Outdoor Activities!

Laika wanted to go organic...

We have three palm trees at Laikaland. Two trees beautifully placed in the front, and one random one in the back.  If it wasn't there I would vote for a hot tub, but between that stupid pretty tree and the gas tank, there wasn't much to do in this 12'x12' space in the backyard.  We toyed around with the idea of a pergola accenting the palm tree, but that probably wouldn't have worked out. We finally decided to work around our obstacles and going with raised garden beds for herbs and vegetables. 

For those who have been shopping around Home Depot and Lowe's over the last couple of weeks, if you live up North and you haven't started planting yet, I hope I have given you the tools you need to not spend 400 bucks on stupid pre-built raised beds. I saw those boxes advertised during Home Depot's "Spring Black Friday" sale- waste.

Our raised beds cost a total of 100 bucks including the soil. Maybe $120 if you include the plants because I did score those on the 5/$10 sale during HD's promotional sale. Here's the secret: PICKET FENCING.

We found them on sale at lowes for $1/8ft board. We bought 30 of them and some 2x8 stakes. Cut them to size ourselves and made boxes. Then we bought liner and stapled it to the sides to prevent weeds and seepage. This took us maybe 2 hours total to make. We filled the bottoms of the boxes with top soil, mixed in peat moss, and bought garden soil for the top. (Again, 5/$10, can't beat it).

Most of these projects I wait until we've finished until I post a blog (And some I just haven't had the time to sit down and enter..) but I wanted to show everyone what you can do with some picket fencing wood and some good ol' hard work.  ANDDD if something happens and we need to replace a piece of the boxes, WHO CARES. It's PICKET FENCING! THEY'RE A DOLLAR! Cedar is EXPENSIVE!

We also found a rain water holder at Sam's Club for 70 bucks. We cut and connected the back gutter with a flexible gutter so the rain water goes straight into the holder. Has two spouts to connect a hose and a watering can. I really thought this was genius, but we'll see when the water bill arrives. (The bench connected to the herb bed, just to throw it in there, was totally my idea :D )

Boyfriend of the Year also dug up every sprinkler and capped some/fixed some to utilize our water flow.  Master's degree what? Guy needs to be fixing stuff because he's so damn good at it. Again, keeping. 

In the front of the house, all I needed was a hedger for the bushes, some black mulch and a few plants for color for the mailbox.  It's not yard of the year yet, but it could be in time. :)

 

Someone Told Me To Wait A Year Before I Started Doing Projects...

...and I smiled as I blew all my money at Lowes.

dining room before

I can't really remember the order on how we did the next few
projects, but I'll proudly share what we did. :)

It's starting to get really nice down here so every second I have off I seem to be doing nothing but shopping for these projects or working on them with Tim.  And we've discovered that our development stocked the lakes with bass about 3 years ago and no one fishes them, so we've got a running competition going.

Our first real project fail was shortly after the master closet was finished. I wanted shelves in the 2nd bathroom upstairs over the toilet. I think those over the toilet storage holders look cheap because they ARE cheap so I wanted shelving. There's not much to tell and the pictures would have been embarrassing. Ka-Blam. A total bust. People, if there aren't any studs, there aren't any shelves. :( Whomp.

I also managed to repaint outdoor wicker furniture white.  I started with gray and scratched that idea 4 spray-paint cans in... not my best moments...

It's come to me. The next project Timmy tackled was installing LIGHTING.

We really REALLY hated the light in the kitchen.  The cheap dining room light was tolerable for the time being, but if we were going to do one light, might as well do it all together.

Lighting really wasn't going to be the next thing on the list. It was a big deal and we didn't know what we would find when we took that hideous fluorescent light out of the kitchen.  But we were futzing around at Lowe's and came across the perfect lighting for us.  It was this industrial-looking Allen and Roth set that featured Edison bulbs!  They weren't ridiculously expensive by any means; I've been doing my fair share of internet stalking of good deals. I waited until payday and dropped 400 bucks on 2 pendents, 1 giant pendant for over the dining room table, and a three light island light for the kitchen.

Timmy knew how to do the electrical (KEEPER) and put the pendents up first. INCREDIBLE! He had painted the old pendants before a similar color but there was just no comparison with the Edison bulbs.
Then he put up the light over the dining room... and as much as I had liked the piece in the store, my stomach dropped. It was terrible. And it was so dark in there candlelight would have been brighter.

I really tried to like it... but it was so freaking dark I couldn't live with it so unfortunately for my patient, patient boyfriend, the following morning he had to unhook it and put the island light over it.
He was in surprisingly good spirits until about 6 minutes into disassembling the dining room light I shattered the freaking island light.

So back to Lowes to return two lights, and return with two more identical island lights.  No more slip-ups, and we were finally finished.  We even set the height of the island lights so Tim can pass under both without knocking his head. (For those who know us, that's actually a really big deal)

Fortunately for us, the florescent light was less work than we anticipated. Just a couple of small holes that needed to be patched. Could have been a lot worse, and expensive.

We even have a dimmer for the dining room. Fancy pants! But if you don't know anything about electric work, don't do it yourself- find a buddy!

dining room after