First of all, seriously 10 days? and seriously they had to send that to us NOW while we were in the middle of doing our backyard? Our front yard has looked the same for so long and now they say it’s a problem.

Don’t get me wrong…we wanted to add more plants in the front yard eventually but wanted to do the backyard first.

BUT we couldn’t just buy any plants we wanted to add to the front yard. HOA has a long list of plants that we are only approved to have. So we made a trip out to the nursery to buy plants from the approved list.

This is what our front yard looks like, promise you won’t laugh at how bare it is!

When we got home, we decided on where the plants should be in the yard then my dad and Tyler started digging. I went inside to do some work on the computer for a while and came out to the kitchen. The guys were sitting at the table all sweaty and drinking water. I asked them how it was going and they said they ran into a problem. As they were digging, they ran into a big rock and couldn’t get it out.

I joked that I could get the rock out by myself. They scoffed and continued talking while I went to see if I could do it. I kept thinking about how cool it would be if I really did to prove them wrong! I decided to dig dirt out around the rock and used the shovel to try pushing the rock up. The rock started cooperating with me!

The guys finished up and Tyler delivered the rock. We decided to keep the rock and it’s now in the front yard by the tree.

Stay tuned for how the front yard looks. We have been watering them as much as we can until we can get our drip system working.

But here’s a sneak peak of my favorite agave plant.

The colors are so pretty and it looks orange when we water it. Now it’s time to finish the backyard.

I’m back with a most recent DIY project we just did! We had a broken wood baby gate sitting in our garage for a while. No, not because we have a baby but because we have a puppy that won’t stop getting into the cat litter box. But this gate we had was a really cheap $5 gate from Walmart that didn’t even last longer than 2 days.

Tyler was cleaning out the garage the other weekend and asked me what I wanted to do with the gate. Immediately a light bulb turned on and I thought of a project! I wanted to rip it apart and spray paint it and hang my earrings on it.

And so that is what we did!

Isn’t it so pretty? I love it! Want to know what happened to the other gate? Tyler spray painted it black and says he wants to use it. He’s not sure yet what he’ll use it for. I’m hoping it’ll stay in the garage or his man cave.

Ever since we got our new west elm chandelier up above the farm table, our (Knappa) light fixture from Ikea was laying on the floor in the living room. Tyler was cleaning up one day and asked me what to do with the light fixture. I jokingly said that we should replace it with the shade on our floor lamp in the family room.

I walked into the office to answer some emails and came back out to the family room to see Tyler using pliers to take the shade & parts off of the floor lamp. This is where I went crazy on Tyler asking him why he just did that! Now if the Knappa didn’t look good on the floor lamp then we’re shadeless.

I left the room again because I couldn’t watch him do it. He came in the office and told me he was done and I was nervous to see how it looked.

I actually was surprised to see that I liked it. It’s cute and I’m happy that we’re able to use it instead of just storing it in the closet/garage with no use for it. I’m proud of my hubby since this was entirely his project!

So last week I was talking to Missa Lee about it at work. She immediately looked on craigslist and the first post she found was a woman who was selling a farm table that she made. It was perfectly priced and just the table we wanted! She and her husband made a similar table to the one from Restoration Hardware for $2,245.

I immediately emailed her and learned that she and her husband were building tables to raise money for their adoption in Congo. I really loved the table and it was a nice touch to it knowing where our money was going towards. We made plans to pick it up with my dad’s car. Really…my dad is amazing for helping us with getting the table. Thanks, dad!

We didn’t waste time once we got it into the house. The table was already sanded so all we had to do was stain it. But I kind of didn’t want to stain it. Tyler on the other hand wanted to. He convinced me to stain it…. more specifically the color, dark walnut.

I was nervous since I didn’t want it to be too dark. You know how it is…the longer you leave the stain on without wiping it, the darker the wood will get. We decided to start staining the bottom of the table so we had some room for error. I didn’t wait too long before wiping it off and it turns out it was too light and I didn’t like it. So we left the stain on for about 20 minutes or so.

Don’t let this picture convince you that Tyler did all of the staining. I did pretty much 85% of the work. I know his little game of being slow and watching football at the same time on TV. He knows I’m fast and focused so I ended up doing most of it.

Yikes! Look at how dark it looks with the stain on for a long time.

Wiping off the stain was Tyler’s job. :) The next morning we put fast-drying polyurethane (semi gloss) on the table. We did about 3 coats and that was it!

Now look at this beauty! Notice something else too?

The new rectangle hanging capiz that I got for Christmas!

Here’s what it looks like with the light off.

I just looove it! After my dad and Tyler got the pendant up, we realized that it was too high so they’re going to fix it later this week and add more rods that came with the package so it’ll be lower.

Seriously this is the best multi-purpose table! For eating, holding cards while playing card games, beer pong and ping pong! Want to come over now?

This is what it looked like before. That table has been moved to the formal dining room for a little hang out spot next to the foosball table.

And this is what it looks like now! The table was $265 and we only spent $35 on supplies (stain, brushes & tarp cover). Total cost of the project: $300!!

I still have my dad’s old school C9 lights that he gave me a few years ago. Last year I filled them up in a vase and this year I wanted to do something different.

