Grassy Update

Back in mid April, I shared that we over seeded our backyard in a couple of steps in hopes of having pretty green grass and less weeds for Summer. A quick reminder of the steps we took: 

1. Raked up all the thatch on our yard & pulled larger weeds
2. Hasani used a power Aerator to loosed up our soil 
3. Hasani used a large lawn spreader to apply the seed evenly to our yard
4. Next we used 1 bale of weed free to hay and spread it over our lawn to help the grass grow and keep moisture in.
5. Lastly we watered watered and watered our seeds and grass like crazy

Before I show you the current state of our backyard, here's a reminder of how it looked right after we Aerated our lawn. Yup, very dry and patchy weedy grass and lots and lots of overgrown bushes.


Mid April 

Here's the current state of our backyard. Much better! Look at all the green grass! I'm very happy, the ratio of weeds to grass is so much better. I'd say 75% grass and 25% weeds much better that our previous ratio of 90% weeds and 10% grass. Gone are all the huge weeds, were left we smaller patches of weeds and as of right now I'm OK with that. We have one area closest to our patio that's a little dry, that maybe how the sprinkler is hitting that area and its not getting enough water. Here's our grass progress, big difference over last month huh.  


Mid May Progress

We still want more green grass, to mimic our pretty sod in our front yard. I'm thinking we will mostly likely to another round of re-seeding our lawn in September just before fall. Since are Summers are so HOT in Northern California 100+ it will be best to wait. 

Mid April

Mid May Progress

In the meantime there is still more more work to be done! We will need to weed and feed our backyard if its not already to late before Summer really hits. This week and over the weekend we have a lot of bush pulling up that needs to be done. See the row of bushes forming along our fence line, yeah we have no idea where they came from they just appeared and started growing. 


Mid May Progress

After those funky bushes are pulled up we plan on laying down weed blocker and covering the area up a lot of the area underneath the trees up with mulch. We are hoping it gives a more clean semi landscaped appearance. I also want to cut done that funky dead looking pine tree 9not sure when that will happen) I seriously hate that thing, its all wrong + I hate pine needles. Oh and we need to trim back lots of the bushes and trees that are becoming overgrown and Hasani needs to edge our grass (get those tight spots the lawn mower can't reach)


I also to need to re-paint our old terra cotta pots (that have been hanging on the tree house way to long) and add some pretty flowers and move them onto our patio. Avery's first birthday party is in a few weeks, so I have just enough time to add some more pretty to our backyard. Parties = motivation to get stuff done!

What you think of our progress? Are you working on any grassy updates? Or are you prettying up your backyard too?


We welcome all lawn care tips, to keep our grass bright and green over the Summer and though the Fall/winter!! :)

Small Exterior Upgrade

We've done many exterior upgrades since moving into our little Rancher three years ago: painted our entire house, installed sod, painted of front door, upgraded our flower beds and more. Not long after we painted our house, we changed out the old dated light fixture (that's next our front door) into a chic black one. Total we have three exterior lights, and only upgraded one of them, shame on us! So on a recent trip to Home Depot, I stopped in the lighting department, which I almost always do and decided to was time we upgraded our fugly crooked motion sensor light fixture that rest outside our garage door that leads to our backyard. Here's our old light fixture, yikes right! I detest our ugly it is, its dusty and icky white outdoor lights in my book aren't a good thing.

 I decided to go cheap thrifty on this upgrade because its a sidelight, not seen from the street and matching it with our front door light fixture would have set us back 30 bucks, for this project um no. I found the perfect simple light fixture, a black matte jelly light fixture for only $ 6 bucks! We really like how black accents look on our grey house (black shutters, mail box, and hanging pots) Here's how new light fixture, sweet and simple! I love how it looks, we need to do a little touch-up paint around the light fixture our old yucky house color is showing. I'll tackle that 5 min project this week. 

I never thought a I'd love a simple jelly light fixture so much! lol

Next we plan on upgrading our Exterior garage light fixtures, and removing the over fuglly motion sensor light fixture. The one at least looks in better condition than the one we just replaced! We also plan on going from one garage light fixture to two. We like this light fixutre that compliments our front door light. Hopefully we'll tackle the light small exterior upgrade sometime this month. 

What do you think our simple exterior upgrade, much better huh? 

Garden Gates

The gate to our backyard (which is on the side our Rancher) is in serious need of an upgrade! It's one of those outside projects we put off. Which is crazy since, we did some many other outside DIY updates: painted our house, installed sod, redid our garden beds, painted our front door and prettied up our front porch to name a several  few projects. To be honest we rarely use our side gate, it mostly used for bringing the lawn mower out to mow the lawn. BUT, its an eyesore and its about time we fixed, after three years of it looking a mess.


The plan is to move our excising fence forward about 8 feet which will extend the interior side our backyard and give is a spot to place our trash, recycle and green waste containers. Right now they are lazily placed on the side our house and I want them out of site! I'm thinking we keep in the same spot they are in now, except along the fence line, and place screen in front our them. 

