Been a busy month, so I figured I was well overdue for an update! 4th of July weekend marked the beginning of this painting madness. I thought that if I could just get a BIG chunk of the house done that first weekend I'd have everything done in a few weeks. Which seemed like a good idea if I didn't do anything else with my spare time! Even now, we still have some painting left to do - mostly the high-up areas where I'm too short or scared to reach, or parts where we need to replace the siding. At the very least, the parts that face to the street look up-to-snuff and are dramatically improved. I know it's a bit like only styling the front of your hair since you can't see the back, but I can live with it for now.

Hopefully, despite my crazy schedule in the coming weeks, we'll be able to pack up all the paint and brushes for good and call this project done before Sept. 1st. Which is why I figured I'd better get cracking right away on my next outdoor project! I've been dying to do landscaping since we moved in: once upon a time this house had a phenomenal yard, and now it's overgrown with weeds. I wanted to wait until we were mostly done with the painting - so as not to stomp down all our hard work trying to paint - but I couldn't resist when I stopped at Shopko and I saw that they had perennials 80% OFF!!!

So on Friday, I got to be the crazy lady with two shopping carts full of plants at Shopko, giddy that a dozen of them only cost me just over $50. Then came the hard part: weeding.

Mars came over to help me pull all the weeds out and till up the soil. Whoever lived here before either dug the plants out (as evidenced by gaping holes in the landscape) or cut them off cleanly, leaving beer-can sized stumps sticking out here and there. We were able to remove all said stumps except one, which ended up breaking one of our shovels in half and then bending the second one to a point where I'm unsure if it could be called a shovel anymore. After much hacking and whacking, we decided to just plant something in front of it and hide it. Not perfect, but it works: you win this time stump.

Anyway, today I got up nice and early for the next step in this fun process: laying down the weed block and mulch. This is probably an easy task, except that HGN.com got this great idea in my head that you can use old carpet as weed block.

Brilliant! I thought, since we had two huge rolls of old carpet in the garage waiting to be hauled to the dump, what a great way to re-purpose that carpet. So I got out my utility knife and cut/tore pieces and laid them down. Huge pain in the ass by the way. And despite the two massive rolls of carpet, I ran out halfway (as well as ran out of mulch) and had to use the regular plastic sheeting anyway. So I'm going to go-ahead and lie and say I planned it that way as an experiment: time to see which one will be more weed infested in two weeks!

I think that HGN.com and all those home improvement channels, shows and DIY things are a bad influence for people like me: no one should be spending their whole summer working on projects like this and enjoying it! I mean, I wouldn't say it's fun to break two $15 shovels on the same stump, but there is a strange satisfaction in driving by my house and knowing that I'm the reason it looks like a cozy little home (well, Dusty too). Maybe that's the sense of self pride you get from investing in your own home.

Or the delusion you have because you don't want to fathom how much money it's taken to get there. Either way, still feels good at the end of the day.