What a Difference Four Years Can Make

Like so many things in life, time has a way of sneaking up on you and making changes right under your nose. Your kids (or nieces) go from little babies to young ladies in the blink of an eye. And in my case, the plants that at first looked swallowed up by the size of the bed now spill over into the yard, overfill the once seemingly large empty space, and transform it into a lush sanctuary.

At the beginning, four years might have sounded like a long way off, but it happened in the blink of an eye, or so it would seem. Plants were added, moved, divided. Furniture was stolen (really) and a pergola was added. A wall was removed and a hot tub added. So many little changes, bit by bit, all adding up to big changes.

Take a look.


First of all, not every change has been for the better. This bed has been overrun by a particularly virulent ground cover. It needs to die.


But most of it has been really good.


The tulips in this bed always get eaten by something. We're pretty sure it's deer. They chew off the young leaves and SOMEtimes they miss the flower head so that we get a few flowers. They leave the daffodils alone, though. It the current pic, they're long done for the season. By the way, the hostas around this bed all came from splitting up just two larger hostas. We can't grow what we'd like in our yard because of the shade, but we can grow the HECK out of hostas!


Isn't this something? The tulips still bloom like the before pic, but now the day lilies are huge. They started out as TINY single bulbs and have multiplied steadily each year. It's quite a sight!






This is the furniture that was stolen. We're guessing they took it to sell as scrap. But now this corner of the house and yard is incredible. All of the plants have grown up to create a really beautiful space. You know those goofy self-portraits I took? I was on the deck. Oh, and my About Me pic is set there, too.









We're pretty darn thrilled with how the yard has grown over the years.

Bedroom Redecorating: Complete (mostly)

I realized that I never posted the photos of the completed bedroom re-do. I'd posted a sneak peek back in August and took this photos on October 10th. So much for being on top of things. *ahem*

Before (more photos here)

ANYway, here are the "after" shots, and I must say that we're very happy with the results. Most of them at least. The beadspread looks fantastic in these shots. After washing? Not so much.



I bought it from Target and while I love Target AND the beadspread, I'm not happy that it's so stinkin' large that it barely fits in my Whirlpool HE washer. But that's a big "shame on me" for not paying attention to that fact when I bought it. It says right on the box that it should be washed in a high-capacity commercial washing machine. Yeah, like I'm going to do that. I don't buy dry clean only clothes (or ignore the fact that they ARE dry clean only) so why the heck am I going to deal with a high maintenance beadspread. Again, shame on me.

The other flaw is the stitching on the cover. There's very little of it holding the layers together, so now it's lumpy lumpy lumpy — not cool. Lesson learned.

Other than the beadspread issue, the rest of the bedroom is great. Love the paint color, LOVE the wall decal and love the floor.







I still haven't gotten any drawer pulls —STILL! Told you I wasn't on top of things.

UPDATE:
Here are links to the products I used.

The decal went on great once we figured out the trick. The directions provided were useless and actually made it WAY worse. It's easier than they make it out to be. Just stick the paper up where you want it then use a credit card or other flat rigid utensil to rub the decal onto the wall. There's a low-tack adhesive on the paper so that it stick to the wall while you rub on the decal. That peels off and the decal remains.

We bought this one from Amazon, but there are a lot of other sellers. Etsy has TONS of sellers and there are so many gorgeous designs there.

Swirly Floral Decal


The floor is special order laminate from Lowe's. We love it, despite the fact that it's a lot noisier than carpet - kitty nails go click-click-click and you lose the noise dampening effect of carpet. But it's a breeze to clean.

Pergo Driftwood Pine laminate floor

Sneak Peek: Bedroom Redecorating

Dwight and I plan on doing a series of updates to the house, mainly cosmetic, but a few larger things. Installing new flooring being the biggest change (to come).

First up on the agenda was our bedroom. I used my wide angle zoom lens (18-135mm) to take these photos because my usual lens (35mm prime) is too narrow to capture enough of the room at one time. Wide angle = distorted walls. Eh. Whatcha gonna do?

Right now, redecorating has involved paint. We went from a darkish green to a pale grey-blue. It's SO much brighter. I just love it. We're also painting the furniture. Dressers and bedside tables. We bough ready-to-assemble (and finish) tables years ago and never finished them. Rather than paint the ones we're using now, we'll leave those as is and put them in the guest room where the unfinished tables used to be. Got that?

Anyway. Here's a gander at the progress so far:


From the door into the room. Vanity is to the left, bath to the right and behind.


From the far corner just seen in the previous pic. The bathroom is through that door next to the dresser. Check out the TV. How awesome is it that I caught the movie at that exact moment? Yes, that's Star Wars. (And yes, that is a ridiculously large TV for a bedroom. You should have seen my face when it showed up.)


From the corner with the TV, facing the vanity.


So. Many. Drawers.


Ah, daylight pictures. So much better.


I just took this one tonight. I forgot to take a "during" vanity shot along with the others. Probably because of all the drawers in the way.

It's looking good-ish. I'm loving the color and the brightness of the painted furniture. Now if we could only find decent replacement handles. We need 4 knobs (no problem there), 16 - 3" on center pulls (again, piece of cake) and 6 - 3.5" on center pulls (DOH! There are only about 3 styles to choose from. In the entire WORLD. *sigh*) Wish us luck.