Playing in the Dirt

I've been in 'clean up and purge' mode lately.  On the rotten days this past week I've been working my way through the basement (and have the purge pile in the dining room to show for it, much to Hubby's dismay) and on nice days working my way through the yard.  Because our yard is so tiny, one overgrown bush makes you feel like you're in the jungle.  Several overgrown bushes and leaves collected in the flower beds make me feel like the yard is closing in.  Luckily, it was nice enough this weekend to attack almost the entire yard with my hedge trimmers, clippers, and rake.  The yard no longer makes me twitch!  Still have weeding to do on the veggie garden side and mulch EVERYTHING, but it's starting to look more like a yard/patio, and less like the great outdoors.  I also spent a lot of time planting in the last few days. Replanting annuals in the font garden that were in danger of being smothered by the monster Hostas, planting in the kitchen (in a 50 cent tag sale cup),

planting new perennials in my flower beds,

and LOVING the new flowers- clematis and purple pincushions.  They give such a wonderful English garden feel!  Once I get much and finishing touches in the yard, I'm planning a glamour shoot for it.

The porch didn't escape the panting frenzy either.  Since getting my rustic metal sphere at Brimfield, I've been planning to plant in it:

I had to rip apart the already established flowers to replant them, so they're still deciding if they like their new home

You don't see as much of the sphere as I was hoping, but I'm curious to see how the flowers will take and grow (hopefully!)

Did you get a chance to play in the dirt too over this beautiful weekend?

Go Speed Racer

Can somebody please take this spraypaint out of my hand before I paint Hubby or the kittens!  Just kidding, don't take my paint away, I might cry. But seriously, it's so much fun that with just a bit of painter's tape and a can of spray paint, you can transform something in a matter of hours.

Last week, I procured 2 of these bad boys from Craigslist for $50.  Not my best Craigslist deal, but I've been looking for the right scale chairs for the porch for a while and you can't even get 2 new ikea chairs for that price.  The scale was perfect (yay!), but the color looked a little drab on the porch.

Bring on the frog tape!  I also decided to add a bit of interest with a racing stripe.  I figured that if I wasn't a fan once it was painted, I could just simply paint over the stripes.  Luckily that wasn't the case.

When I told Hubby I planned to add a stripe, he was scared (my design plans often have that affect on him).  But, since I kept the colors to simple white and natural- which are colors already present on the porch, the paint treatment added interest without looking over done (and Hubby agreed).

The best part about paint transformations is if I ever get sick of my speedster racing striped chairs, I can break out another can of paint and switch it up again.  That's not happening any time soon, though, these chairs are absolutely delicious.

Even though the backs will ultimately be up against my house, I just had to continue the stripe, I couldn't help myself.

I think this might just be my favorite view- nice rear!

I may have also attacked my black mail box with some satin nickel spray paint.  Now that my porch accessories and furniture are all set, I have the minor stuff left... like staining the floor, painting the trim and ceiling, and replacing the broken light... you know, the minor stuff.

Are you digging my porch transformations so far?

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

If this is your first time over here, Welcome to the new Year of Serendipity!!!!  I'm still tweaking a few things here and there (including updating my rather sad home tour and pathetic 30 before 30), but I'd love to hear what you think! In the midst of launching this site and ironing out kinks with my web designers, I've gone spray-happy again.  I can't help myself!  Spray paint is such a fantastic way to make an instant transformation.

As I mentioned last week, I have target lock on my front porch.  My itsy bitsy never used front porch.  So far, I've purchased paint to refresh the trim and started looking at solid stains for the floor, but I may have started a little backwards... I started with the furniture.

I found 2 perfectly scaled chairs on Craigslist and a small side table at the thrift store which all called for a few coats of spray paint.  So far I've tackled the side table.

It went from this:

to this in about a half an hour:

Talk about instant gratification!  I'm not too worried about having a wooden side table on the porch since it won't be exposed to too much of the elements, but that's also why I went for an inexpensive thrifted piece (with some sexy legs, no?).

I was very tempted to run outside at 8am this morning and try to get the chairs painted, so I could include them in this post, but I probably want to do them right and not just fast.  probably.  because they're going to be fan.tas.tic.  With the glorious weekend forecast (rain rain rain), it looks like I'll be impatiently waiting until Monday/Tuesday to do the chairs.

I hope your holiday weekend forecast is better than ours and you can enjoy some sunshine!  I'll just enjoy my sunshine colored table instead as I watch the rain.

Do you have any awesome holiday weekend plans or projects?  and what do you think of the new site??