Finishing Projects

Finally! Bryan and I had a weekend with nothing planned and nowhere to go. It was wonderful. We were able to finish up the guest bedroom/office, rip off the nasty screens from the front of our house, and even get out and work in the yard.

I remembered to grab my camera and get some pictures so you guys can see all the progress we made.:) OK, so the back yard is still pretty much a disaster. I tried to zoom in on what we did rather than give you a full view on purpose.:) As you can see (even with the zooming in), the bottom of our garage still needs painted green from when we ripped off the attached deck last summer and found that it used to be some kind of orange/red color.

So maybe we should have bought a condo.:) But now that we're here, we are trying to embrace the beautiful parts of owning a funky old house.

Here is part of our quaint little guest bedroom. I finally got around to painting the rest of the trim...for a while we had a door that was half green, half orange. I also had fun painting the design on the wall. I'm not sure what it is but Bryan actually likes it too.:) New bamboo window shades and a fun rug from world market and the room was magically transformed into a place of wonder and delight.:)

The window shades to which I referred. We've had them since we got married and just now got around to putting them to use. We had to finish painting the trim first of course. Now that they're up, I'm very sad we didn't get that done sooner. They're pretty fun.

Here is our front porch...also magically transformed. I wish I would have taken a picture of the ugly screens first for a little before and after action but alas, I did not think of that. Personally, I think this is a vast improvement...though I've been told taking off the screens may hurt when it comes time to sell. Oh well, it's worth it. Bryan wasn't so sure at first, but I think he secretly agrees now that they're gone.

I've actually taken down the curtains and tea-stained them so they wouldn't look quite so much like bed sheets. I'm also thinking about sewing on a few big horizontal stripes around the bottoms of the curtains in another material. What do you think? They look kind of Persian the way that they are, all blowy and white, but I'm not sure that look is quite right for our little brick bungalow.:)

Oh yeah, and the fern is new.:)
And here is the newest addition to the back. It was so fun picking out plants at Lowes. We got some basil, oregano, tomato plants cilantro and blackberry bushes. Everything looks a little wimpy here but I'm sure they will all be up and running in no time.:) We still need to lay a stone path through all that (and paint the rest of the garage). Another day...

Thanks for making it through this crazy long post. And come visit! The guest bedroom is all ready for you.:)