Fall Fun

Yes, it’s mid-September but here in Northern Maine, the fall weather hit us this weekend.

I picked up a bunch of mums to swap out my summer annuals, rearranged all of my outdoor vignettes and pulled out the Halloween tote.

Better.  My doors need some attention – and I have something fabulous in mind – but I’ve promised T I’d finish some other projects before starting anything new.

Those poor milk jugs of mine needed some love.  The stone paint had all washed off in the rain.

Fresh paint and a fresh look.

I’d put our old wine barrel in the middle of a flower bed this spring and it ended up being covered by the flowers (I was not expecting 7 foot tall flowers!).  We moved it out to a more prominent position.

We didn’t have any luck with the pumpkins in our garden.  I also haven’t found a new “go-to” pumpkin patch for cheap pumpkins.  So for now, this will do.

We’re getting our Halloween decorations ready with some new homemade goodies.  We’ll put them out in a few weeks but it doesn’t hurt to get ahead of the game in crafting!  My favorite so far?  This repurposed screen headed for the trash:

I found a witch image online to mentally guide myself with, but I freehanded this bad boy.  I’m quite pleased with it.  I have a second trashed screen waiting for a similar treatment.

Enjoy the change in the seasons.

 

I’ve linked up here:

Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes…

When we bought our new old house, we knew we were going to need to do some updating – the windows being one of the needed updates.

We went through last winter paying attention to which windows were in the worst shape and decided which ones to change this year.

Our carpenter is finally here this week.

Before – exterior (excuse the shadows – I forgot to take my pictures until THAT morning – the sun was uncooperative):

Of course with an extremely old house, nothing can be simple.  The new windows are just a hair smaller than the old, which caused issues with the two big windows – particularly with the trim.

Our carpenter came up with a fabulous way to hide the problem – and it makes such a huge impact!

He is still up on the scaffolding working so I cropped him out just to show you the window.  LOOK at that trim!  You can see the difference with the window below it (old window).

The big windows make my heart go pitter patter.

 

T and I have been discussing paint colors.  The decision has finally been made that the house will get color-matched.  The trim will get an off white or cream, similar to it’s current primed color.

Next up, interior trim.  I can’t wait to see what he does for us inside!

A beautiful day to play outside

It was a beautiful fall day outside today. We spent much of our day outdoors. I spent much of that time in just a t-shirt! I love days like this.


Monkey and I spent some time doing some winter preparations. I needed to trim down some perennials and dig up some bulbs. Then I decided to take a few pictures of our fall decorations. Most of these will transition into winter decorations very easily.


The front of the shed has an old busted out window hanging on it (there was glass when I first put it up but a wind storm had the window banging around a bit to much one day.). I finally added the wreath today. It makes it feel finished.


This old bike sits in my flower bed. It is the bike I learned how to ride on. It did have training wheels at one time but heavens knows what happened to them. The basket was an ugly yellow and green. I gave it a spray paint treatment and attached it to the bike to hold flowers. Now it holds apples and pears from our trees. And when the snow flies, I'll put pine cones in.

I also have an old chair in another flower bed. I'll change out the faux (I know!) leaves for some pine and evergreen branches once the snow flies. My father-in-law found the old rusty watering can in the woods on a walk one day and knew I'd love it. He was right.

This poor old rake got tied to a porch rail. T isn't allowed to use it anymore. I should have something on the milk can, but I don't have anything on hand that "goes."

I tried to save money this year by forgoing the mums. I'm hoping to try planting my own next year. We shall see. We also didn't get to go to the pumpkin patch. When T stopped in one evening to check the situation, he was told the picking wasn't very good. So we didn't feel too badly when the timing just didn't work out for us to go.

I've also added to my stairway. The baskets are all full of fruits and veggies. I still haven't found pretty and practical shoe storage, though. I really need to because I spend my days tripping on shoes when I'm going up and down the stairs (it wouldn't be a big deal if my washer and dryer weren't in the basement!).

I got my hanging mirror secured to the wall. I need some hooks but screws are doing the trick for now. I had this painting from my junking trip sitting in my room. I like the unfinished edge and the pop of color it adds. I haven't decided if I'll leave as is or if I'll put a wreath, as I was originally thinking.

I also played with the top of my dresser a little tonight. I got this adorable little thing on my junking trip with my mom back in May. T gave it a paint job for me (when he had me on his own version of modified bed rest) and we changed out the handles for some cute little glass knobs my mom gave me.

The painting was a junk store find. My dad built the frame for me (you're going to see more about this frame soon). I also got the candle holder and silver trays at the junk store. The glass goblets were also from my May junking trip. I don't have much jewelry and it just seemed perfect to store the little I do own on/in. I think it needs something still, but haven't decided what. I'm thinking I may put a glass plate under the candle set up. Yet another one of those things I haven't had the time to try. (Having 2 little ones is so much more work than I expected - but I do love every minute of it).

