I didn’t do much to the backyard last year. Or to the front. Really, what I mean to say is that I didn’t do anything to the exterior of the house last year. This year, it shows. The garden needs tending, the grass needs seeding, and to top it all off, we should probably paint. The garage is starting to peel pretty badly, and the house could use some attention, too.

(Not our yard! That’s Jenna Lyons’ former garden.)

I had a grand plan of things I wanted to do to the outside of our home that I put together back in 2009, two months before Eleanor was born. Allow me to quote myself: “Of course, the arrival of spring will also mean the arrival of our baby, so maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves!”

Nah, you think? Childless me was so naive.

So now, two kids and four years later, I’m reassessing. I’m copying and pasting my original exterior to-do list, below, with some clarification.

• paint & repair the trim
  We still need to do this.

• paint the front porch and the back deck
  I would miss the hand-painted rug that I did, but the porch needs to be refinished.

• replace the railings for the front porch with a style more appropriate for the house
  I’d still love to do this, but at least our railings are functional.

• cover the sides of the front stairs (lattice?)
  Yep. Actually, stucco would be a more seamless choice.

• build a gate to hide the storage area under our back deck (lattice?)
  Still a good idea.

• replace our ugly white screen doors with simple, unobtrusive ones
  I removed the front screen door entirely because I couldn’t stand it anymore, but I’ve yet to replace it.

• install gutters with covers that supposedly don’t need to be cleaned
  We can skip this, and continue to have our gutters cleaned seasonally.

• remove the aluminum siding on the addition and stucco it to match the rest of the house
  We had a couple of quotes and this is cost-prohibitive.

• change the house color
  It would be nice.

• paint the garage to match
  The garage needs to be painted either way, and of course it should match the house.

• put up cute new house numbers
  Yes!

• maybe change the mailbox?
  Maybe!

• add an outlet out front and in back (there are none outside)
  We did this! And now it’s broken! Yay.

• add another metal sculpture in front of the house (we already have one)
  Really? One is enough, Nicole.

• put in some foundation plants/shrubs
  I sort of did this, but more is needed.

• plant a small tree (pagoda dogwood?) out front
  Probably not the best idea to plant a tree too near the house.

I feel bad, looking at this list and realizing how much of this has yet to be done, but it’s expensive stuff. And the only new item I’d like to add to the list? Build a wooden fence. The neighbor’s yappy dogs used to be an annoyance. Now that we have kids and they have a more aggressive dog that wants to bite their hands off, a wooden fence would be nice.