B&A - Garage Flower Bed

That is B & A, as in Before and After, not BA, as in Bare Ass. We don't do BA's around here so get your head out of the gutter!

On to the B&A...

I think, maybe, just possibly, the little area in front of the garage is finally officially finished now! YAYYYYY!!!!

1 down, 3,796,241 to go!

I mentioned it a little in this post last fall. It was the third project that I finished last weekend, officially classifying me as a total rock star for how productive I was. The other two projects were The Great Clipper Encounter 2009 and getting the closet in my office/craft room painted and organized.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the real before, how it was when we bought the house. I'm discovering that I do that a lot. It's annoying.

When I got started on it it had a huge and very dead rose bush with massive, evil thorns. It was huge. And evil. It took a lot of very careful pruning to extract. Then I pulled out the huge, mostly dead juniper shrubby thing. It had completely over grown the area and over hung the little fence border by a good foot or more. It was ugly. This picture was taken after pulling all that stuff out. There was plastic covering the whole area and the little fence in the back was the border around the whole edge.

I worked on it a little last fall, got it "done" but then decided that I really wasn't satisfied with the way it looked. I wanted to add dirt to it, bring it up level to the concrete and re-do the rock border.

I talked the boyfriend into pulling out the juniper root finally a little while ago and he turned up the dirt a bit while he was there. Last weekend I pulled the rock border out and got him to bring a couple scoops of the good horse poo dirt out for me to add in and got to work re-doing the rock border.

This was what I ended up with. Much better!

I still wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to plant in there so I decided to think on it for a while and see what ended up inspiring me. I'm a big fan of low maintenance when yard work is involved so that was a big consideration. There are big, pretty green leafy bushes that seem to grow and spread pretty fast and don't need watering in front of the house so I decided to pull up some of the shoots and transplant them over there. They should fill in pretty quickly and then we can just snip it back to keep behaving itself in it's little area.

Then I hit Home Depot for paint and supplies for the office and found these cute little flowers that are also supposed to be low maintenance, spread out to form a mat and bloom all spring. Plus, they were on sale and I do loooove sales! I think I would have gotten them even if they weren't on sale though. They were pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Only cuter!

Aren't they cute? I think they are adorable little flowers!

So after adding the bushes and the little flowers to the area, this is the finished product...

Everything should fill in and grow together eventually. The leafy bush should grow quite tall, the one in front of the house is going on 5 feet tall. They also get cute little white flowers on them late spring. I really like the way it turned out!

So YAY finished yard project #1! Not sure what's next outside, but hoping to get after pics of the office by next weekend! Finger's crossed.

Sunday Stills Challenge - The Color Red

You wouldn't think it would be all that difficult to find something red to shoot pictures of, but this proved to be a bit of a challenge this week! Especially since I was determined not to pull from archives again!

I'm not super thrilled with the pictures I got, but they qualify so here goes.

First off we have our resident red head Sugar. I never realized she was the same color as the barn until I loaded these pictures.

Later that night when we were eating barbequed bratwurst on the porch, pretending it was summer already, I heard a plane flying over. I could tell it was a small plane and was watching the sky for it to clear the trees. When it finally did I realized it was RED! So here I am trying to grab my camera, turn it on, zoom in, find the blasted plane high in the sky when I am all zoomed in, try to get the stupid camera to focus enough to take a picture that you would actually be able to tell what the thing is, all with a brat in my other hand, trying not to drip mustard on the camera. With all that messing around I only had time to snap one picture before the plane went back behind the trees. It was interesting. Not a great pic, but it was funny and it's a very red plane so I have to post it.

Then I hit Home Depot and found these cute little flowers that completed my third project from last weekend. Before & After coming soon! They are kinda magenta/fuschia-ish, but that qualifies as a shade of red, right?

I also purchased some plants to go in my new "tropical paradise" office/craft room that I'm painting and decorating. I picked out some house plants that I thought looked tropical to stick in there and on the way home realized that this one was red and I could take pictures of it for Sunday Stills! Wohoo!

So there we have it. A few different shades of red for ya. Happy Easter!

Sun!

Bee-u-tee-ful sun!

