Our yard needs help!

We've done so much work, in so little time, indoors that our yard is hurting! We are the lawn rejects of the neighborhood. All the houses around us have professional landscaping with in ground sprinklers. Well, our yard, like our dining room, just hasn't happened yet!

Back in April after we had been in the house for a month, we decided that we should at least attempt to do something with the yard. So, we made some mulch beds and planted flowers that came from our family members. For example we have black eyed susans from my parents house and some hosta from my in-laws, among a variety of other plants...however, I don't know what they are called, I just like the way they look!

So, now, we've got plenty of flowers in our beds, and unfortunately plenty of weeds in our so-called lawn. Name a weed, we've got it! It was green all summer because apparently crab grass can live through anything. But now, it's starting to look very yellow and the differences between our yard and the neighbor's is much more noticeable. Don't get me wrong, it looks WAY better than when we moved in, but it still needs some serious work. My husband is planning to "slice seed" it in a couple weeks. Apparently it'll make it look even worse for now, but will supposedly make a huge difference in the spring. We'll see about that! I'm convinced that there's no hope, but I'm trying to stay positive. All I know is, I'd much rather have him give it a shot than pay a landscaper a boat load of money to do it! We'll be watching a lot of DIY network videos!

Decorating!

We have moved from a 2 room apartment that is pretty much 1/3 of the size of the house and are still trying to fill the space! We moved in having 1 couch, a small kitchen table and a makeshift bedroom set...a combination of furniture that we had at our parents' houses.

We needed something to put in this house. The thought of decorating a home with furniture and wall decor was both overwhelming and exciting!

On our first day of furniture shopping I spotted these polka dot arm chairs. I decided that even if we couldn't afford any other furniture I had my heart set on those chairs. Well, we were able to buy them and they became the center of all of my other decorating ideas. Even with countless trips to HomeGoods, we could only find so many blue/green/brown/tan combination! So, we had to resort to what we thought would be the cheapest and easiest way of decorating...framed pictures that we've taken. Although not EVERY picture in the house is of my husband and I, I do admit that a lot of them are. We recently got married so that's what we have pictures of!  Because of that, we have been made fun of by family and friends. My brother refuses to go in our living room. Apparently he thinks it's creepy that if you sit on the couch you look directly at a 11X14 picture of us from our wedding. I guess I can see where he's coming from! We are still working on the wall decor!

We are making progress. We have been able to fill up the rooms with both new and hand-me-down furniture. Our dining room however, that's still in the works. We currently have a plastic banquet table and folding chairs. Not exactly what you picture in a dining room, but I put a nice tablecloth on it, and it'll do for now!

We have plenty of time to fill this house, and look forward to finding new ways to furnish it!

Boiler Problems

This being our first home, we don't know what's normal or not. Our basement started to smell a bit like smoke but we just thought that that was normal for an oil burner. Two weeks later our smoke alarms started going off...this has never happened before. They are hardwired throughout the house, so I was running around with a kitchen towel trying to shut them off. That didn't work so we went into the basement, walked towards the boiler just as it let out a puff of black smoke and some fire shot out of the sides. Very scary! Turns out, when the maintenance man came to service the boiler he didn't reconnect a loose wire that was necessary to keep the boiler running. It has now been taken care of and we haven't had any problems since!

Move-In Day

As we walked into the house it looked as if the former owner did not own any cleaning supplies. The dust on all countertops, windowsills and floors was inches thick. The house reaked...turns out it was the carpets. We removed them immediately!

Day 1 painting: the faux paint on the family room walls, dining room and living room walls were next to go. We were lucky enough to have so many family members helping us! We were able to move in within 3 days of the closing. The ladies did all of the cleaning...that took a while! The men did the painting and moving. We definitely needed their help and were so grateful that they offered. We paid them with food and drinks :-) Without their help we'd still be cleaning up his mess, even now, 6 months later! 

We were definitely lucky to have a real estate agent who helped us see through his mess when we looked at the house for the first time. Without her expertise, we probably would have walked in the door and right back out. Thankfully she showed us the potential in this home, and we are so happy she did. We really love it here! If you are every looking for a new home..Julie is the way to go!
 Prudential Page Julie E