All on a rainy Sunday.

The rain is back. Today it rained, and rained, and still it continues to rain. This was supposed to be our weekend to build the stairs up to the upper lawn, but it was not meant to be. After a busy Saturday, we let ourselves sleep in this morning, but quickly made up for any lost time.

We installed the final touches on the new dishwasher and refrigerator. That consisted of mounting the dishwasher to the underside of the counter, and balancing and leveling both appliances. They look great in their new homes.

Next we put together the hand-me-down bed frame in the guest room. We'd previously had a metal "Hollywood" frame, with no headboard. This beautiful antique came from my Aunt and Uncle, who were glad to see it go.


Before


After (updated with Spring bedding) Among other things, this wall was screaming for some verticality. The headboard helps fill up some empty wall space.

The foot board curves out from the mattress, providing some extra toe room for our taller guests. I also recently replaced the existing curtains with these gray panels.

The artwork next to the windows are poems I typed and printed to fit the oval Syroco frames. They were originally gold, with images of a county home, all in tones of rust and gold. The frames took the black spray paint beautifully. I'd like to find some portraits to fill them, but for now the poems will suffice. I found a few old poems about the sea, and played around with fonts and color until I found something I liked.

These will be the new bedside tables. We picked them up last weekend, another Craig's List steal at $25 a piece. They'll need a light sanding, and then a fresh coat of paint. I was initially thinking red, which is never a fun color to try to pick a shade of. It's so easy to go so terribly wrong. But now that the room is taking shape, and I've had a chance to start to look at how the colors are coming together, I'm thinking of going with a very dark fuchsia. A pink so dark it almost looks red. Something like this...


This is a section of Benjamin Moore's Classic colors. No. 1343, Fuchsine, is my front runner so far. I have to sneak my pinks and purples in where I can, and the guest bedroom is a perfect place for it.

We also hung our new piece of artwork in the family room, but that will have to be another post. The cleaning of the garage that we did is much less exciting, and I'll probably skip the post on that.

I thought that spring was sprung...

Apparently, I was wrong. With this recent burst of cold weather, it seems that spring is on hold for now. All the tulips, daffodils and other spring flowers that were making their way up and out have seemed to stop dead in their tracks. It's cold outside! All the same, I am thrilled to see so many of the things I planted, and replanted, coming to life again. My little Lilac next to the front walk seems quite happy, and has tons of new green growth.


I was also very happy to see the Coral Bells and Bleeding Hearts along the front walk are also growing back, no thanks to the deer that mowed them down so prematurely. No sign of the Hostas that suffered the same fate, but I'm holding out hope.


The stars of the yard, my precious Andromeda, have survived the winter fabulously. I did catch a young deer trying to munch on one of them last week, so I let out our vicious attack dog, Maybe. She has become quite the little guardian of the yard. She used to ignore the deer, but with just a little coaching she now sees them as intruders. She barks at them with all her might, and circles the perimeter of the yard until we call her off. My plants just got a little safer. I want to plant two more Andromeda, right along with the others, to help form the border across the back of the yard. The three in place now are growing faster than I expected, and I think we'll get some nice separation from them.

I purchased (but have not planted yet due to the constant rain), three bright red Azalea on clearance at Home Depot. They must have been from last year, and were barely hanging on, but for $3 each, it was worth a shot. Since they've been outside, soaking up all this rain, they've started to come alive. I wasn't planning on having red in the mix, but I think I'll plant them in the back for a nice hint of color.

We've had a strange occurrence in the front yard. A transplant of some sort. We watched this plant grow out in the middle of the pachysandra, and originally thought it was some mammoth weed. As it took shape I realized it was a flower after all. An Easter Lily perhaps?


On our one day outside, we managed to get a good clean up in. At the end of the day we decided to rip out the picket fence behind the garage. It was terrible, and we knew it was going to go eventually.





Eventually this will all be large patio pavers, wrapping from the deck around to meet up with the path on the side of the garage. I can't wait to get this area cleaned up, but for now, this is a big improvement. It is much more open back there, and you can really appreciate the amount of potential usable space. You can see my rock wall is almost complete. I'd like to finish it up with one more row of stones on top and a border of of plants along the top. I am really proud of that little wall. I think it looks great, and I can't wait to turn the rest of the piles of rocks into nice features for the yard.

And to close, we were lucky to get a ton of work done that day, thanks to this sweet, little man staying put on the deck all day. He was happy to curl up in the sun on my sweatshirt.