After we bring our fence line forward, we'll need to build a new gate. This is the fun part! I've been gathering ideas and trying to 'pin-point' our gate style. Do we want a single gate, a double gate? Curved? With lattice? With a door handle? Who know there were so many pretty & cool ideas. Oh, and after we do our gate update, I'll be officially calling the gate, our garden gate :) I've seen so many gates styles and narrowed it down to our musts: Create privacy, Pleasing to the Eye, Go with the style of our house, Can be locked. Below are Gate Styles I Like.


I've always loved the looked of gates with a top curved. I love how this gate is private and pretty. I also like the black exposed hardware.

{via Pinterest}

Again, I love the curve on the gate. I would place the boards closer together.

{via Pinterest}

I think the lattice on top of this gate is very pretty. I would want our gate lower and not so close to our eves. I think a little breathing room is a good thing :)

{via Pinterest}

I pretty much adore everything about this gate. First, I love that house is shingles (like our home) I like the pretty door handle and the down curve of the gate. Most door curved gates I looked at didn't offer much privacy, this gate offers plenty of privacy. I also like that this garden gate reminds me of a pretty door. Another plus, is they painted the gate to match the house and it works seamlessly! I also love the blooming vines. We have vines on the side our our house, there are finally blooming again and I would love add more on the side our house. 

{via Defining Your Home}

Obviously this gate won't work for our needs, since we want a private gate. But I love the large decorative exposed hinges. It really gives this garden gate a custom look. 

{via Pinterest}

Now that I've shared with you gate styles I like, here's gate hardware I also like. This decorative gate kit comes with everything (I like the exposed hinges, and pretty handle) The gate kit style is kind-of cottage like, and I like that look and think it could work well with our home style. 

Out of all the gates, I've been looking at I favor the one below the most. I think with a few modification to fit our needs we could make a pretty gate very similar to this one. 

{via Pinterest}

After narrowing down the gate styles, I noticed I'm most drawn to gates that a painted. Which is odd, because typically I don't like fences or gates that are painted. I prefer the natural wood, I usually cringe when I see a yellow house, and then the attached fence is also painted yellow. But since were about to do our gate upgrade, I'm rethinking my previous stance and would be open to painting our gate white, but I would want to keep our fence natural wood. 

What gate style do you prefer most? Do you like painted garden gates or natural?

I Wanna Build...

Recently, I've been bit by the build-it bug. I've been a long time fan of Ana White, you know the amazing DIY built wonder. Well just recently I was trolling on her lovely website, looking at plans when I came across furniture I wanna build. We ( the Mr. and I ) have fallen in love with her clean modern lined outdoor furniture. We are in the process of re-vamping our patio, who am I kidding our patio has never been done (we did fix it our for our Wedding Reception we hosted in our backyard) We recently bought an outdoor dining room set and want to build some more pieces for our backyard, more on that in a few days.

For the furniture we wanna build we plan on starting simple and working our way up to the big items. I really like this clean simple table, which would make a great buffet table for nights when we BBQ & have friends over.

{ via Ana White }

From there I wanna build the DIY Outdoor Sofa inspired from Restoration Hardware. I wanna build the WHOLE set. I'm pretty much in love with the sofa! Oh and Ana even shares how to create your own cushions.

{ via Ana White }

I also adore this bench that would look great in the lawn area of our backyard.

{ via Ana White }

Those are my 'I Wanna Build Goals' if were able to table fairly easy and quick, our patio 're-vamp' will happen quicker than expected!

Have you built a project using Ana White's plans? Or plan to?

Oh Cherry Tree

Last spring we discovered the big tree that holds our sons tree house is a not just a big tree but a cheery tree. It was so cool to pick cherries off the tree. Last year of cherries were ripe around the end of June. We were eve are able to fill a whole bowl with fresh cherries.

This year the cherries began to ripen around the end of May and the first week of June. We think because the weather has been so from one extreme to the next { rains one day, next day in the 90's then back to the 70's } are cherries riped sooner. We have a lot of cherries on the tree, however most went bad.

The cherry looked perfect until, I turned it over!

I climbed and ladder and my son was in his tree house helping my pick cherries. Next year, I'll be watching the cherries closer much closer, to snag a bunch of fresh fruit.

So far we were only able to fill a small bowel of cherries. I need to do a little research and see if we leave the spioled cherries on the tree or remove them.

While picking the cherries off our tree, I also discovered we have a peach or apricot tree? in our back yard. Most of them are still green but a few are turning a faint peach color.

It's so much fun to discover fruit bearing trees in our back yard. I'd love to plant a small lemon or lime tree in the back yard in a large container { perfect embellishment for adult refreshments }

Do you have any fruit bearing tree at your house? Or plans to add one to your home