Green Thumb Part 2

Before I get to more of our yard projects…

Thank you so much for all the congratulations :)  It’s such a relief to have that behind me.

Happy 4th of July weekend everyone!!!  I’m currently up in NH at the inlaws house!  Today is Brian’s sister’s bday, and tomorrow is one of his best friend’s birthday’s so we are usually up here for the 4th.

Before we headed up north, I went to a steamy HOT yoga class this morning.  I’m running a 5-mile road race tomorrow morning, so I ‘figured yoga would be a good pre-race workout.  Let’s hope this years run goes a little better than last years!!  Last year was my first road race ever…and this thing has HUGE hills, so I really didn’t know what I was getting into.  Although it’s going to be H-O-T tomorrow so I don’t think I’m going for any records haha!

After yoga I grabbed some Basil from our garden to add to my breakfast :)

I give you Tomato + Basil + Goat Cheese + egg sandwich

Oh yeah…

I added some chopped basil right into the egg and then a couple leaves fresh on the sandwich.

   

I bet this would be delish with a little slice of mozzarella as well :)

I see a little yellow summer squash starting to grow!!  Can’t wait to have veggies to eat!!

Now back to the subject at hand…

One of our other tasks that I was excited to tackle at the house was my attempt to DIY-update an old set of outdoor chairs and a table that I received as a hand-me-down from mom. 

Beautiful aren’t they?

This was always part of my master plan for the patio.  I wanted to spend some $$ on a nice conversational set (i.e. our new sectional!), and then try to update the old table and chairs instead of buying new ones. 

I remembered reading this post on Young House Love…another favorite blog of mine!  Didn’t seem too hard, and we really didn’t have anything to lose.  The furniture couldn’t really get much worse ;)

Update old Patio Furniture

This is some serious paint.  In the end we ended up using 5 cans of this spray paint for the 4 chairs and table. 

After reading the instructions from the YHL post, I knew I didn’t want this stuff on my skin, so I made sure to cover up :)

H.O.T.

Now take that image even further and imagine me with blue rubber gloves and saftey glasses…yeah, sexy. 

Lots of fumes, bug spray, weird looks from passer-bys and neighbors, and a few days of drying later…we had ourselves a not-too-shabby patio dining set!

My next step is to find cute colorful outdoor seat cushions, but so far no luck.

There are a few paint drips on the chairs (it was hard getting in between each chair slat), but it’s not too noticeable…and again, a MUCH improvement over the original.               

Other things blooming…our roses! (well these pictures are from like a month ago when the roses  were blooming…it’s been pretty dry the past few weeks!)

I need to cut myself some blooms more often…so pretty, and they grow back SO quick when the weather is good!

And finally my gardening themed iphone cover haha :)

Well I need to get my butt into bed!  Here’s hoping I can get through the hot, hilly, run tomorrow!

Hope you all have a fun 4th! 

Green Thumb Part 1

Time for an update on our yard!

The month of May seemed to be all about yard work…probably the most I’ve ever done :)  I mean weeding alone can occupy many many full days and you’ll never be done!!

We’ve been at our house for 1 year this month!  I’d love to share some of the adventures/projects as new homeowners.

#1 – Vegetable Garden

I always knew I wanted to have a veggie garden.  We didn’t move in early enough last year to really get one going, although we did have a few tomato plants last year and those are always great to have.

We did tomatoes again in the same spot, as that worked out pretty well and we’d have more room for other veggies in the new garden.

 

(this pic was from a few weeks ago.  We now have some green tomatoes sprouting and they’ve grown a lot!)

For our new garden, we did a raised bed.  We build the box ourselves, and it’s 4’x8’ and 8” high. 

The area we chose gets a lot of sun throughout the day which is very important.  The plastic in the picture was there when we bought it to keep weeds at bay, so we cut around it for the bed instead of removing it.

My handyman/yard work champion

Once in place, it was time to buy some veggies! 

We had a gift card to Mahoney’s Garden Center leftover from the wedding (great gift idea btw!!), so we headed there one Saturday morning.

They had SOOOO many things to choose from, it was a hard decision and we really didn’t know how many different items we could fit into our garden.  

Definitely Basil

Look at all these gorgeous basil leaves!!!!!!!!!

This is what an asparagus plant looks like

I bought 1 to see what would happen, but we wont see anything from the plant until at least next Spring.

Thought this was interesting…

A Stevia plant!   Didn’t get one though.

In the end we had a full cart of veggies and herbs

• cucumbers
• green, red, and yellow peppers
• carrots
• mesclun lettuce
• red onion
• zucchini
• summer squash
• asparagus
• snap peas
• basil
• cilantro
• parsley
• thyme
• oregano
• dill
• rosemary
• mint
• chives
• sage

And into the ground they went…

Aside from 1 year with tomatoes, we are both gardening newbies!  So we are figuring that this year is more of a learning experience than anything…but I do hope we have some success!

So far things are going pretty good…not great, but good.  I really need to read up more about each plant and how to take care of them.  It’s also only been 3 weeks so I don’t know how much growth to expect yet.

If anyone has any tips for any of the items we are growing it would be greatly appreciated!! :)