Long time, no blog? 🙂

I figured I’d jump back on the blogging wagon with some simple seasonal decorating. I’m not really one to go big for most holidays except for Christmas, but I love a little Fall decor. We host Thanksgiving each year, so I keep things fall neutral to get a good 2 month stretch out of everything.

First up, the porch. My favorite fall wreath got ruined when our basement flooded during Hurricane Irene in 2011. I went 2 years without a replacement wreath until I spotted this one on clearance at Target about 2 weeks ago.

I added our same old doormat from Target about 3 years ago, some mums and 4 pumpkins, 2 of which Easton painted himself. Can you frame a pumpkin?

You may have noticed that we also changed out our (off center) porch light for this one from amazon.

We still need to put a clear bulb in there. We ordered another for the other porch light, but the glass was broken so we’re awaiting a replacement.

For the entryway table, I just added my usual twine pumpkins from Crate & Barrel several years ago. I mixed in some white gourds. Placement is based solely on the length of a 17 month old’s arms.

I also added some gourds to the powder room, along with some orange towels and a candle. Just call me Martha Stewart over here.

I probably could have folded those towels better. Oops.

Apparently, I lost steam once I got to the inside of the house since the family room got one lone update…

Okay, it got two updates, there’s a pillow on the other side of the couch.

Really, we’ve spent the past several months a) living it up for the summer b) working on that outdoor kitchen and c) decluttering the house and minimizing. I’ve been trying to focus on one thing at a time, which may not be a fun and bloggable thing, but that’s life.

But! The outdoor kitchen was grouted today. Once it’s all haze free and full of appliances, I will be sure to post pictures.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Roar!

This weekend, we finally got started on building the outdoor kitchen we’ve been dreaming of for 3 years.

When we planned out our wood plank stamped concrete patio, we knew that we wanted to add a caddy cornered type of built-in grill. My brother and sister-in-law built their own grill and bar area when they moved into their house about 5 years ago and used BBQ Coach. They sell grill frames, complete with plans, instructions and videos. You basically choose the shape you want, along with how many appliance cut outs, and they send you the parts. When we were ready to pour our patio 2 years ago, we went on the site and chose the New Yorker BBQ Island. With the measurements in hand, we decided how large to make the one curve of our patio.

(via BBQ Coach)

We assembled the frame this weekend, so we finally got to see how it was all going to work out!

I don’t have many pictures or much info to share at this point, but I figured I’d try to keep the progress up to date…And avoid a giant, overwhelming (mostly for me) “after” post. I admittedly did zero work on this, since I was with Easton all weekend while Mike and our friend Steve worked away. Steve’s sister is married to Mike’s brother so he’s kind of related and was more than willing and excited to help us out.

They spent the whole weekend just getting the frame up due to confusing directions and a whole lot of parts.

The frame was 3 rectangular pieces, connected by two 45 degree angles.

The good thing was that a) whenever Mike had a question he could ask my brother, who had built one of these in a different shape a few years ago and b) BBQ Coach responded so quickly to Mike’s emails that it was practically real-time support.

This is where we stand at the moment.

We finally brought out our patio furniture and though the island looks huge, it really works well with the size of the patio. I’ll have to take an aerial shot from Easton’s room one of these days, but we even have room to keep space behind the grill to add some bar stools. We could have done without that element, but we wanted it to feel nice and cozy out there.

Up next we have to decide how thick of a counter top we’re adding to finish out the frame. We want to do a concrete one and bought the thicker steel to support it. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how to make one, or my concern, how to actually get it up on the frame since it’s going to be so heavy.

Then it’s adding concrete board, stone to the bottom, a backsplash and appliances. Who tackles a giant project two weeks before hosting a large first birthday party and having out of town guests? We do. I accepted a while ago that we are not logical thinkers. I just roll with it now.

We have a lot of major projects brewing around here. One of them is a first birthday party and another one is this…

We finally pulled the trigger and ordered a build your own outdoor kitchen kit. That picture is one I Photoshopped for our “planning it out” post 2 years ago. It shipped today and we may be certifiably insane.

But it should be fun, right? RIGHT??

::deep breaths::

About a year ago, I pinned this picture on Pinterest…

(from Tar Paper Crane via Pinterest)

It got me thinking about painting our front door, which is currently the same brown color as our shutters (this is an old picture from the fall).

Then I saw this picture on Pinterest and I loved the blue door with the blue hydrangeas.

 (from House of Turquoise via Pinterest)

So I started thinking that color could work because we also have blue hydrangeas. I love them, so why not make them stand out a little more? Btw, look at how big they are now after just 2 years!

After teaching Mike what robin’s egg blue was, I did a little Pinterest search to find some more inspiration. Why not share, eh? Since I don’t have much time for projects, I spend a lot more time brainstorming and googling for ideas these days 🙂

#1. Love this blue gray color, so classy

(from Pink Wallpaper via Pinterest)

#2. We’ve even talked about putting some numbers on the door itself, sort of like this (I also love the door itself but buying a new door is not in the plans…)

(from House of Turquoise via Pinterest)

#3. This looks nothing like our house, but fabulous none the less

(from Katy Elliot via Pinterest)

#4. Nice and clean, and looking more like our door

(from Desire to Inspire via Pinterest)

I’ve been itching to spruce up our front porch (replace the lights, get a bench, do some cleaning). Why not add another goal to the list? We just started giving Easton bottles, so maybe once this heat wave ends I can spend some quality time out there. I mean, it’s been almost a year since I pulled a weed myself 🙂

I mentioned last week that we desperately needed some mulch. Okay, I’ve been mentioning for the past year that we desperately needed some mulch. After all, our front yard was looking like this…

And this…

So last week, Mike drove around looking for mulch places. We actually did this last year, since the first year that we moved in we used bags of mulch in the middle of July and it was aw.ful. It took a lot of bags and many weekends in 90 degree weather, so we wanted to get some yards of mulch delivered. The problem we came across last year was that there was no landscaping supply place close enough to our house to qualify for free delivery. Every single place wanted $50 to deliver, so we finally decided to suck it up. Unless we wanted to pull weeds constantly like we did last year (uhhh no thanks), we didn’t have too much of a choice.

Mike ordered 3 yards of dark brown mulch, which was delivered at 8am this morning.

He worked at putting the mulch down all day and by the time I got home, the pile looked like this.

The 3 yards we ordered was just enough to cover everything out front in a nice, thick layer.

Not only did Mike slave over a hot stove pile of mulch all day, but he told me he planned to surprise me by planting some new flowers. Unfortunately, he ran out of steam, but I am just happy to finally have some mulch!

I would still like to add some things to our landscaping, especially on this side.

We added those tiny little daylilies here last year, but the rest of the bushes are near death. We also need to add some plants to the area in front of the garage where we pulled up those flat fern things that I hated at the end of last season.

Overall though, at least we’re no longer at a messy point. I just wanted to at least be able to maintain what we have after the baby comes. Not having to pull weeds is a major plus!

Keep it coming spring, we need some more blooms like this…