Front Porch Spruce Up Part 1

Our home has a covered walkway up to the porch which is also entirely covered. While I love our big porch it's kind of dark, especially with a dark door. We repainted our house last spring to a greyish-blue (although it looks more blue in the pics) and the porch area needed a spruce up.

I like everything here but I wasn't liking the colors. I want all the colors to coordinate with the house color and be a more cohesive.
Here's a before pic of the whole porch.

The bench I've had for many years and is still in good shape but the finish wasn't. The table is a little metal table I got about 4 years ago and I like it the way it is (just needs to be cleaned up). I got the star about the same time as the table and it's a great red. The blue bottles are beer bottles that I love the color of.

The pillows are outside pillows and were red. I covered them with some left over outdoor fabric I had in my stash. They are kind of plain but I was thinking about stenciling them with some type of design, but I don't know what. Any suggestions?

So that's what I started with. Now here's what I did.

Painted the bench. I wanted to spray paint the bench because it would be SO much easier and faster to get it covered. It took 3 cans to get this sucker covered (not including the back which won't be seen). But I LOVE it! It's fresh and pretty and modernized.

The table I decided to keep as is and just clean it up. It's a light weight metal (tin?) and the color works well with all the blues. And the bottles will stay for a while.

Next I sprayed the star. The star has some great designs on it and I worried that once I painted it the designs wouldn't show.

You can kind of see the design in this pic. But after painting it I could still see the design.

The last thing I did was take an old plastic planter and spray it too. It came with our house and I've only used it a couple of times. It was a hunter green color and was faded, so it wasn't very pretty and not my style.

I also wanted to put it next to the walkway right by the porch and have a shade plant in it.This is how it turned out.

I'm not sure if the planter will stay where it is, depending on how the plant does where it is. But I like how the thing turned out. (the brown smudges are dirt)

Ok here's the finished pics.

Yes, Trey likes to "chalk" here!

Next episode I'll share about the front door.

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A Fall Garden

This is just a little post to show my fall garden.

As you may recall, we had lots of tomato plants that we planted in the courtyard and then in September they were totally destroyed by the tomato horn worms. So, we decided to plant our fall crop in the courtyard since we pulled out all the tomato plants.

We planted spinach, beets and carrots. They only took about a week to sprout up. But they've stayed small for a while. This is the first time we've grown these veggies so I have no idea if they are on track or not.

Oh, and we had planted some garlic in the spring and they didn't amount to much so we left them and they are now doing pretty well (at least their greens are). And we have a couple of rogue onions in with the carrots.

Carrots

Beets

Spinach

Garlic

I spent some time this last weekend weeding the garden and no I didn't finish.

So, is anyone else doing a fall garden? If so what are you growing and is it doing well? Do you think mine is good or is it behind?

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Destroyed!

You know, I keep reading blogs about how they are harvesting all these wonderful foods and how well their gardens did this season and it makes me sad and a bit jealous. Anyone in Oklahoma knows that this was NOT the year for tomatoes. The weather got too hot too early and while the plants grew any flowers that did come up fell off so they didn't produce.

We'd bought about 9 tomato plants this year with visions of not buying any all season long and of being able to can/store some for the winter. We had 1 plant that finally started producing in July, it was a golden cherry tomato plant and they were great! And about a week or so ago I noticed that the other plants where getting tons of flowers all over them. I was so excited because I thought we'd finally be able to start getting some tomatoes.

And then it was all over. Just. Like. That.

We'd been watering them but it was 2 days in a row that we watered at night and then when we went out to look at them in the daylight found it all destroyed.
First let's take a look back at what it once was.

This was in March when we planted.

This was in July (we didn't get them caged quick enough so they are all over the place

Here it was when we finally saw it in the daylight. Do you notice anything wrong with this pic? Besides that it's a hot mess all tangled together that is. Here's a close up. Notice anything missing?

LEAVES! There are no leaves! Almost every bit of 7 huge plants (2 of the 9 are in the backyard) have been totally stripped of the foliage due to this.

I'm not enlarging this pic because these things are nasty looking! They were all over the plants and if you haven't seen one in real life they are about 4in long and about as big around as a dime. NASTY!

When I saw the garden and all of these "Tomato Horn Worms" I wanted to cry. There was no way we could get all of them off all the plants because we couldn't reach everywhere. So since there wasn't anything left on some of them we pulled them out. And then pulled worms off the remaining plants.
Here's what we have now.

I'm trying to look on the bright side, and that I can now plant some fall plants: carrots, beets, spinach. But I'm still mourning what could have been and that next year we'll need to be more watchful and ready to kill these things. They give me the creeps.

So, has anyone else been attacked? If so what did you do? Please share all wisdom!

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Outside Lights

I'm a little slow in posting about this but it's not as exciting so it got pushed back. We did this back in May when it was WAY cooler!

