven't grown so much as an inch since we moved in. 

When I step back and look at my front yard, I feel happy.

 I've come a long way from my Arizona front yard of rock, oleander and scorpions.  

The stairs look crappy because it was just raining, and our front door has a 'no touch, no talk, no eye contact until he has all four feet on the ground' sign.

 He may still be pooping on the carpet, but other than that- the training is going great. He's such a sweet and smart little dog and I adore him.

Since it's been over a week since I posted a picture of Badger.....

Next up, a post about vitamins, adult diapers and blue hair dye.

Is it spring yet? Is it spring yet? Is it spring yet?

Have I mentioned that I am SICK OF WINTER?

Only 100 times?

Well, I am.

It SNOWED on Saturday and Sunday. 

What kind of witchcraft is that?

Come on Spring...you are so close!

Those evil squirrels totally missed more bulbs than I thought they did. 

We have the promise of about half the tulips I planted, but way more than I thought survived.

It's going to be so pretty.

We found out that we have at least a dozen giant rocks in the back yard when that tree blew over. Now we just need to get them in the front and side yard where I can get my curb appeal on. I never quite figured that out in Utah, but we have an itty bitty front yard here and I'm not so intimidated by it.

I don't remember what we planted here, but it grew in a big cluster. 

Maybe Romy or the squirrels put a bunch of bulbs there.

Any guesses, Blog Readers?

Remember these unfinished chairs I picked up that the thrift store last week?

Well, yesterday I was running errands and the crazy DIY voice in my brain kept nagging me to go back and see what was new at the thrift store. The cool thing about a big thrift store is that the inventory changes every day. Oh sure, there will be some stuff that is there forever, but there is always something new, too. 

There was the cutest bench and I came thisclose to buying it. It was only 25 dollars, and I even have a place for it. I didn't buy it. 

I didn't buy it because it would need to be sanded primed and painted and it would look great, but it would be a real project and I am trying to finish what I start these days and I have this vision for a casual fun dining room arrangement so we can play games with our friends.

As I walked away from the bench, simultaneously trying to talk myself into and out of buying it, 

 I saw two more clean and unfinished wood chairs.

They are a different design, but I had no intention of having the chair match in the first place, I just wanted cohesive. These are the perfect chairs to go with the other two. At 8 dollars each, they were coming home with me and I left the cute bench.

 Now I have four chairs, just waiting for me to love them:

And love them, I am.

The sun came out this morning and as soon as the kids were dropped at school, I threw on my paint shirt and got to work:

I may have also painted the grass blue.

Oops.

That's right folks, Chris Olson is breaking up with tan and black as her signature color scheme. 

Okay, they will go in a  room that is primarily tan and black, but I'm working on it.

 I went so crazy with color in the first real house I owned and realized that there is a big difference between a pop of color and a house that looks like a circus threw up in it. I learned my lesson while painting over my neon orange and green Nickelodeon inspired kid's bathroom when I put the house on the market.

Eight coats of Kilz, folks.

Rainbow chairs are a safer choice.

The total cost for them is less than 50 bucks including the paint. I have some weathering to do on them and then a coat of clear gloss, but with the sun peeking out of the clouds and the tulips peeking out of the Earth, I am excited to have some color peeking out of my dark and boring dining room.

I am already in love with them.

Tomorrow is 25% off day at the thrift store.

 I am sure it will be gone, but I might just pop in and see if the bench is still there....

Not HGTV Worthy

Let me start by saying this is NOT about projects.

If I say it on the blog, that makes it true.

In our last house, we started out with red and black carpets and lavendar walls in the family room.

The kitchen had bright orange formica counters and the main floor carpets were baby poop brown.

It was ghastly.

My favorite neutral color pallete was perfect for the house and made it feel updated and comfortable.

(We sold the Utah house, BTW. I'll post about that later)

One thing I appreciate about this house is that all of the walls have *my* colors.

But they do need some oomph.

I LOVED my accent wall in the Utah house.

I now have a house that has some charming trim and details, but a  the spaces need something more.

This area is driving my designer wanna be brain nuts.

It is too small of a space to have it be a living room and a dining room and I don't want that anyway.

I want it to all be one living room.

It is an open space, but every wall has either a window, a radiator or a doorway and there is no focal point or natural layout for furniture.

I want the focal point to be in the 'dining' half of the room, so it pulls it all together, but every time I start mapping out furniture or plotting decor, I can't seem to find what will work to make it comfortable and modern.

I painted a border on the alcove thing/ wall and planned to do a bold accent wall on the back wall leading to the kitchen, but I'm not so sure. If I make the pattern too busy or bold, I'm hilighting what- the closet door and entry to the kitchen?

That doesn't seem right.

I'm open to suggestions, I'm begging for them, in fact.

I want this narrow room to feel like one living room.

 Eventually we'll buy furniture that fits in this space exactly and move the sofa upstairs, but the light brown chair stays because it has a high sentimental value aspect for me.   The rug will go, as will the DI coffee table for sure.

Ugh.

View from the kitchen side:

  The dark grey stripeI painted.

Wooooo...exciting.

Help.

I took that picture and figured that doing the dishes might help me to get a vision for the space.

It didn't, but I did clean up the mess.

Tomorrow, Matt and I are going to the city, just the two of us.

We plan to visit this place:

http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/

We're also  going to look into getting tickets to take the kids to see this:

Harvey is one of my favorites.

So is Jim Parsons.

I can't believe I live here.

Secret

Today while I was unpacking upstairs I found a hidden room in our house.

We had access to what we believed was just a small crawlspace in the back of a closet upstairs and I removed the panel today to see if there was room there to store some books. I was shocked to find a good sized room hidden away behind the panel.

Okay, the ceilings are low and there are no floorboards, but it's totally a secret room.

And when we do get around to doing projects in this house, we're SO making that access panel a secret bookcase entrance to the secret room.