Evolution of Style

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Banishing Weeds - My Outdoor Nemesis

Hello!

I hope you all had a glorious weekend. For the first time in awhile, we had sunny, beautiful weather, the entire weekend. I worked in the yard a lot this weekend, and have the sore back to prove it. It's really a nice change of pace from work, where things are so busy and stressful. Getting outside in the fresh air and just focusing on the work at hand is really rewarding.

On the topic of yardwork, let's get down to business. Do you have a weed problem? Sometimes I think Mother Nature just likes to play games with me since I struggle with getting my hydrangeas to bloom, but yet, I can't eradicate weeds to save my life.

Let me introduce you to something that has made my weeding problem more manageable. Landscape fabric.

I tested it out last year in a small area around our mailbox that had these vine-like weeds that had a network of roots like the NYC subway system. Ridiculous. It went from looking something like this:

To this (taken last year):

And I'm happy to report, that it still is virtually weed-free.

So, now that we're in the process of getting the yard mulched, I am on a mission and have been putting this stuff down all over the place. We have some beautiful rose bushes that get lost with all of the weeds that like to hunker down in there. So, it's a double whammy for me - trying to pull prickly weeds amid thorny rose bushes.

Here's what it looked like before I got to work:

And now:

I can't wait to have all of the mulch put down to finish it off. But for now, I'll take my victories where I can get them.

The areas that have been completed are looking so pretty.

Things are looking up in the landscaping area. Take a look at one of my hydrangeas... Yes, those are BLOOMS that you see!

What are your weed-banishing tricks?

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

A New Room to Share - My Boy's Room

Hello friends!

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend and are easing into the new week. Mother's Day was a rainy one from a weather perspective, so I didn't get outside like I wanted to, but it was kind of nice to chill out and relax.

I don't blog much about my two boys' rooms, mainly because I usually avoid them for obvious reasons. Let's face it - Boys. Are. Messy. Isn't it frustrating to find potato chip bags in their closets and Moonpie wrappers under their beds? What? Yours don't do that? Well, my boys are messy (and evidently, sneaky as well).

It's a fine balance between asking and nagging my boys to keep their rooms presentable, but they look so nice when they're all cleaned up. My younger son is a little better about keeping his room semi-organized, so I'll start with his room.

Here is how it looked when we first moved in:

You can't tell by looking at this picture, but there were a lot of little holes in the walls that needed to be patched, so we ended up painting before we moved in.

A work in progress - at one point, we had his twins beds set up like this because one of the two twin headboards was way too big for the space. And yes, I did paint the walls - the colors are just very similar.

See - too big. Especially since I wanted to put the beds parallel to each other. Just couldn't make it work.

That big headboard has since been sold on Craigslist, and I replaced it with this old school looking headboard/footboard.

I sanded it down in an effort to get the chipped paint removed in order to repaint.

I really like the natural look of this, but since I couldn't get all of the paint sanded off, I didn't leave it in its natural state. I painted it navy blue, but it looks like a crazy royal blue in the photo I have, so I'll spare you that - it looks much better in the room (although I'm still tempted to repaint it in an oil-rubbed bronze color).

We purchased a dresser from Ikea, that fits in between the beds perfectly. This set up is MUCH better.

The football mural fits in perfectly - a great fit for this wall.

No kid's room is complete without some whimsical artwork. This is by the same artist whose art is in the adjoining Jack & Jill bathroom. I just love it - so fun and full of character.