Hubby's Manual Labor

Well last year when we decided to have a backyard garden, I just dug out an area and planted some stuff. I had a couple of tomato plants that did really well, especially the cherry tomato plant. We LOVED it!

Then came the 4th of July. We have 2 dogs, a Dashchund and a Beagle/Bassett mix. Well, Sabrina (Beagle/Bassett mix) doesn't care for (make that HATES) the fireworks. She freaks out and will throw herself on the back door and whatever else makes her feel better. While we were out watching fireworks, she decided to chew the stake holding the chicken wire blocking her from the garden, got in and destroyed my beautiful tomato plants.

She was disowned for a while.

So, this year I decided we needed to build it up and add the chicken wire so hopefully this won't happen again. Oh, after the 4th, she then realized the garden was a great place to stay cool.

We had a bunch of bricks that were unused so I asked David to please move them to the garden for me. He was so great, he did that and made the wall! Oh, and he made it a bit bigger so there was more digging involved.

But now we have a built up garden that just needs a lot of dirt. I'm SO excited to get some plants in there, I think I'll plant spinach in there, not sure what else or if there's room for more. We'll have to wait and see.

I did plant some seeds indoors last week and some are sprouting up, so in a couple of weeks hopefully I can get them outside!
Now we just need to till up the courtyard to get it ready too!

WIWW #4

Happy Wednesday everyone!
Here's my latest What I Wore Wednesday, which is being linked up to Pleated Poppie.



Jeans- Kohl's
Flats- Famous Footwear
Cardi- Gap
White tank-I have no idea!
Colored tank- Maurice's
Necklace- Kohl's

I love the colored tank, I hardly ever buy patterned tops I think because when I find a pattern I like and a flattering top it really narrows my choices. I'm more a solid shirt kind of girl. Anyway, the top was WAY too long for me so I got it hemmed up, which was totally worth it!

Courtyard Garden Before

Our home has this courtyard in the front and ever since we’ve lived here (4years) it’s been unused. When we first bought the house it had a horrible, ugly, dated and unmaintained “pond”. I can’t speak for how it looked when it was first installed but when we got it, it was awful. I yanked everything out of there as fast as I could.

Now, we’re left with an empty space that David has to mow. We’ve talked about several ideas. We wanted to put a floor in, maybe stone, or brick and then have a sitting area. But, the flooring cost stopped us as other things were much more important. So, it’s still empty.

We have a new idea though; we want to turn it into a garden. A veggie garden.

Last summer, I finally planted a veggie garden in the backyard. You see, we’ve never lived anywhere long enough for me to feel I could invest a garden into it. After living here almost 4years I decided it was time.

So, I planted a few tomato plants, a strawberry and some peppers. The strawberry didn’t do very well, the peppers did ok, but the tomatoes were awesome! I loved them!

This year I want to expand and we need to keep the dogs out of it, so the courtyard seemed a natural place. It's about 13'x12', so it’s a decent size for lots of plants.

I want to grow several kinds of tomatoes, okra, peppers, basil, cilantro and some other stuff too.

Anyway, this is the before of the courtyard and hopefully in about 2months it will look very different!
I'm so excited about getting it ready and getting plants planted!

Decorating is MY art

Ever since I can remember, I've loved decorating my space. My room as a child I'd move the furniture around and wanted pretty things in the room. I remember when my parents were trying to sell our home and they were doing an open house or showing and I actually staged my desk. I had the colors and coloring book all laid out like someone was just there. I know so dorky!

Then when I got married I was beside myself with trying to set up everything to make it look great. We didn't have much everything was a hand-me-down. But I did my best with what I had.

Over the years I started to notice that I was constantly changing my decor. I'd get bored with the way something looked or my tastes would change, or we'd move (6 homes in 12 years) and I'd have to change something.

We've finally stayed in a house for 3 1/2 years (big for us!) and instead of the challenge of a new environment to decorate I'm settleing in to this one and really figuring out what I like and don't like and what works for us right now.

Master Bedroom Before

I know that some people probably look at me and all my decorating posts and think that I'm focusing on silly stuff or that I spend too much time/money on things that they think are irrelevant.