Since I was a total rock star last weekend got at least a million and twelve things accomplished (okay, so it was more like 3, but they were big things!) I decided to just kick back, relax and enjoy the sunshine a bit tonight.

You know what relaxing and enjoying the sunshine means? Playing with the ponies and taking lots of pictures!

Here are a few of my favorites from the day.

I was trying to shoot the sun peeking out over Midori's neck, but she wouldn't stand still. This was the best I could do.

Then I decided to sit down in a corner of her paddock to get some pictures from a different angle. Thought it might be interesting.

Then she snarfed me.

So I shooed her away and she went to the opposite corner to pout.

Then I realized I had an audience.



The blackberry bushes behind me were full of little birds.

When I was done crawling around in the paddocks I noticed these cute little flowers. They are the only flowers I found on the property, other then dandelions, and though they weren't very impressive, it gave me something else to shoot. Trying to get the flowers in focus, the sun to shine thru them just right and Sug to cooperate so I had a horse silhouette in the background was tough work! I still don't think I totally hit it, but it's a cute enough picture.

Then I got to sit on the porch and eat the first barbecued bratwurst of the year with a beautiful view of the mountain, blue skies and the moon.

Does it get any better?

The Great Clipper Encounter 2009

I've been saying I was going to do it every single spring that I've owned Midori. This year I finally did it. I body clipped my horse. She is really naked now and I love it!

Every winter she grows the most insane coat regardless of blankets, stalls, etc. I have not been able to slow it once. This year seemed exceptionally long and thick since they only had blankets and trees to stand under, no stalls.

She's been shedding pretty good for a few weeks now but was still extremely hairy and I decided that since it was nice outside and I didn't want to put up with the hair any more, today was the day.

This is Midori before the Great Clipper Encounter of 2009.

Here we go! No turning back now!

And this is after the main part of it.

She's almost the buckskin I've always wanted! hehe

And here is the carnage...

It took me about an hour to do her body with big clippers and then another 3 hours or so to touch it up and get her legs and other tight spots that the big clippers couldn't get. So, 3 very dull blades and 2 dead batteries later, I have a very pretty pony! It was a fun day and really nice to actually get that done! I'm so excited about how great she looks de-fuzzed!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Animals of Husbandry

Once again I've been a little preoccupied this week and I didn't get any new pictures that would qualify for this weeks challenge. So back to the archives we go!



This is another picture from the camping trip I took to Ellensburg a few years ago. The last day there we ended up helping friends of in-law's in-laws, cousins, neighbors, dogs grandma (or some wacky relation of that sort) drive some cattle. I believe it was my one year anniversary of owning Midori and we'd never been any where near cattle together. It was quite the adventure thru the hills of Ellensburg and I had so much fun!


That's really all I've got that isn't just a bunch of horses that I've already posted a million and three times. I'll try harder next week, I promise!

Before and After - Office Closet

I just couldn't wait. I was way too excited and motivated to get going on the office closet project so I finished it up last night. I grabbed a coffee after work, hit Target and Michaels, my two very favorite stores for decorating/organizing and headed home to get started.

This was the very naked closet after I stripped it all down. Of course I was excited to start tearing into it and forgot, once again, to take before pictures. You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that it wasn't pretty. It had one shelf, supported by boards nailed into the wall (where you now see the line in there). There was also a clothing rod that was seriously stuck in there with one rod hanger/shelf support in the middle, held up by another board (where the pink square is in the middle)(and yes, this closet apparently used to be Pepto Bismol pink). I had to have the boyfriend help me with some muscle to get it all out.

When all was said and done I counted 42 nails and screws holding 3 small boards and a rod in. 42 nails and screws! And the best part...see the nail that is top right? The one that looks like a screw? It's a nail, a ribbed nail for extra grab. There were a few of them. They weren't planning on that stuff going anywhere at all when they put it all in. Totally ridiculous!

This was the office while I was painting the closet and getting the shelving set up. The circled stuff in the middle is all of the crap that I took OUT of the closet. It was just piled haphazardly on the floor because I just had the one shelf. I'm really not joking, everything in that circle was piled in there.

Also in the picture at the top middle is a desk that we've had in there that will be headed some where else in the house. I'm not sure where yet.

Under that desk are some boxes that are hiding.

