outside

Light em up

Posted by matt on Dec 2, 2011 in decor, outside | 0 comments

Another day of decorating, another area of the house…this time, outside. This is a whole new experience for us, we’ve not had the opportunity to decorate the outside before thanks to our dinky apartment. Now, however, we have some wonder bushes to string lights across and light up the neighborhood. The only problem was that the outdoor outlet is around the back of the house. I could have run an extension cord all the way from the back to the front, but I didn’t really want to do that. So, thanks to my dad’s suggestion, I got a little doo-dad from Home Depot for $1 that solved my situation. You see, our porch light isn’t fully enclosed, it has an open bottom, so I got a plug that screws into the light fixture. It looks a little like this:

From there I was able to plug-in a few strands of lights, wrap them around the bushes and our front door. I will say that running strings of lights in the daytime is difficult to see where everything is. In the end, we like it, and we hope our decorative spirit pass to some of the others in our neighborhood. There are a few house that have gone all out, and they look awesome. I may have to steal some of their ideas…and by may, I mean I will.

I’ll try to take some better pictures soon, it was pretty late when I took these, plus I’m not done yet

I screen, you screen! WE HAVE A SCREEN!

Posted by matt on Nov 21, 2011 in outside | 0 comments

This summer, MC and I were bummed that our front storm door was all glass, and that we couldn’t leave it open without bugs flying in. I had thought that next spring I would bite the bullet and buy us a new screen door, so we could enjoy more of the weather.

At our old apartment, we rarely had the screen door open because we backed up to a shopping center parking lot and it was always noisy. Now, we’re in a quiet little neighborhood, and I would love to open the house up as much as I can.

I also noticed this weekend that whoever installed the storm door, did it wrong (shocker). The door never latched shut, so I took it upon myself to fix that. It was pretty easy, and lucky for me, all I had to do was move it down about half an inch, and in doing that, it covered up the original screw holes.

As I was putting the last screw in, I happen to look up, and noticed a screen rolled up in the top of the door. Well, that seemed odd, but then I looked a little closer and had never noticed this handle at the top of the door, or the small latch in the middle.

As I pushed the latch and pulled the handle, wouldn’t you know it, a screen appeared! You’re telling me we had a screen door this whole time!? I went from angry to realizing that I basically got a new door, for free (because I had it the whole time).

Too bad mother nature has decided that winter is already here, now I have to wait months to use my “new” door. Blasted!

Fraken-door

Posted by matt on Oct 27, 2011 in outside | 0 comments

While I may not be a big fan of dressing up for Halloween, I do enjoy decorating. Even more than that, MC loves decorating, and when we stumbled across a very cute a clever way of dressing up our front door on Pinterest, we had to do it. With a few pieces of thick matte board, we were able to transform our dark green door into…Frankenstein!

Okay, he’s a cute Frankenmonster, but I like it, and hopefully our trick-or-treaters will like it as well. Tonight we’ll be picking up our pumpkins and doing some carving and finishing up our little bit of Halloween decor. We may have done more, but having been away for a few days put us behind. Have no fear though, when Christmas starts to roll around, we’ll be doing quite a bit more. Enjoy the Frankendoor!

Spring is here

Posted by matt on Apr 29, 2011 in outside | 0 comments

When we were looking at houses, we were looking in the dead of winter. It was cold, there was ALWAYS snow on the ground, and more than a few times we had to battle large sheets of ice on the front stoops. When we first looked at our house, it was freezing cold outside, a gloomy grey sky and dirty snow had built up from being plowed into the parking spaces. Needless to say, the house didn’t appeal to us so much on the outside. We had seen pictures of it in the spring, so we had a fair understanding of the landscaping. Now that spring has landed on us like a ton of bricks, the flowers have started to bloom and really given us some wonderful color.

I took this photo today on my way out the door for work. What amazes me is that yesterday when I got home from work, the flowers looked like this.

That’s a whole lot of blooming in a very short amount of time. Having lived in apartments and condos for a long time, tree/bush/shrub maintenance is not my strong suit, so it looks like I’ll need to figure this one out sooner than later. I happy to know that our lawn grows nicely, and quickly, as currently it looks like we live in a forest. My father is being kind enough to give me his lawn mower, and not a day too soon, because the HOA is going to get mad at us if I don’t tend to it soon. Anyway, the azaleas look great, and it really is a nice calming look to come home to. I love our house a little more everyday we’re there.