So there's a peek as to what I've been up to. I tend to get a lot done when I'm not getting much sleep and I've been suffering a bout of insomnia the past couple of weeks. I may have much more to show in the coming weeks. (Hopefully not. I'd rather sleep. haha).

I hope you've all had a wonderful and productive weekend.

PS - I'm linking up with Donna at Funky Junk Interiors for Saturday Nite Specials. Check it out!

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was almost any other day in our house. I called my Mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day and that was about it. T and Monkey let me sleep in a little, but our handyman was coming to install the tile in our bathroom, so if I wanted to shower before he got here I had no choice but to get up early.

We did spend the afternoon together as a family, but that is normal on Sunday. T grilled surf & turf for dinner for a special meal - and informed me what my present is.

The dear sweet man is giving me hours of back breaking labor to fix this:

THIS is the flower bed in front of my house and what it looks like in the spring. It looks so bare and like such a great blank slate, right?

Not really.

This is what it looks like later in the summer. It's not terrible, but it's much more overgrown for my taste. I've been trying to weed it and create a nice cultivated look since we bought the house five years ago. It all just keeps coming back.

T told me to dig out the plants I want to keep (I do like some!). He will then dig out the rest of the bed. I have a small budget to haul in fresh loam and to pick out and buy new plants with! I'm so excited by this prospect. I've been trying to figure out exactly what I want to do. I have a feeling I'll be spending quite a bit of time at the nursery.

Work begins sometime next week because this weekend (weather and interior projects permitting), I'm taking off for a belated Mother's Day girls weekend with my Mom. We're taking off on Friday for the night, just the two of us, for a small antiquing/junking road trip we've been wanting to take for years.

I'll tell you all about it next week!

Meet the girls!

I'd like to share with you a few images of our new backyard beauty. (Read that dripping with sarcasm). Yes, we will be doing something to pretty it up some so it's not an eye sore, but for now, it will have to do.

First - the inspiration photo from Mother Earth News:


And now, our (T's) interpretation:

This is the back, behind the nesting boxes. These are doors for us to collect eggs from (latches have since been installed). Note the two small handles for T to cart the coop around the yard with (I think the big handle bar would have been easier, but what do I know?).


This is the larger, main door. T can get in and out from here for cleaning, feeding and watering (latches have since been installed here as well).


And here is the door for the chickens to get in and out into their pen through.


Monkey did enjoy helping T build the pen (she did do some hammering on the coop itself, too).
(I don't know what the red dot is - I probably lost control of the paintbrush while brushing out my license plate. Oops.)


Like I said - it's not pretty. But I'll take care of that later (I do have bigger fish to fry right now).

I'm thinking T needs to make the big door look like a barn door (this will also mimic the doors on our big shed). I'm also thinking I want to give it a clapboard type look - or put wood shingles. We'll see what I can find for free/cheap in the coming months (I also need to keep it LIGHT since T will be lugging the thing around the backyard!).

What are we looking at?


Oh? HI!
Meet Tallulah (red), Maisy (white), Carmella (white), BBQ (black), Stew (black) and Pot Pie (black). T knows the breeds - I do not. Deal with colors. HAHA They are 9 weeks old today (so no eggs for a little longer - if memory serves, I believe it's around 20 weeks they start to lay).


Who needs TV when you have chickens?


I'll admit it. I was laughing at him when I took the picture, but did join him once I'd put the camera away. We've been sitting out there quite a bit since Sunday.

So far, they've decided to stay in the coop all day but sleep in the pen at night. Weird birds. T needs to set them up a roost in the coop. A coworker of his who raises chickens said that will probably help them figure things out.

Welcome to the Farm!

Home Remodeling for CHEAP

I'm cheap.

Yes, that's right. And I have no problem admitting it. I'm cheap.

I have this grand delusion in my head that we'll some day move back to Fort Kent. Pipe dreams don't cost anything, so I'll keep dreaming them (I told you, I'm cheap!).

If we're ever going to sell our house (or if I'm going to be happy with how it looks if I'm living here for the rest of my life), we need to do some upgrades.

Our house was built in 1975 as part of a small subdivision. Thank goodness subdivisions then included a bit more land and a bit more privacy from the neighbors. The 2nd owners put all new windows, siding and decks in 1997 (I know this because the invoices for these things were given to us when we purchased). The people we purchased the house from only did cosmetic work as they only owned the place for 2 years.

Then we came along.

This is our house when we bought it.

Cute enough, right? It was affordable and it had potential (and my goodness I've lost a lot of weight since that picture!).