Lately I have been obsessed with glitter so I thought why not?! So I bought Martha Stewart’s glittering glue & glitter from Michael’s for the project.

I used a paper plate to shake the excess of glitter off then waited until there was a lot of glitter to pour it back into the bottle. Now I want to sprinkle glitter on everything else in the house!

I wanted to hang these bulbs up in the family room. So I did it the easy way with tying them with hemp that I had in my closet from other projects.

I love it! It’s worth all the glitter that I got on myself and Cheerio, the pup! I still have a lot of more bulbs left that I’ll use around the house. Let’s hope I don’t go overboard with decorations for Tyler’s sake. :)

I found a photo of bats online {sorry, I can’t remember where now} and printed out a bunch of them. After cutting them, we put double-sided tape and put them in the hallway and on both sides of the front door.

It’s always a fun project when we save money by using the things we already have. I’m not a huge fan of going out to buy Halloween decorations just for the month. I need to save my money for Christmas decorations since that’s my favorite holiday anyways.

Mini pumpkins, Halloween subway art & candy corn. I hate candy corn so I’m fine with just using it as decoration or for others to eat.

Now all we need is for the weather to cool down. 100 degrees is NOT okay!

I have always wanted to do something with chalkboard paint in our house but I didn’t really know where or what. After talking with some friends & Tyler, I was told myself that I had to do it before I changed my mind.

The original plan was to do it on the pantry door but it’s so small and I wasn’t really feeling it. Then we both saw the wall in between the kitchen & living room and knew it had to be on that wall.

We made a trip to Home Depot and bought chalkboard paint, wood for the framing and paint.

This project was really easy and painless! We did a second coat after letting the first coat dry for 4 hours per the instructions.

Tyler did the painting while I painted the wood with metallic paint by Martha Stewart. After they dried for a few hours, Tyler cut them up and then nailed them into the wall.

We’re so happy with how it looks! Now we can use it to chalk up reminders, grocery lists and pretty much anything. I love that I have been catching Tyler looking at it with pride. Doing projects ourselves really makes us feel good and accomplished considering that it has been a while. Now I’m hoping we will do another project soon!

I love the pinwheels that Mrs. Priss made! She made them herself and posted a tutorial on her blog. I thought I’d give it a try and do this since it’s a cheap and fun project. I didn’t have anything for the center of the pinwheels so I used dimes. Not bad, huh?

I love mustard yellow & pink! I told Tyler we need to add more pink to our house because he wouldn’t let me before. I’ve added some color of orange (his favorite color) to the house so now I have pretty pink pinwheels in our house. As of adding more pink and going pink-crazy, I guess I’ll have to wait until we have a baby girl some day. No, sorry this isn’t a hint. No babies for us yet! :)

I loooove it! Now I get to go pink-crazy this weekend because I’m in charge of decorating for my sister’s graduation party on Saturday.

I hope you all have a fabulous Memorial Day weekend – any fun plans? I’ll be spoiling my sister and getting some sun!

So let’s talk about our faux fireplace! I’ve been longing to hang something up above it but nothing came to mind until last week when all of my creative juices were pouring out! I wholeheartedly blame it on pinterest and having a new co-worker at work who loves doing DIY projects too.

I have a tall stack of magazines…mostly West Elm magazines. I didn’t know what to do with them but couldn’t bear the thought of throwing them out. All of their pictures and products are so pretty! I decided to rip out my favorite pages and then Tyler rolled them up like cones. We had a whole bunch of heavy poster boards from college so we cut it in a round shape. Then I hot glued the cones on on the edges.

I looooove it! I know the mirror isn’t centered but whatever, I love it that I could care less about the position of the mirror.

Our faux fireplace for the Spring/Summer! See those fillers? Those took forever to make with styrofoam balls and hemp twine. It was worth it because there’s no way I’m buying $15-$20 for just 4 of them when I can make them myself.

We have our sand unity vase on top of the fireplace and I don’t like how there’s no cover for it. So I made a little felt flower and put it on top for now.

We had another vase to use so I thought I’d use more paper cones but with bright colors this time.

I love how we made sure that ‘West Elm’ was going to be visible when we did it cone style.

I’m on a roll here with projects!

Inspired by Flower Patch Farmgirl

Once I saw Flower Patch Farmgirl’s post, I knew I wanted to try this. I needed a break from being on the computer and watching TV. So this was the perfect solution!

Now all I had to do was find something pretty to cut up. I then remembered that I had books from Sabrina Ward Harrison that I bought a few years ago. Without any hesitation, I torn out my favorite pages. It was either making my wall pretty or just keeping the books stored in the closet. I chose to make my walls pretty of course!

I didn’t have a heart punch so I went with the manual method of folding and cutting heart shapes myself. I put them together and taped it together on the front and back. Once I finished that, Tyler hot glued the pennies on for me.

Now I wanted these to go up on the wall where there is an intercom which makes it kind of hard to decorate around an intercom. So that’s why that wall has been neglected until now. So anyway, we did it the old fashioned way and taped them to the wall since they were not that heavy. After all…a penny weighs somewhere between 2 to 3 grams.

This project only cost me 15 cents….sweet!!! ;)