Friday, May 8, 2009

House as is

So, we have been in for two weeks now, I can't believe it has been that long (well, we moved in two weeks ago Saturday, but still).  Most things are settled in, the kitchen is unpacked, the bedroom is [mostly] unpacked, and we have piles of storage hanging out in the bonus room.  And this week we managed to clean out the garage and park our cars in there!  Which was exciting because it has been since last AUGUST since I was able to do that.  And I missed it terribly!
You can see that the bar has become a place to hold junk [for a lack of better word] but that will NOT be the case!  I am determined to keep it spotless.
And in our dining room, that mirror needs to be hung on the wall, and I have to find candles and stuff like that.  

We have since moved the dog kennel into a spare bedroom.  
This is just a peek at what it looks like with furniture.  I will eventually take beautifully staged, fake photos to post!  And don't worry, the projects arent over.  We are working on the backsplash this weekend and apparently Brad has plans for a built in entertainment center (that we are to build!) We will see how that goes!

Monday, May 4, 2009

The grass is greener...

In my yard.  Or at least it is now after all the rain!
We moved into the house a week ago Saturday.  Everything is in, but not necessarily in its place.  This past weekend we had rain.  But not just any rain – torrential, can see to drive rain all day Saturday.  So, we thought that would be a great time to head to Home Depot to get some plants!  OK, truth is, in order to close on the house, it has to be appraised and in order to do that, the yard must be landscaped.  So it had to be done, rain or shine (literally).
Here is the finished product:

We have one flower bed in front of the garage, another that wraps the other corner and a large one out in the front.  We used brown metal edging from Lowe's, a double hammered hard wood mulch (that we got by the truckload! from a nursery just up the road from us.  The mulch was cheap, $30.00 for what they call a 'yard,' which is enough to fill up the back of a truck bed.  But the plants were WAY overpriced.  i.e. the hosta's I picked up at Lowe's for $4 each were $32 each there! And they were even the same size.) and most of our plants came from Home Depot  – not that we don't love Lowe's but now HD is closer!
I adore these spiral topiary trees!  The green pops against the rock and they have an elegant look that I really love.  

Here, we had to put a bed of river rocks against the house to help with drainage.  Another 'swirly' tree, hostas and some evergreens.

We used a lot of azelea's, mostly because they were only $3 each!

The purple grass-like plant is called cordaline, but we just call it purple grass (clever, I know).  The tree is a Japanese maple.  We both really like the red/purple ones, but that variety is a bit more expensive and we wanted a more mature (read taller) tree in this spot, so we chose this one instead.  I like it.  The tips of some of the leaves are reddish, and will probably turn that color in the fall.  Also, both of our neighbors have the purple Japanese maples, so this makes ours different.