New mailbox topper

Our old mailbox had some personality. Unfortunately it wasn't quite our style and as you can see was falling apart.

 

When Mom and Jimmy came to visit a month ago the Saturday project for the guys was to work on the mailbox.

They got it to this point but it was my job to pick out a paint color. It only took me a month :) It was a hard choice because we have intentions of painting the house some day and it will be a slightly different color. So I didn't want to match the mailbox to the house exactly. I finally decided on a color to paint the house, which in turn helped me pick the mailbox color. Okay, too much typing,  here it is...

As you can see it's a warmer darker gray- it has more green undertones than red. It's one shade darker than we plan to paint the house but the color is really growing on me so we'll see!

Baby Nursery- White trim and a shade

We are expecting a baby girl in November which means our guest room will turn into the baby's room. Even though I have zero energy this pregnancy, I've managed to get a few projects for her room done (definitely some nesting kicking in). I painted the trim in the room from oak to white. The difference is amazing.

Before

Current. Sorry it's super hard to get a decent picture of this room because it's tiny!

I also made the shade. It's a relaxed roman shade. Right now it's just faux because we have a room darkening roller shade under it. I have intentions of making it a real movable roman shade eventually once she is big enough to know not to play with the cords. So it's just for looks now but I'm happy with the fun pattern it brings in the room. Fabric is from Tonic Living, I love that store! And in case anyone is interested I followed this tutorial mostly but instead of using glue I sewed it so I could covert it later.

Hopefully, I'll be able to finish all my other plans for this room before she makes an appearance :) Here's whats on the list:

• Set up new crib (LONG story,  but my old crib got recalled in 2010 and amazingly after 2 hours on the phone and an hour in the store I was able to return it for a full refund! Time well spent!) 
• Paint old dresser. The new crib is white so I want to paint the dresser we have white to match. 
• The carpet in the this room is so worn and yucky. Replacing the carpet is not in the budget so I'm going to cover it with an area rug for now. 
• DIY a starburst mirror.
• Have the boys paint a picture for hanging above the dresser. We'll see how that goes :) 

Garden- August Update

I can't believe it's August already. We're harvesting lots of veggies each day which means getting creative with dinners. Most of what we've picked we have eaten right away but I've managed to make tomato sauce and blanched/frozen green beans for later.

 Cucumber vines are in the back. They are huge! But for some reason haven't really been too prolific with yields yet. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Lemon squash is a keeper. If you live in an area with squash bugs grow this plant! It's still going strong and I'm getting at least 1-2 squash per day.

I've also had a ton of success with Beurre De Rocquencourt Bush Wax Bean- great producer and I've been harvesting for at least 4 weeks. My other "kitchen king" and purple beans pale in comparison.

Building Compost Bins

For a while I've been asking Cam about building a place for me to start some making compost. When we first moved in I was throwing our kitchen scraps etc. in a heap in the woods. It didn't work out to well because it spread out naturally and just blended with the existing soil.

We are pretty much always working on a budget so my number on priority was that it be functional and cheap. I had this in mind.

                                          

Image from here

It would have worked just fine. But I also kind of wanted something where I had several spots for the compost. One for fresh stuff, one for cooking compost, and one for finished compost. There are lots of available plans online but they require a ton of wood. We estimated the cost of one of them and it would have been $150 just for the untreated wood! Regular untreated pine around here rots in about 3 years. It wouldn't have been worth it. 

Cameron said he had a plan and it turned out awesome. Total cost was $50 and it's made completely of cedar that will match our current fence and last so much longer. 

Cameron made this little drawing on the driveway for me so I could get an idea of the scale. 

Here is the start of the bins. 

 The finished product! We used extra scrap cattle fencing and chicken wire from leftover from building the garden fence. Cam saved money by just hammering the wire right into the ground rather than using extra wood as many plans required.

More landscaping

I mentioned in last weeks post Cam does stuff at super fast. It's definitely a good thing. But here I have some landscaping updates and no "before" pictures really.

Next to the propane tank, the previous owners planted forsythia bushes. They were literally 10 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It was difficult to walk around that corner of the house without hitting them. After a failed attempted to pull one out with the rope and the truck, Cam chopped them with the chainsaw.

As you can tell in the picture, the dirt area is how much space they covered. We gained back a ton of lawn. Unfortunately, the propane tank happens to be a huge eyesore. It looks worse than when we started so maybe it's good I have no before picture :)

We toyed around with the idea of a better looking fence around the propane tank. But we nixed that idea because we already have so many structures in the backyard. So for now I'm thinking a smaller plant to cover it would be good. Or at least something functional. I was hoping to plant some blueberry bushes here but it may not get enough sun. If that doesn't work I think we'll do some sort of ornamental grass maybe.

Update #2 is another chopped tree and more lawn space.

After the stump gets chopped down the rest of the way we will level out the last 10ish feet of lawn behind the shed as best we can.

#3 is more of a garden update. I've been looking for a natural way to preserve the cedar fence without it putting a bunch of chemicals in the soil and consequently our food. From web searches it seems linseed oil is the best thing. You can buy boiled linseed oil from your local hardware store but it has turpentine in it to help it dry faster. So not any more healthy than a staining your fence. I ordered this linseed oil from here.

 Here is a before. The fence is naturally graying and I don't think the oil will help too much with that but it does preserve the wood for longer.

Here is the after. I finished the outside but still need to work on the inside. You have to work around the weather as this stuff takes 4 days to dry!

Another Day, Another Tree

A certain corner of my garden was getting to much shade, old news right? I guess that's what you get when you live in a forest :) or something like it. Seriously though, Cameron loves getting out the chainsaw and all I have to do is say the word and he's out there chopping something it down. Sometimes so fast I don't even get to take a "before" picture.

We have this massive oak tree adjacent to the garden. Cameron thinks he could chop the whole thing down but I'm a bit worried about *ahem* the house. So we agreed to limb it up a bit instead. There was one branch in particular causing all the trouble. The only problem was it was about 35ish feet high. Yeah, no problem for crazy Cameron. He just grabbed his latter, then a rope, and tied it over. He tied knots in it (like in gym class) then climbed the rest of the way up to the branch. Oh and I forgot to mention, without a harness. I about fainted watching him. I'm sure we saved like a couple hundred dollars doing it ourselves but if there was a hospital trip involved it wouldn't have been worth it haha :) I can laugh now {spoiler} he made it out alive.

I took a video too. I was watching to make sure Dax didn't run over to next to the tree so its really shaky. Just watch up to like 40 seconds. You can hear Dax say "wow" :)

Garden- July update

 Hornworms are here, which means careful checking and hand picking everyday. Yuck!

 Tomatillos

 Tomatoes. No red ones yet. Sigh... But they are close.

 Squash. So far I love this variety. Not a squash bug or egg in sight!

 Peppers. The leaves have been yellowing on the bottom of my plants a little bit. I think it's because we've had a ton of rain.

 Green Beans

 An overall look

The fence is working great! I've seen deer out there at least once a week. I'm so glad I don't have to worry about them eating all our food.