Yard Work

This past Sunday, while I was playing in the kitchen with my fresh farmer’s market veggies, Mike was working outside on the backyard.

Our dogs have really done a number on our poor backyard.  Since they’re such a high energy breed, they run constantly.  By running constantly, they’ve dug trenches into our small yard where grass refuses to grow.  They also have this annoying habit of digging tiny little holes EVERYWHERE that are just small enough that you can’t see them and big enough that you feel like you might break your ankle if you take a wrong step.

So, Mike decided to do something about it.  Sodding the whole yard would have been thousands of dollars, so we decided on a cheaper option.  We bought topsoil, high traffic grass seed, and peat moss.  Mike mixed it all up and spent all day filling up the holes in our yard.

Yeaaah.  Lots and lots of little holes that Mike filled up.Lots and lots of dirt for the dogs to roll around in.  Hopefully, lots and lots of seeds will sprout too!

Here’s a comparison…on the left, that’s where Mike has laid down dirt and seed.  On the right…where the dogs run so fast, hard and often that grass just won’t grow ;( We’ll have to break it up before we put dirt down there…it’s too dry and hard for seeds to take root.

Zoe:  Why you covering up all my hard work?  I’ll just do it again, you know.

Mike: Sigh…I know.

This is the dismal state of the other side of the yard.  It’s on an incline, so not only does any dirt we put down run off with water, but it’s in the path of the destroyers, aka, our dogs.

Destroyer #1 (Zoe)

Destroyer #2 (Wrigley)

Oh, and did I mention they’re eating the dirt that we’re putting down?  Yeah.  So this will definitely work, right?

Even if it doesn’t, it was a $200 project, and hopefully it won’t hurt the yard’s chances of growing more grass!  Seriously, we just don’t know if it’s possible to fix all of this while we/our dogs still live in the house.  We’ll see.

So while Mike was doing that, I planted some new veggies!

Some of our tomatoes–I planted a lot of fun heirloom varieties this year, so I’m excited to see them!

Our peppers/herbs

and our strawberries.  Usually by midsummer, they’ll branch out enough to cover the entire box!  Unfortunately, last year Destroyer #1 and Destroyer#2 ate them ALL and we only had like, 2 strawberries.  This year will be different though, right guys?

Zoe:  Nope, no different.

Wrigley:  I really don’t think we’ll change.

Me: Oh.  Well…I guess we’ll love you anyway.

Wrigley & Zoe:  We know.

Haha, let’s see how this goes!  Maybe we’ll be super surprised and get a yard full of grass and bellies full of strawberries this year!  Maybe!

Do you have the odds stacked against you for your yard?  Does anyone have dogs who don’t like to destroy all living things?  What’s that like?

(JK, we love our dogs, and while they are definitely better/calmer now than they used to be, they’ll always be extremely high energy dogs.  We signed up for this & love them madly.  They’re just mischievous little devils.  In fact, since I’ve written this and before I posted it, we found Destroyer #1 shoulder deep in a hole she dug. Battle of wills: Begin!)

I Love Lamp(s)

I hated the lamps in our bedroom.

Seriously, they’re older than me.  And what’s up with the crimpy lamp shades?  They were hand-me-downs from my parents, and we were even convinced for almost three years that one of the lamps (the one on Mike’s side of the bed) was broken.  We kept it there for three years without turning it on once because we thought it was broken.  I never thought to investigate into it.

It wasn’t broken, it just needed a new bulb.

Anyway, I was SO ready to toss them.  I wanted epic lamps.  We have a pretty big bed, so I thought epic lamps were in order.

Turns out, epic lamps are epically expensive.  So I was looking on macys.com for new lamps since we still have some $$ on our Macy’s gift cards from our wedding.  I found a lamp that I thought would be just lovely, and it was on the low end of the price-spectrum.

Source, $79.99

But $160 for two lamps took up a big chunk of that Macy’s card, and I’ve been trying to angle for a new purse from Mr. Socks, so I took a look at those old lamps and realized they had somewhat similar qualities to the lamp from Macy’s.  No, they weren’t as tall and elegant, but if they were white, wouldn’t they look kinda similar?