We didn't do much before moving in. We painted the ceilings, our bedroom and cleaned from top to bottom. That fall, we had to replace the roof. We shopped around and purchased all of the supplies, rented a dumpster and had a Roofing Party. Our father's, 2 of my uncles and one of T's best friends all came down to give us a hand (I hope I'm not forgetting anyone - it's been a few years!). My dad and T ripped off the old roofing on Friday. By noon on Saturday, they were over half done. My mom and aunt helped me keep a supply of food available and I made a feast for that night as a thank you. They all knew what they were doing and it was MUCH cheaper than hiring a contractor.

After going through our first winter here, we knew what had to be done next. The doors were original to the house and they were drafty. We spent months doing our research and shopping around again before making our purchase. Money well spent. We no longer have a draft and they look really nice! We hired a self-employed carpenter to install - and T helped him to help cut down on time/man power.

Before (check out the old front door):

We didn't do anything to the exterior of our home last summer. We had our hands full just learning how to be parents so we didn't take on any extra curricular activities.

This year was probably the biggest year yet. It was the least expensive and had the biggest impact.

I convinced T we needed to change the shutter and deck colors. Apparently, after 10 years together, he still doesn't know me very well. He immediately poo-pooed the project because it would be too expensive. Silly husband thought I wanted to actually replace the shutters. That would have been a hefty price tag because every window in our house has shutters.

Replace? No way.

Paint.

My father has a paint sprayer. So we borrowed it and T went to work (he wouldn't trust me with a paint project of this magnitude, of course).

After 1 can of primer, 1 1/2 gallons of paint for the shutters and 2 gallons of paint for the decks, our house looks completely, 100% like a different house. (And the man now agrees with me that it was a fantastic idea - he needs to learn to not doubt me! ha) I also took some of my "play" money and replaced the exterior lights.

I present to you, our new house:



A cozy look for less than $200.

Now if I could tame the flower beds....

Outdoor fun

One of my favorite things to do is to decorate. Whether it be "permanent" or seasonal, I just love the planning and implementing. We put out our pumpkins, mums and cornstalks a few weeks ago, but now it's time to put out the spooky stuff!

Monkey and I spent a couple of hours playing outside today. Perfect fall weather is the best!

Because money is obviously an issue (the lack of unlimited funds can be such a downer - HA), I'm at the point in life where I create small vignettes. Over the years, I'll slowly build my supply of decorations so that I can go hog wild but for now, I think smaller.


My current favorite display area is our old wine barrel. We picked this barrel up our first year in the house to use as a rain collector to use to water our flowers. That same year, West Nile virus started to be an issue so when it got put away that fall, it stayed put away. I pulled it back out this summer, plugged up the hole we had made in the top (no standing water for those pesky mosquitoes here!), and I've used it to display flowers. I did have a pumpkin on top but it was all rotten and fallen in on itself when we got home this weekend. Our first pumpkin casualty.


My second favorite is the chair. I need to put a board in where the old seat is so that it's level, but it will do until I find the time to fix it. This chair is one of a pair I bought at a yard sale for $10 a few years ago. My plan had been to fix them up, paint them and put a new seat and use them in my kitchen (at the time, I had 70's rolling chairs at my kitchen table.. UGH). T had been threatening to burn them, so I put them in MY yard sale this summer. One sold and I was left with this. I then had the brilliant idea to put it into my flower beds. The moose antler is the last one T found while he was working summers for Irving Woodlands in college. It's been sitting next to our shed since we bought the house, so I decided to put it to use as well.

My front steps still need something. I haven't decided what will be going there, but this is what we have for now. I saw an article in Martha Stewart Living last fall about plastic skeletal pieces and covering them with glitter to make them eerie to display on glass platters and in glass cake stands. I'm not up to glitter projects with Monkey just yet, but I liked the concept. So I filled my big glass cookie jar with water, put in some food coloring and plopped in a plastic skull. I need to get more water into the skull so it sinks all the way to the bottom, but I doubt I'll find the time for that. ha ha

Also, if you notice to the right of the steps, I have an old metal milk jug. My father in law had a pair in his basement for years and he gave them to me a couple years ago. For some reason, I had it in my head to paint them white. So Trooper T sprayed them white for me. I realized quickly that white didn't work and found this great looking paint at Home Depot in Bangor when the old store was closing. Paint on clearance. Great! No. Not great. Rust-Oleum American Accents Stone paints are horrible. T complained about the coverage (if we had been smart we would have used black spray primer, but we had white on hand). And look how the paint has washed away on the top! We put them out just a couple of weeks ago. Hurricane Kyle came through and washed the new paint off! I liked the look, while it lasted. But I will not be using this paint again - ever. And at $10 a can, it should work!

