Home Improvement

If ever a single lady were to ask me for any advice in what to look for when choosing a husband, it would be this, "Marry a guy that can fix stuff, but is not too proud to call in reinforcements when he's in over his head."  Not that anyone has ever asked me for advice in this arena, but if they did, that's what I'd say.

For the past two weekends we've been working, working a lot and it feels good to see progress made by our own two hands.  The biggest advancement?  Remember this eye sore of a block wall that ran along our entire property line?  Before it looked like this: 

And with some of this

 And this

We now have this.  And this guy couldn't be prouder of himself.  He can now add stucco artist to one of his many lists of talents.

After the stucco job was complete, we had to get rid of the green wall and so we painted.  Actually this is the "in over your head" part that I talked about before.  We ended up hiring 2 painters that got the job done at a reasonable price in less than 5 hours, which left us plenty of time to work on wiring the whole place up for outdoor lighting and to start planting.  It looks like a different place now though just with the walls painted.  Other shots from around the yard that I shot late last night...

We're working with all new plants that we've never had before in a yard and I love the silver colors brought out by the Silver Sheens and other plants in the pittosporum family.  White roses, lots of jasmine, lavender and rosemary round out the assortment.

And this is the best seat in the house, both indoors and out.  If you ever come visit you may have to fight me for this seat.  

 And while that's going on outside, inside I'm scouring catalogs and magazines looking for wall color inspiration since we're going to start painting as soon as the back is done.  I'm loving gray and thinking our bedroom set might look perfect painted this color seen in the latest Ballards catalog.  What do you think?

And lastly, the kids picked me this hydrangea from the garden over the weekend.  Not sure if it's at the start or end of it's blooming cycle, but either way I've never seen one look this with these dots.  I love it.  Any ideas how they turn like this? 

Whether relaxing or productive, hoping your weekend was whatever you were hoping it to be!
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