'front porch' by sherwin williams

just finished painting the little bedroom, as we call our guest room. i love this color! it was the perfect background to the dresser i painted in annie sloan chalk paint - a gorgeous rich yellow called 'arles.'

sw 'front porch'

'front porch' by sherwin williams

rain barrels

finally got my rain barrels installed! they filled up with only half an inch of rain so i need to design a better overflow system than the short tubes that came in the box. also, the water pressure is pretty low so they probably need better (higher) platforms at some point. but they work!

rain barrel from woodlanddirect.com

rain barrel hiding behind plants

 we got rain barrels for the 3 downspouts furthest from our water spigot so i don't have to keep fighting with 150' of hose each time that side of the garden needs watering. these barrels came with all the parts i needed except for the flexible downspout elbows and platforms (i just used cinderblocks) and they were only $109 with free shipping - a steal compared to the $199 home depot wanted for the same model!
this is my fav barrel because it's so hidden, the others need some camo and beautifying. but they're the ones on the back of the house...so no rush :)

and here's a photographic garden update for your viewing pleasure....

foundation garden is taking off...

flower carpet rose

brakelights red yucca - insanely pretty

nothing so rewarding as gathering a basket full of fresh flowers to arrange in little bouquets all over the house!

diy window muntins

i've been researching the best way to add some sort of grille design to our front windows, and stumbled on a few sites that suggested using pvc screen trim from home depot as it is cheap, durable, easy to cut and only 1/4 inch thick (so it won't interfere with the operation of the windows.)

the other day i suddenly decided i'd pondered enough. it was time to get some trim and silicone adhesive and see what happened. 

here was some of my inspiration from the Internet:

as you can see i wanted something different than the standard colonial style:

standard colonial muntins

here is our house before, with no window trim - just big dark windows.

first i tried doing only one piece of trim, but i didn't love this for our size/shape of window:

 so i went with two vertical pieces of trim, and here's the result!

this was one of my easiest projects - 10 minutes and a few bucks worth of trim. i love how the white trim balances the brick side of the house with the white screen porch. and unless you get your magnifying glass out, it's pretty hard to tell they aren't 'real' muntins.