Author: Staci

Staci blogs about travel at TheVoyageer.com.

Outside (May)

The last time I shared with you, dear readers, any glance of my home’s exterior was here, where I talked about grandiose backyard plans. We have made no progress on that front. Maybe on Memorial Day I will get a chance to go to Lowe’s and get prices for different kinds of decking and fencing. Then, with dollar estimates in hand, we can move forward.

The last time I touched on the front exterior was clear back in November, a few weeks after we’d painted the house an “oops” color. The color has grown on me since then. The fact that the yard is perking up and new plants in the flowerbed are doing well helps, too. Yesterday, after Doug had mowed the yard I stepped outside and got a good photo. The sunlight was pretty nice, too.

Mowing the lawn is something he loves doing, by the way, and does weekly. If it was my responsibility I would let it get scraggly and mow only every 2 weeks. Glad I’m not in charge of lawn care!

In March we planted seeds for poppies, zinnias, and cosmos. Two of our flowers have bloomed! I hope we get to see lots more flowers before we head off for our vacation in a few weeks. What I don’t want is for the flowers to all pop out while we’re gone and wilt before we get back!

Speaking of plants, the above photo does not do it justice. The plant we have in the little front door alcove is just about the most beautiful plant ever. And, according to my MIL, near impossible to kill, too! Anyone know what it’s called?

What I’d like to do ideally is to tie in the terra cotta roof tiles somehow. The house color, shutter color, and roof color do seem to play nicely together, but I want to work in more of that orangey red. Seeing how nicely the flowerbed is coming in (the poppies are kind of going overboard, in fact) doesn’t leave a lot of room for terra cotta potted plants, which would be the easiest thing to do. So any suggestions are welcome!

PS: It’s clear that I should stop editing photos on my laptop. I thought the pictures looked fantastic until I came back to write the post on a different computer (one without a broken “shift” key,) and they look terribly green! Yuck! Live and learn, right? It’s always something…….

PPS: Ashley at Any Lovely Thing has given me a Liebster award! More on that in a couple of days.

Wow, I started out May strong: a good quality and quantity (in my opinion anyway) and certainly just sort of… fell off the wagon last week.

I’ve got ideas, let me tell you. I want to finish my posts on room details (I did the guest room and bedroom), I want to make some more inspiration boards, especially for kids’ rooms (my friend and I brainstormed a list of classic kid books!), I want to put up some pics I took a couple weeks ago for photo editing practice, but I can’t seem to get these things done around work and life.

May is a busy, busy, month here at work and the next two weekends are big events… if something goes wrong, it just might traced back to me (no pressure!) so I’m going to try to do my best to anticipate anything that might come up, but after that whatever happens will just happen! It means I’ll be forced to get my head out of the clouds and get down to business. For real.

I want a “retreat” weekend to work on my blog, focus myself, and to just nail down some ideas and inspiration I have floating around in my head.

I got an apple green binder “to hold my hopes & dreams” but right now it remains empty save for some plastic sheet protectors (also empty) and divider tabs (unlabeled).

Someday I will catch up… Maybe…

 

Do you hate it when bloggers just write a brain dump post about nothing (like this?) I personally don’t mind it… they are human beings with lives and usually a full time job and blog on the side.

Just like me.

I must keep reminding myself that I am just a normal person. 

Great Weekend!

Well, Friday I promised to come back and let you know if I did anything particularly interesting… Some of this is interesting and some isn’t but… here goes! Those who follow me on instagram have seen all of these photos… but now the whole story shall be revealed…

Friday, during the day I tried to clean my gunked-up coffeemaker with water and vinegar but I didn’t stick around to see the cycle through and somewhere between noon and 5:00 pm the whole thing got ruined. The carafe had boiled dry and I don’t know what else happened. Couldn’t tell anything was wrong from appearance though, so I poured water into it to flush any residual vinegar flavor, and the water just gushed out of the bottom of the machine and I had a major clean-up on my hands. The old machine (pictured above) got tossed in the trash and a new one was acquired at Target later that evening. We got a much cheaper one, less painful to replace in a few months, since the water here in town is so hard it’s very tough on appliances it’s silly to invest a good one. I found this out the hard way.

 

Friday night, Doug and I went to a special event in downtown Hutchinson where many of the shops were open until 9:00! (Note to big-city-dwellers. In small towns, stores being open past 6-ish is a BIG DEAL.) It was the perfect opportunity to experience some stores I’d never set foot into before! From hair salons to cowboy gear, there truly was a store for everyone. There is a cute cooking store called Apron Strings and an amazing retro toy store (which has toys from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and yes, 90s). It was cool to see some “new” old toys like Olympic Gymnast Barbie (so many hours spent trying to get that unitard back on). The toy store also had an amazing Lionel train collection in the back.

Saturday morning, I had a staff workshop then I scooted across town for a party the likes of which you only see online. Except I got to live it. My friend Kellory threw a garden party brunch for my other friend Lisa’s wedding shower. We had a full meal and the weather was perfect!

Saturday evening, to honor Cinco De Mayo, we had a meal at On The Border (yes, we drove an hour to get Mexican food even though there are Mexican restaurants here in town) and retired to Katie’s patio to get devoured by mosquitoes. I was pretty weary from being surrounded by people since 8 that morning, so it wasn’t long until I had to retreat home to the comfort of my bed and company of my pooch.

Sunday after church we swept and mopped the whole house, a terrible task I related to back in last Thursday’s post. It still smells fresh when we walk in and we know we’re healthier for it. So, win. Also, my friend Libby and I explored a half-million dollar house on the market here in town, pictured above. This house has four stories (this includes a finished basement) and semi-secret passageways. In another town it would go for a cool million, so anyone who wants a Victorian fairytale house for half the price, consider a transition to the small-town life. Except I don’t want to be the person who has to get all the heavy weight-lifting equipment out of the top floor.

Last but not least, since it got a pretty good reaction on Instagram, here’s a quick shot of me. I’ve gotten new glasses in the last month-ish. My hair is getting lighter because I stopped dying it like a year ago.  I guess I like seeing pictures of my favorite bloggers, so here’s one of me.
If, in fact, I am one of your favorite bloggers, all I have to say is “aww shucks.”

What did you do this weekend?