I'd noticed that the lights on either side of our garage doors were looking very grey and weathered. They are in good shape but just needed to be freshened up a bit. They also needed a good cleaning. I just picked up a can of black gloss spray paint.

The before without the glass or bulbs.

I had to wait till evening to work on them because of the heat and the wind. Both would be calmer by then. So I started dismanteling them and thanks to my favorite helper David made the job easier. He actually took all the glass out of the lights so I could wash them.

After that, I started taping off the brick and siding so I wouldn't get shiny black paint all over them! This part took the longest. I hate prep work....

Anyway, after prepping I got to paint! My favorite part! They instantly looked SOOOO much better!
By the time the paint dried (didn't take long it was still hot out) and the clean glass went back in and new bulbs were installed those babies shined! At least I think they did because when we were done it was dark!

But I looked at them the next day and they shined and the black paint popped nicely against the grey/blue brick. Our realtor told us when we moved in that black accents would look great on this house. I agree!

I love the way they turned out!

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Mama's Got a Brand "New" Bag

Since I've been using my clothes line the last couple of months I've been trying to figure out the best way to haul the clothes. Obviously I can't just carry the wet out and the dry in without some help. I know that most people probably use a laundry basket but I have a very small laundry room and I don't have room to store one so I don't use them. So I found an old bag and was using it. But the bag was too small.

I didn't want to go buy anything so I thought about making a bag. I had some canvas fabric that I'd bought many months ago and I thought that it would probably work the best. It'd be super durable and strong.

I didn't have a pattern or template so I just winged it. I used the small bag as a starting point just to get an idea of how big I wanted the bag. Then since this didn't need to be perfect or a particular size I just cut the fabric about where I thought it should be. I cut 2 large pieces for the sides and a small rectangle piece for the bottom. Although I cut it too big and had to sew it smaller. And I cut some straps.

I used a bright pink thread to run zig-zag stitches on the whole thing. I wanted it to look a bit homemade and fun. After sewing the whole thing I ran 3 rows of zig-zag stitches around the top as a border.

Because the fabric is a plain canvas, I thought it needed a little something. So I got out some old stencils (they were my parents' from over 25years ago) and I had some turquoise fabric paint and stenciled on the front of the bag.

I love how it turned out! It's plenty big enough and it's cute! It's bright and cherry with the pink and turquoise.

If you hang clothes on the clothes line, what do you use to haul the clothes in?

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I'm LOVING my clothes line

So a few weeks ago I'd been reading about using a clothes line (a few blog posts) and I decided that we should get one.

Now I'm no newbie to clothes lines. My parents have had one in all the houses we've lived in. They'd use them mostly for towels, sheets, big blankets, comforters and rugs. Occasionally clothes just depending on what it was and how things were outside. Of course this happened in warm weather.

I didn't like it growing up. I didn't like my towels or sheets smelling like outside and I didn't want rough towels. So I wasn't a big fan. David and I haven't lived anywhere for longer than 2 years (until this house going on 5!) so it never crossed my mind. I'd thought about one after Trey was born because people said if you could dry your cloth diapers on a line they freshened up really well and it worked great on stains. But I didn't have one.

I also had started feeling the need for one so I could air out my dry clean only down comforter and other things I couldn't get in the washer. When I wanted to wash out rugs I had to hang them over the fence.

Like I said above one of my concerns was the rough towels. After talking to my Mom she said they aren't always rough just when there isn't much wind. And the blog post mentioned that if that's a concern for you then just toss them in the dryer on a air fluff cycle for a few and that will go away.

My other concern was the smell. They suggested throwing them in the dryer on a fluff cycle and using a dryer sheet to help them smell better. So with my 2 concerns taken care of I was ready to do it.

We have about 12 feet on one side of our back yard from the house to the fence that runs the depth of our house. We thought that would be the perfect spot to set up because it isn't used for anything. David attached hardware to the brick and then to the wood fence posts and then we ran coated line between them. We ended up doing 4 lines.

I have LOVED hanging almost everything outside on the line. Everything dries so fast and I actually like the smell now! It smells so fresh and clean! My towels were becoming a problem, because if I used fabric softener they wouldn't absorb water and if I didn't they started to smell. Now they smell great and they absorb! And it's been windy enough lately that no rough clothes either.

I've also been hanging out our clothes. Although I've heard that you have to be careful with colored items because the sun will fade the colors, which is why it's so great for whites!
There is something so comforting about hanging clothes on a clothes line, very domestic too! I've really enjoyed doing it! And well there is the fact that it's cheaper than fabric softener and the sun does so great at whitening whites. And I haven't run my dryer but a couple of time in the last few weeks, I'm hoping that shows on our electric bill.

I've just been using my homemade laundry soap and nothing else, so simple! Love it!

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