Patio Furniture Makeover

Remember the spray-painting patio furniture project?

Well, I had finished up the painting a few weeks ago, but I was putting off posting pictures because I had yet to find the perfect cushions for them (and of course I need the full shebang!). Have you ever looked for patio cushions in June? Seriously... they are everywhere in April/May, but good luck with that after summer actually hits! But H noticed they had got a new shipment of them at Lowe's one day, so off we went. I found some that I really liked, and voila! Here is the final result of our patio furniture makeover :) What do you think??

A (Hopefully) Rabbit-Proof Garden

We did some more work on the backyard this weekend, and it's coming along slowly but surely. Here is the current state of progress.


While H broke apart the many mounds of dirt we have, to fill in the many gaping holes that we also have, I worked on an enclosure for our vegetable garden.We have a large number of very hungry rabbits in our area, so the enclosure is more for function than to look pretty. We took down a fence that had been dividing the backyard, so I decided to use the remaining pieces of that as the outer part of the enclosure, and wire mesh that we had picked up at the garden store for the inner part. Here we go!

(Materials: staple gun, wire mesh, wire cutters, and old fencing and posts)

I laid each piece of fencing board side up, to have maximum stapling surface. I unrolled the mesh on top, and stapled as close as possible to the bottom and stretched it as far as I could up to the top. It actually reached nicely to the upper cross board (I obviously don't know the proper fencing terms!) so it didn't even look half bad. I also left a little extra mesh at each end- it can be twisted together with the next piece if need be, or tucked in if it's not.


We decided to put the garden in the front corner of our backyard, so we actually only needed to build two sides to the enclosure. After measuring it out, we started with a small piece right against the fence. H nailed it in, and next came the hinged post for the gate.

We dug the hole for that piece nice and deep, filled it in to keep it in place, and connected the gate to the hinges. This one was a little tricky to get the hinges at exactly the right height for the gate to be able to swing open, but not allow too much space underneath for the rabbits to sneak in.


After that, it was smooth sailing- another deep hole for the post with the latch, a long piece of fencing nailed to that, a shallower hole for the corner post, and the last piece of fencing nailed to that. The last piece of the enclosure wasn't reaching completely to the existing fence, so I nailed it to a 4-foot wood stake instead.


I'm quite proud of the little project! Now let's hope it keeps those rabbits out ...

Our New Backyard

Once upon a time, this was our backyard.

There were 25 trees, on just the back 1/3 of our 0.33 acre property. The previous owners didn't do any kind of maintenance back there, so it truly became a forest- brush and branches everywhere, layers upon layers of decomposing leaves, the whole nine yards. And this spring, we are in the process of changing that.

We did a bit of raking. Hi H!

Someone from craigslist is coming to pick up the swing set.

That pile of sticks and branches was from before we even cut any trees down. They were all JUST on the ground everywhere, buried amongst leaves.

As much as it pains me, we needed to cut down some trees. Please note the two terribly awkwardly placed islands at the bottom of the picture. Seriously!

After the tree guys did their thing. Wow, what a difference! The yard looks SO much bigger. And those bags of leaves weren't even one third of what we cleared out.

We disassembled the two islands in the middle of the yard, and are reassembling them on the sides. The first one is done.

The second one is in progress.

I am thrilled that our new backyard is coming along so well. I am excited to put down grass seed and have space to enjoy it this summer. Our future dog is going to love it too :)

I guess it's Time

... to start raking, eh?