Fun Fridays!

I am totally slacking on my blog lately!! I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted!!

First I want to share some pictures of a few projects I worked on this week with the help of my wonderful parents!!

They came over on Wednesday so my Dad and Brandon could finish putting insulation underneath our 3-season porch. While they were slaving away in the 80-degree heat, my Mom and I were working on beautifying the porch itself. The porch had kind of turned into a dumping ground for furniture and odds and ends.  We decided to move the futon from the guest room onto the porch and we put my old mattress and frame into the guest room. So now our guests can sleep on a real bed when they come to visit!

Not the best "before" picture, but you get the idea.

And I switched out the dark brown duvet cover for a lighter one - it is summer after all!

We used an old duvet cover for the futon so the mattress underneath stays cat hair free!

Luna approves! (Doesn't it look like her outstretched paw is giving a thumbs up??)

We had 2 sets of tables and chairs out here before and decided to just keep one and my Mom happily took her set back!

My plan is to take the coffee table from the living room and add it to this room. Or maybe just a smaller, low table - who knows! The possibilities are endless! I am already envisioning this as my new reading room!

I also need to finish stringing my sets of small white lights around the curtain rods - hopefully this weekend!

The other project, that has been about a year in the making, was to refinish some patio furniture. Last summer I worked at a pool & patio store and at the end of the season, there was a table and chairs set that needed to go back to the manufacturer, because the paint had started to peel (The people that owned this set before me lived near the ocean. Salt water + certain kinds of paint = peeling!) The manager said it was mine for free as long as I could get someone to transport it to my house!

Here's a before picture of one of the stationary chairs.  (The set came with 4 stationary chairs and 2 swivels).

(They had to spray paint them with white "X's" so they couldn't be sold again)

We scraped the chairs that were peeling pretty bad - mostly on the arms/seat. I used an attachment on Brandon's drill

Here's a decent "before" picture of the table:

A before pic of one of the swivels:

You might be able to see a slight difference in color between this chair and the one above. That's because I had started to spray paint it with a brown textured paint. The more I looked at it, the more I hated the color. So I switched to shiny black instead and here's the result after 1 coat:

 I bought 12 cans of glossy black spray paint at $4 each and we've only used 6 cans so far. I think this whole project will come in under $40 if I do a 2nd coat on the table/chairs. Not bad for a free patio set!

This picture was actually taken from inside the porch looking out, because it's raining today, but I realized I never took an "after" picture of the table, so I had to improvise :) If you look closely, you can see there's an inner circle in table - it's a Lazy Susan!! Such a great feature! I can't wait to add the umbrella/base I bought a few months ago, that is, once it stops raining!

Ok, so now back to our regularly schedule blog hop! I'll keep it short:

• Tonight I have ANOTHER gig with the band - that's 5 in 8 days!! It'll be nice to have 2 weeks off before our next show :)
• Tomorrow morning I am running my first 4.8-mile race! Monday I ran my first 4-miler and was pretty pleased with how I did, even tho I was a complete sweat-ball when all was said and done:

• Tomorrow afternoon we have our nephew's 6th birthday - I can't believe he's already 6! When he was born, I was in Ireland with my parents on vacation and I remember calling Brandon long-distance to find out if his sister-in-law had the baby yet. Time flies!
• Sunday we're having a little cookout with friends - so far the weather seems pretty good! Can't wait to have them try out our "new" patio furniture too!

Happy Friday everyone!!! Don't forget to link up at Jen's blog!

Fun Fridays!

I've missed this blog hop the past 2 weeks because we've been doing a lot of house stuff on Fridays so my blogging took a back seat!

(Wanted to post this earlier, but we were having internet issues, so I started cleaning the house!!)

Kind of a low-key weekend:

Today I'm going to tackle our closets and bring some clothes/linens to Goodwill. I love paring down our stuff and giving it away!

Meanwhile, my Dad, Brandon and his friend Tim are busy outside putting up the panels for our new fence! Here's what the accomplished last week:

This is just one side of the yard - all the posts are cemented in!

Tonight I have a gig with my band at a new bar/restaurant

From last year's 3rd of July Fireworks show

Tomorrow (as of right now!) we have no definite plans, which is nice! I will probably spend a good part of the day on Pinterest.com, my latest obsession! 

I'm also going to post about my June Birchbox which came yesterday. Here's a little preview of what I got this month:

Sunday I'm running a 5K, just a few miles away from our house - I think it's the closest 5K I've ever run! The forecast is calling for rain :( But it's supposed to be in the 70s, so it might not be too bad

Only a week and a half left of school!!! YIPPEE!!!

Don't forget to link up at Jen's blog: 

Thursday's colors

Turquoise & Caicos by Essie on my nails:

And orange-y red, in the form a beautiful tulip (popped up overnight!):

Gotta make hay while the sun shines...

...which translates into: "It's a semi-nice day today, let's get out and do some yard work because it might rain tomorrow!!"

And we did just that!

Since we moved into our house last June (I can't believe it's almost been a year!), we've focused all of our energies on tearing down wallpaper, painting, ripping up rugs, etc. Unfortunately, that meant our quarter acre of land was put on the back burner until we were ready to tackle it.

Today was the day!

Because of the crazy weather we had this winter (click back here and here) our yard was covered in broken tree limbs and other debris

Here's the pile of yard waste my Mom and I created after about an hour of walking around:

And I forgot to take before pictures (in true Sara fashion!!) but here's more of my "hay-making" from today:

This lovely section used to be poison ivy....that is, until my husband killed it last summer with about 4 rounds of pesticide! Today we found the root of the ivy, pulled it up (yes we wore gloves and boots!) and got rid of a bunch of leaves, pine needles, other yard debris. (Oh, and the green plants in the upper left corner aren't poison ivy in case you were worried!) Because this section doesn't get a lot of sun, I'm hoping to find a cute little bench and maybe some flagstones/stepping stones. Or perhaps plant a few flowers that grow well in the shade. Haven't really decided yet..but it is NOT staying a giant dirt pit!

You can see the poison ivy in this picture (the green stuff to the left of the garage) - pretty, right? YUCK!!

Cleared out the leaves under the rhododendron bush

Part of my pile I cleared out (Had to take a picture as proof!)

Cleared away some of the leaves so that the daffodils/jonquils don't get smothered! Need to go back with a smaller rake and get the rest. We're planning on mulching around here and the rhododendron bush too.

We trimmed back this bush because you really couldn't see the front door very well (especially on the left-hand side) I'm thinking of trimming a little more of the right as well so it doesn't hang over too much.

Oh, and here are some pictures of where we plan to finish fencing out the rest of the yard:

You can sort of see the neighbor's fence in this picture (right-hand side). Our fence would start there and then attach to our house a little behind the A/C unit (on the left). And after consultation from my Dad, he suggested we install a gate on this side as well (not just the opposite side of the yard near the driveway like I had planned. Dad's are so smart!!)

Another angle of the neighbor's fence.

Opposite side of the yard. We'll have to make an "L" shape so we won't end up with a diagonal line from the neighbor's fence to our house. We'll put a double gate right where the driveway/pavement starts and that will connect to the side of the house.

Not sure if any of that made sense!!

Overall, a good start to our "Yard Makeover" project...which reminds me, I need to make a separate post of that and list all of the things we're planning to do with the yard this summer!

Um, and yes, that would be a candle in one of the front windows..from Christmas...scroll back up if you missed it the first time... (hangs head in shame..)