home sweet home

well hey there, stranger. it's been 4 months and 17 days since i last blogged! yup - basically forever!

yeesh.

of course - i keep telling myself that home ownership is the perfect excuse. a 98 year old house presents a never-ending to do list. wade has been a champ! however ... friends/family keep telling me that i now have EVEN more reason TO blog. even more design on a dime, even more DIYs, even more life lessons ... even more need to vent! true true. but blogging again has presented me with major anxiety. ha. where do i even start!?!

we've been busy busy in the yard this spring!
so today - i'm sharing our front yard projects thus far + a few items on our wishlist:

 

here's what we've been doing instead of blogging:

• we added gutters on the porch. clarification: after countless hours of research, we decided to go w/ 6" 1/2 round white gutters. 1/2 rounds are a little more expensive but true to era for our home. (we are saving to gutter the rest of the house next year.)
• after a spontaneous trip to the flea market - we ... okay honestly ... wade completely dug up and replanted the 4 rosebushes, 5 crepe myrtles and 6 boxwoods that the former homeowners had planted prior to selling the house. i sketched and directed the process. ;-). then we added*:
• 5 irish junipers for height
• 3 virginia sweetspires bc they are a tennessee native and give a little color
• and an incrediball hydrangea under the dining room window (it boasts of blossoms the size of your head!).
• we also took the dwarfed dogwood tree from the front yard, moved it to the backyard and replaced it with a perfect little dogwood tree.  i'm pretty sure that the original dogwood was hit by a car at some point ... really praying our new little tree is a survivor.
• of course, a ton of new plants means new extended beds. we decided to use pinestraw as mulch. it was super easy lightweight and easy to spread. and the cost vs coverage is ah-mazing. AND where mulch can pull nutrients away from soil (aka don't put woodchips in your compost pile) - pinestraw adds nitrogren to soil which is excellent for hydrangeas and other plants. first time homeowner complaint // will the weeding of my beds ever end!?!
• we purchased, painted and hung a pretty little porch swing. pretty sure there are only 2 beams in our porch ceiling and we have several holes in our ceiling from a faulty studfinder. ha. after much frustration - it's angled a little differently than we had anticipated - but an ultimate favorite place to spend the evenings.
• last but not least, we added some porch decor. (i'll share some closeups soon.)

*PS - why do plants have to take so long to grow into their full potential!?! gah - i need a plant time machine or microwave. stat. 

of course before we wrap up ... let's daydream about curb appeal for a second.  {someday}:

• we're going to brick the front walk. we collected and bricked a patio in the back as practice. and now need to collect some more (and the energy to lay them!). and of course decide on a pattern. in the meantime, i've become obsessed w/ all the bricked walks and patterns in the neighborhood.  

 

 

• the back porch has ceiling fans - and they are going to be amazing w/ tennessee heat! so we definitely have decided that we need ceiling fans on the front porch! :-) and while we're up there - we'll update the tacky ceiling (and cover all those porch swing oops holes) w/ haint blue bead board. 

 

{credit - l: southern living, photo: laurey w. glenn; r: moodboard}

• wade is really really set on moving our house # to the transom window above the front door. and i might have to give on this. it would definitely look cool. (sort of a hard pic to see - but i love this font and use of No. ###)

 

{credit - the foo dog ate my homework} 

of course - {someday, someday, someday} when we have a million katrillion dollars ... 

 

we want extend the house on the left side of the front porch (removing the "2nd front door" behind the swing) to add a 1/2 bath. a house around the corner w/ similar layout recently did this - and we're super jealous.  we lucked out w/ a MONSTER OF A PORCH that would continue to be super big even w/ the addition. and we could use the added bathroom - talk about resale value! 

 

of course, we also dream about adding a master suite in back and bedrooms in the attic. okay okay i'm getting super carried away! ;-) 

 

hope some of you are still around. have missed you, friends.  

so what's on your curb appeal wishlist?