Side Yard and Rain

We have been working on 'refreshing' the house since June 2008.  The inside is done and we have only the small side yard to do.  It is not that big, but has been an thorn in our sides for a long time.  Here is a pic before we started any work.

This is the area next to the house,  the next pic is looking towards the back fence.



 

As you can see it was a mess.  Storage and left over bricks and such.  So..... We bought a roto tiller!  When we first moved here in 1988 places wouldn't rent them to us because our ground is so rocky!

Here is a pic of DH roto tilling!  Amazing!

Here is the after, nice loose dirt!  We are thinking of building a floating deck here.

This area will have 2 raised beds next to the fence and against the house a small garden with shade plants.

Problem is we keep getting a little rain, so we work a little and then wait for it to dry out.  We don't have rain gutters, on the list, so it gets real mucky and sticky right after it rains.



This weekend we built the raised beds, tied the sprinklers into them and leveled them and put down weed fabric last night!  This morning I was going to start moving some dirt around adding some to the raised beds so I could mix with compost and such.  But, alas, it rained again.

Here is a pic of the finished raised beds.  DH was finishing leveling off the dirt.
Here is a pic from this morning.  Mucky mess.  Yes we know we have to add more dirt by the gate, but we have been working on the raised beds.  Two steps forward, one step back.

So here is hoping for dry days ahead.

Toodles,

Laura

Touches of Black!

Well my touches of black arrived and I told you I would show you all. So here it is!

Before - notice small bathroom, not much elbow room!

After - Added a little black and a little sense of vintage!

Years ago I would have never thought of black as a neutral!  It was when we did our kitchen 5 years ago and got stainless applicanes with touches of black that I started to see the light.  Then 2 years ago we redid the stairs with wrought iron, and I loved black.

I found these cute toile handtowels at Target last week.  They just add to my touches of black! 

I didn't tell DH I was doing this, and changing a toilet seat is easy peasy!  

I will have to look for the pic of my black/white toile with eyelash trim chandy shades.  Lurve them!

Have a great weekend.

Laura

A simple solution

See this cord/chain?  I hate it, have since I put it up

I always meant to paint the cord brown like the chain, but it never happened.  So yesterday it hit me!  A cord cover, couldn't be that hard, right?  And I already had some black/white toile.  So....

I measured the length of the cord, only 7 ", so doubled plus, took a one inch seam and added velcro dots, (all I had on hand.)

So much better.

Lurve it!  Borrowing a phrase from Thrifty Decor Chick!

 
This is in my powder room downstairs.  I talked about redoing it here.  Now I am adding a few touches of black!  I will post about the new addition when it comes in!  Excited to see it!


Have a great Easter Weekend.

Toodles,

Laura