luxe chandelier

Our neighborhood has two areas: Parkside and the County Club. We live in Parkside. Most of the homes in Parkside have smaller lot sizes as compared to the County Club so there is not very much open space between the houses, and consequently, not much privacy. The homes are separated by cement block walls to help increase the privacy but unfortunately they are not very attractive to look at.

The house next door went into foreclosure and is up for sale so I’m loving the privacy we have since the owners moved out, but the same ugly wall exists. Anyone want to move in next door? I promise we would be the best neighbors you could ask for!

One day while doing the dishes and staring at the cement block wall outside my kitchen window I thought about how nice it would be to have a hanging planter box full of beautiful flowers to look at.

Tyler told me how he thought he could build one to hang on the wall, but I was reluctant to to go with his plan since he can be like Tim Allen from Home Improvement sometimes! I asked my Dad what he thought and he said he would help us when we got around to it.

On Saturday while I was working on a website, I heard the doorbell and went to answer the door. There I saw my dad standing with a planting box from Home Depot. Aww, what a nice dad! He didn’t have to do that but of course that’s him. He’s always thinking of me and other people. Can we say Happy Daughter’s Day? Just kidding.

So as Dad & Tyler were busy working on securing it to the concrete wall, Mom and I made a quick trip to Home Depot to buy some flowers. There were not a lot of options because Home Depot sucks when it comes to flowers & it’s summer in Arizona.

Isn’t the view so much better now? It’s amazing how a good kitchen view really puts you in a good mood especially in the mornings!

I’m counting this as a new milestone in my life – planting flowers! Later on, I want to try & plant some herbs but that won’t happen until the weather cools down.

I recognize that planting flowers comes with the responsibility of watering them (especially if you don’t want them to die!) but the thought of having to go outside in the backyard and turn the hose on then walk all the way to the side of the house to water the flowers twice a day was not pleasant. I was determined to make it work without having to do that and I found the perfect solution…

…water the flowers from the window! Call me lazy but I love this. It’s actually fun!! I came home from work today and immediately watered the flowers then made some yummy banana bread.

I had an old canvas that I painted a few years ago when we lived in an apartment in college. This was the time when I was in love with everything that was red and black. I’m glad we didn’t throw it away and brought it back to Arizona with us after graduation. It is easy to just paint over it… even if it is for the 50th time!

Anyways, I wanted to repaint it since I’m not into red and black anymore. Luckily for us we had a lot of paint left from painting the house.

So we went from modern…

to simple & feeling right at the beach!

I’m no Da Vinci when it comes to painting. I painted it an off-white color then used the same color we have for the office which is kind of a yellow-ish color. After that.. I have to admit the canvas sat on the floor against the wall for about a month or so. I was waiting for inspiration or the urge to put it up.

One day while cleaning I realized I had some beach decor so why not use them! I got my hot glue gun out and glued the starfish on the canvas. Finally the canvas went up on the wall in our office. If you webcam with me you’ll see this pretty canvas that will make me look like I’m at the beach!

Plan A: Build a fireplace. We didn’t build a fireplace which I originally wanted to. My dad and Tyler convinced me it was going to take forever and a lot of money especially when we didn’t have all the tools we really needed. So there went my plan.

Plan B: Craigslist. After only a few minutes of searching, I immediately found one I fell in love with. We went over to the owner’s house and purchased it from him. We felt bad for the guy that lived across the street – he was supposedly having a garage sale and had been sitting outside for a while hoping people would come by and no one did. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy seeing his neighbor sell a fireplace in less than 5 minutes.

The fireplace was dirty & almost a yellowish color. I swear I thought I took a “before” picture and unfortunately I didn’t… so there’s a picture of what it looks like after we sanded it.

We had paint from a previous project – Behr Premium with Paint & Primer in one. The longest part of the process was hot gluing the marbles on. Before we even did that we placed the marbles on first to see how many we needed for each side and to make sure they were even. Poor Tyler, I accidentally touched his finger with the hot glue gun. Then at the end, I did it to myself! Hot gluing can be messy & frustrating but that didn’t matter anymore after we were finished.

We only spent $100 on this project and that was spent on the fireplace and marbles from Michael’s. We’re in love with it! We’re thinking about getting wood and painting it the same color then put it on to add more thickness to the top. I’m already excited to hang my Christmas stockings up and now Santa Claus can come and leave us presents. It sucks we don’t have room for our Christmas tree in this area. Enough with the Christmas talk. We’re now satisfied with our faux fireplace and fire pit in our backyard that we finally used recently and I absolutely love the smell of burning wood!