I follow several decorating/creative blogs and yesterday I read a post from one of them that really spoke to me. Let me share an exerpt from it:

"Nobody accuses the writer who is restless with the pen and a blank page of  trying to find her contentment in the wrong place.  Is the singer who changes the arrangement, the pianist who craves the keys, the painter who tweaks the canvas, the collector searching for that one last treasure, the songwriter who paces the floor waiting for the perfect words,  are they looking for meaning and contentment in all the wrong places simply based on what they are passionate about?  Is it about time they smartened up and stopped wasting their time? No one would dare accuse them of such.  I think they are created to pursue their art."  The Nesting Place

When I read this it was clear to me that yes, I am passionate about decorating my home. My home is my canvas and I love to play with it. I know that God created me to use my hands and my eyes to create beauty.

So, as I decorate my home, create a crafty item/project, put together outfits (yes that's art too) I'm being who I was created to be and fulfilling some of my passions (I have others too).

I'd love to hear what you think about art, passions, decorating and such!

WIWW #3

This is one of my favorite outfits, it's cute, and comfy.

Boot cut Jeans-Kohl's

Brown Heels-Famous Footwear (pretty comfy for heels!)

Cardi-Target

Necklace- I made

Shirt-DKNY/Dillards

The shirt my mom actually picked out. We had gone shopping for clothes for me about 3 weeks postpartum and this hid my baby belly well and was comfy and cute.

I'm linking up to Pleatted Poppy. This is done to get us SAHM's out of our sweats/jammies and to put some effort into ourselves.  

A Little of Everything

Since I don't have any finished projects to show yet, I figured I'd talk about what I'm doing and what's been going on.

First, we had a messy weekend with David digging 2 big holes. After the snow melted and we still had a lot of water in the front yard not drying up we figured there was a leak and our water bill has been high. We think the extreme temps (for Oklahoma) made it come to light. So, David took off work early Friday and started digging holes to find the leak.
Thankfully by Saturday afternoon the plumbers had fixed the leak and we saved money on the bill by digging the holes ourselves (or David digging!)

We've been trying to enjoy the beautiful spring like weather here. I took Trey to the zoo on Thursday. We got a zoo season pass for Christmas so we'll be spending a lot of time at the zoo this year.
We cleaned up the backyard in anticipation for building and planting our garden and for lots of playtime!

Trey has been sick on and off the past 3ish weeks. Getting his first ever ear infection (at 2 1/2yrs old). Runny nose and coughing. It seems that when I take him out in nice (60's/70's) weather he ends up with something the next day. I'm not sure what to do about that. We are using some essential oils to help the symptoms.

I'm in the process of a couple of projects: sewing a dress, hemming some of my shirts, planning our gardens, and making some pillow shams for the master bedroom.

The dress is giving me problems, the pattern isn't the easiest to understand and I'm a bit rusty.

Now that I have a sewing machine that works, I'm undertaking hemming a bunch of my shirts. I'm short waisted and the majority of shirts I find are too long. I was getting them hemmed at a tailor shop but after my Goodwill finds (about 10) I now have too many to affordably get them all hemmed. So that's on my list for this week.

I'm trying to figure out how to layout my garden beds for everything we want to grow this year. We want lots of tomato plants, peppers, okra, strawberries, basil, cilantro, and maybe some blackberries and onions. I'm so excited for the weather to stay warm enough to get planting!

I found some remnant fabric at the store last week that should be perfect for making pillow shams for our bed. I haven't planned this out yet so it's a bit early to tell you how it's going.

So that's my random goings on.
What projects or things have you been up to lately?

WIWW #2

Ok, here is a couple of outfits I wore this week.

Sorry, the left side of the outfit is dark, I'll work on this.

Brown heels-Famous Footwear

Jeans-Kohls

Purple cardi-Target

Green shirt-Goodwill

Necklace-Claire's

Shoes/Jeans same as above

Turq tank-JCP

Brown cardi-Banana Republic (found at Goodwill)

necklace same as above. It's new and I'm still getting used to it being so big. I don't normally wear such big pieces of jewlery, but I'm challenging myself a bit!

What do you think?