Making it Lovely

Tag: Outside

  • Substituting for the Soleil Chair

    Substituting for the Soleil Chair

    I’m turning my attention once again to the front porch. Remember, I gave the furniture that was out there to my mom (whom I visiting this weekend for her birthday, so maybe I’ll get some photos of the table and chairs in her yard).

    I got as far as putting new benches on each end of the porch before stalling out and moving on to other projects. Summer is short though, and I want to finish so I’m back on the job! I think I just need to add a chair, a little side table or maybe a coffee table, plus plants. I’ve always liked this Soleil Lounge Chair, but I recently realized that I have a similarly shaped chair already. It was from Pier 1 (a long time ago). Here it is in a photo from a few years back:

    front porch

    I know it’s not an exact match, but it’s free. I’m considering spray painting it, though I don’t know what color. In white I think the lines of the chair would make it a decent substitute for the Soleil, but why limit myself to white? I mean, there’s always pink. Or yellow. Or green. Or…

  • Landscape the Front of the House

    Landscape the Front of the House

    This was one of the items on my 30 Before Thirty list. We’ve lived here for three years now, and the front has been a bit bare the whole time. There was a dead Rose of Sharon that we removed, but not before leaving it up for a year first (“maybe it will come back!”). We also added some hostas (free from my dad’s house) and two boxwoods (small, and not holding up so well).

    I feel like there’s more pressure to make the front of the house look nice because that’s the public part that everyone sees. I’ve been having fun experimenting with the garden in the back, adding and subtracting, moving and rearranging plants as I see fit. And it’s looking pretty cute back there!

    Our Yard

    But the front? Nope. The front has remained bare because I’m too afraid to put the wrong plants in. Yeah, well guess what I did.

    I went to the nursery looking for some flowers and a bush. I got five astilbes (good choice!), but then I also got an Ivory Halo dogwood (wrong choice). The flowers are excellent in the shade, which is what the front of the house gets. The bush is supposed to be in full sun. I didn’t even look at the tag because we have three of the dogwoods in the backyard getting partial sun, and I thought I remembered them being OK in part sun to shade. Wrong. So now I’m not sure if I should move it (to where, I don’t know), or take my chances and hope it survives.

    Oh, and the front of the house still looks pretty bare.

    Out Front

  • Nesting

    Nesting

    No, not me. The robin that has decided to build its nest upon the support column of our front porch!

    Robin's Nest

  • We Need a New Bench for the Front Porch

    We Need a New Bench for the Front Porch

    We’re going to give my mom the furniture from our front porch, which means we are now looking for some replacements.

    I had been planning to get IKEA’s Ammerö seating. Two of them together make a nice little bench that is perfectly sized for the far ends of the porch.

    Then I saw another option when I was at Target recently.

    Windsor Loveseat

    Cute, right? It’s a Windsor Loveseat by Smith & Hawken. They were out of stock, so I got a rain check. Great, except when I called today to check stock, I noticed that the rain check is for the wrong item. And it isn’t listed on the website. And there was a lot of confusion in the store when I asked for the rain check in the first place, and I don’t know if we’ll actually be able to get a hold of one (or possibly two) of these.

    So maybe we’re back to the IKEA option?

  • New Roof

    New Roof

    The roofers have been here since eight o’clock this morning, but hopefully we will have our new white roof before they leave tonight. All of the banging has made for a very unhappy (and loud) house today.

    New Roof

  • On the Fence

    On the Fence

    I’ve been thinking about trying to create a little privacy along our back fence for quite some time. I saw the DYNING wind/sun shield at IKEA this weekend, and at just $7.99 I figured it was worth a try. I’m not sure if I like it or not now that it’s up though.

    DYNING wind/sunshield

    Backyard

    The weather has warmed up but the trees and bushes have not leafed out yet, so everything looks a bit dead and brown. I almost didn’t post this photo because the yard looks so bad right now, but the neighbor’s weeping cherry trees are in bloom and at least those look nice. We’re going to add some Hicks Yews to that area soon, and that will probably give us the privacy we’re looking for. Until the evergreens grow in though, the stripes could look cool as a background. Plus, they’re fun to see from the alley.

    Here’s an old picture, just for reference so you can see what the area looks like when the leaves are on the trees.

    The Backyard

    I think I need to see what that portion of the yard looks like in a few weeks to make my decision.