Back to the spooky decor. Here is Monkey helping me bury fake skeletal bones. I found an idea in one of the many magazines I read on making fake headstones out of styrofoam coolers. I had already purchased these at the Dollar Tree, but next year, we'll make a couple more so we can make a larger "graveyard" out front.

My last little area is right in front of our side deck. I saw something similar in a magazine years ago and had ripped it out to file away in my ideas binder. It needs another punch of color but I don't currently have anything to put there. Maybe next year I'll remember to buy one extra mum. You can also see a small white spot on the front of this metal jug as well. It didn't get as horrible a beating as the one in the front of the house, though.

We're hoping for another wonderful day on Thursday so we can make a scarecrow or 2 (or a family of them, if I'm really ambitious). We also need to make and hang a few (or bunch) of ghosts from the trees out front.

This weekend, we attack the interior Halloween decorating. Should be fun. I have a project for making cheese cloth ghosts with a sugar and water "glue" that I plan to let Monkey get messy with.

*mental note - don't wash kitchen floor until the ghosts are made*

Fall

Fall is by far my favorite season. When I see the mums appearing outside, I know it won't be long before we have the pleasantly cool weather and the changing of the leaves. With fall comes the funnest holiday... Halloween!

In the past, when fall rolled around, I'd decorate with mums and cornstalks. I would forgo the Halloween decorations. It was just T & I, after all, and we are adults now (or so I've been told).

So this September, I'm sticking with my traditional "fall" decorating. But now that we have Monkey and she's old enough to have some fun with it (I'll just keep telling that to myself), October is going to be filled with ghoulish decor!

Last week, I went to buy mums to start the process. Wal-mart has great deals. Here's my first money saving tip for decorating: Hit up Wal-mart early. For $2.50 and $4.50 for mums, the nice ones go quickly. For a total of $25, I have all the fall flowers I need to start the transformation. If you wait too long, you're going to end up with a wilted selection - or need to go elsewhere and pay more.

We have also gone to pick our pumpkins. Money saving tip #2: Find a local pick your own pumpkin patch (a good place to start your search is http://farms.2havefun.com/). Our spot is Rocky Ridge Farm in Corinth. We've been going there since we moved to our house 4 1/2 years ago. In the past, it was $1 per pumpkin, but this year they've upped the price to $1.5o per pumpkin. That is still an insanely cheap price for pumpkins! (This is not per pound - it is per pumpkin!!). For a total of $15, we now have our second phase of our fall transformation.

I'm currently planning the next phase of our transformation.. but that's for another day (and I will share pictures when I finish up).

Back to Halloween. Growing up, my Mom made our costumes (and more often than not dressed up with us). We actually still have one that she made for me out of a suit she wore while pregnant for me. It's a little Indian (Native American, to be politically correct) costume that she lovingly designed and sewed for me to wear as a toddler. It originally was a skirt but she turned it into shorts when it was my brother's turn to wear it. It then got passed on to my aunt's 2 kids and has since made its way back to bro, for C, my nephew, to hopefully wear in the next year or 2. (It won't fit Monkey until she's at least 5 because she's so darn tiny!). So this is one of those fun things I was looking forward to as a parent.

We were gifted at a baby shower, appropriately enough, a monkey costume for last year. So I dressed as a zookeeper and hauled around my little monkey to visit my sister-in-law, friends and co-workers. This year, however, I'm making Monkey's costume. After much consideration and brainstorming, I've settled on her dressing as a Bumble Bee (and, I, obviously, will dress as a Bee Keeper).

I purchased a pair of black tights for her this weekend ($4/pair - ouch - but she can wear them all winter, so I'll still get my money's worth out of them). I also found a long sleeve black t-shirt for $4 with shipping on E-bay. This is the base of her costume. Today, I am going to Wal-mart to buy some yellow fleece - and depending on cost, either black fleece or black ribbon (which ever is more cost effective) to make the stripes. I'm just missing the hat, but I remember seeing a bee antennae headband at Jo Ann Fabrics last week, so I'm going to bring my 40% coupon (sign up for their mail fliers - money saving tip #3!) and see if it's still there.

T is heading north after work tonight to take care of my in-law's firewood (my father-in-law obviously can't cut, split, haul and pile wood this year after having his surgery a week ago). My parents are in Bar Harbor for a couple days but are coming to visit Monkey and I tomorrow (and spending the night before heading back north). Little does my Dad know, I'm sending him outdoors to entertain Monkey so Mom can help me sew my first Halloween costume for my daughter. I look forward to carrying on the traditions my parents made for us as I look back on my childhood fondly.

Besides, I need to enjoy the childhood years before they turn into teenage terror years....