Next to the desk is a rather large and sloppy pile of blankets.

In front of the blankets leaning against my pub height craft table are the bookshelves. They are in boxes until I finish painting and can assemble them. They will be against the wall that the small desk is currently holding up.

I have to thank The Wife for recommending Picnik for free photo editing in her Sunday Stills post last week. I've been having fun playing with it!

This is what it looks like underneath my craft table. There are lots of boxes hiding under there. They are mostly waiting for the bookshelves to be assembled, but I did get 2 or 3 of them unpacked into the cool new super-organized closet last night.

This is the closet now. The green on the walls doesn't stand out as much in the picture, but I promise it's green! Actually, the color is called Tropical Dream. The name was the tie breaker. It just seemed fitting. And I was happy to see green was a trendy color when I went to Target to get all of the tubs (which were also on sale, SCORE!) They have nice lime green accents on them, pretty much the color I want to accent the room with. I got this nice black wire shelving unit at Target also a month or so ago. I have the shorter 3 shelf version in the kitchen and love it.

Currently contained in this closet are the large pile of blankets, neatly stacked in the space not taken up by the shelving unit. All of the crap that I pulled out of the closet originally, neatly organized into tubs. The board games that originally resided on the one shelf of the closet. And most of my stamping and scrapbooking stuff which already takes up most of the upper 3 shelves. I was surprised by how much stuff I had once I got it all in one general area and I think there is more floating around in some of the other boxes. Yikes!

I had so much fun organizing all of that last night! I'm a total nerd. I think I'm going to put the closet doors back on, atleast for now, and see how they work out. I may still go with the curtain idea, but for now I think the doors will serve me better while I'm painting.

Oh, and you see the wall to the right of the closet? The one that changes color half way up? The top peach-ish looking color is the current color of the room. Ick. The bottom color is my test strip for the teal I am going with. It's called Teal Ice. I can't wait to get the room painted!

This and That

Well, I think I'm over my little tantrum from the other day. I still love drill and my team, but at this point, I think it's best for me to continue on as an associate member for the year, filling in spots where I need to and competing at just one big competition this year. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how it all goes and then decide what I want to do for next year.

On to the next subject: my next painting project, the office. I mentioned it here and here. I think I finally decided on a color/theme for it and it's not much like any of my ideas in those posts. Go figure.

Nothing was inspiring me for the office. It has a computer desk in it, but the main focus is my craft table. I wanted it to be a place where I can spread out to do my scrapbooking, stamping and crafty-stuff. I wanted it to inspire me, be a cheery place to go in the winter when it's dreary outside and a place that was a like a haven and really reflected me. Not that the rest of the house isn't a reflection of me, but I really wanted this room to be mine. I was searching every where I went for one little piece of anything that might inspire me to decorate the room around, but nothing was catching my eye.

I planned to get curtains for the four windows in the room and browsed some sites hoping to find some that would inspire me, to no avail. When I mentioned that to my friend she offered up some of her extensive collection of white sheer curtains that she amassed for her wedding last summer. So now I had sheer white curtains, black bookshelves, a dark wood table and a mostly black computer desk (which was free and I'm not fond of so I'm hardly considering it in my decorating fantasies). The curtains made me think light and breezy and made me lean towards teal for the walls. For some reason Bahama Breeze kept popping into my head. I know it's a pretty darn good restaurant, but I decided to try it on for size in the decorating department.

I'm not sure what other people picture when they hear bahama breeze, but I'm going with a nice bright teal color for the walls and then I'm going to accent with dark wood and a nice green. I would also like to find some sort of palm tree or palm frond accents. I want it all light and breezy, sort of tropical feeling. I'm going to paint the closet lime green (my first project) and get that organized and then start on the room. I'm hoping I can fit most of the boxes that are hiding throughout the room in the closet after it is painted so the rest of my house doesn't have to suffer too much while I'm painting the office.

I'm hoping I can paint the insides of the black book shelves green and maybe line the shelves with some sort of bamboo look liner paper or something along those lines. I have a lot of ideas swirling around in my head right now, but they will just have to wait for a while because painting has to come first.

At this moment I'm off to my very favorite store, Home Depot, to get some paint for the closet. Hope to have a Before and After post by the end of the weekend!