So I went to Home Depot by myself (for some reason, this makes me proud), got a couple of new lampshades and some white semi-gloss spray paint, laid our paint sheets on the floor of the garage, and went to town.

I realize that it looks like I’m about to chuck this at Mike’s  face, but I was really just shaking the can vigorously.

It actually took quite a few more coats than I thought it would.  Maybe it was because some of it was metal and the other part was wood that I didn’t bother sanding down?  Whatevs, I didn’t have the patience for that.

I also sprayed the electrical cord:

(Note to self–wear sneakers for chrissakes when you spray pant.  Seriously, I’m so stupid sometimes)

And after about 4 solid coats, it looked great!

The lamp shades I bought were a different kind than the lamp originally required, so I had to take the lamp “harp” off of the lamp–this piece:

To remove it from a lamp, slide those two cylindrical pieces at the bottom up, then squeeze the harp and pull out.  It should be pretty simple.

Once I removed the harp, I put the lamp shade on (it didn’t fit exactly and wobbles a bit, but the world isn’t perfect) and screwed in the bulb!

Wanna see?

And what’s a renovation without a before/after shot?

Yayy!  It isn’t from the 70′s anymore!  It’s modern and much nicer!  It surprisingly gives off more light than the old lamp shade did–I was expecting less since it’s black, but because the shade is open at the top, more light gets through!

Plus, it just looks SO much better, right?  I can’t believe I waited so long to do something so simple!

Have you waited an unnecessary amount of time to update something that turned out to be the easiest thing ever?

Updating a Hidden Treasure

Remember this?

This was my first and only thrift store find.  I found it when I was 15 years old or so, exactly as-is and never saw a need to change it.

But after redecorating the guest bedroom, I decided I had had enough of the pink matting.  I wanted something cooler.

So this past weekend, I took my little print out of its frame for the first time.  Except it wasn’t an art print as I had originally thought!  It was actually a songbook from the year 1919 with the full song “Mandy” by Irving Berlin inside!  I’ve never discovered something so exciting before, even though it’s not in great condition and it isn’t worth anything, I felt like I had my own little treasure!

I did a little research on the song and of course, YouTube had a version of it!

I was strolling out one evening by the silvery moon
I could hear someone singing a familiar tune
So I stopped awhile to listen
Not a word I wanted to miss
It was just somebody serenading
Something like this

Mandy there’s a minister handy
And it sure would be dandy
If we’d let him make a fee
So don’t you linger
Here’s the ring for your finger
Isn’t it a humdinger
Come along
and let the Wedding chimes
bring happy times
for Mandy and me.

Cool, right?

So anyway, I still wanted to reframe it, so Mom had the wonderful idea to use some pretty paper from Paper Source that I loved!  I had bought a few options:

Ooooh, pretty, right?

I narrowed it down to the paisley and the cherry blossoms, and eventually picked the cherry blossoms.  I don’t know if this is the way others might tackle this project, but here is what I did:

I placed my mat over the paper and cut enough so there would be overlap to fold over the edges.  I cut it a little close with this…you might want to be slightly more liberal.

When I had the paper cut to size on the outside, it was time to cut it to size on the inside.  I used a super scientific measuring system for this…a Japanese book that I thought appropriate for the cherry blossoms.

I cut as straight as I could around the book using my rotary cutter.  It was far from perfect.

At this point, I turned the matting and paper over and cut corner slits so the paper could be folded over.

I folded and cut the excess off so it wouldn’t get too bunchy.

Then I just started folding and gluing using an all-purpose adhesive from Martha Stewart.

All glued!  How did it turn out?

Not too shabby!

How did it look with the songbook?

It’s pretty cool!  I don’t know if I’ll keep it like this forever, but now that I know just how easy of a project this is, I could easily change it up as I see fit!  The whole project took less than 20 minutes and I had fun breaking out the glue and pretty paper.

What do you think?  Would you take on a project like this?