Where the Wild Boys Are

The wild boys are here.  It's been a long time since I blogged so here is a recap of their latest adventures.

Rex's birthday

Play Pals at city gym on Friday mornings.  Apparently they love it because we are always counting down to Fridays when we can go again!

Swimming lessons for Rex-

We try to go to the aquatic center (our super-fancy city pool) once or twice a week.  It has a lazy river, waterslides and a special toddler/little kid area.  And a snack bar, which is where this picture was taken.

Firefighters are big around here.  The library had one of their story times at a fire station which was so awesome for the boys.  And then there is Wyatt, pretending to be a firefighter in our front yard.

We spruced up the playroom (which used to be Wyatt's room) and now most of their toys are in there.  We even made a little play kitchen for them as seen on Pinterest and, well, everywhere on the internet.  But this way they got a manly kitchen and it was cheap.

They mostly love to pretend to wash things in the sink and turn that faucet off and on.  There was major disappointment that it wasn't a working faucet but they got over it. I bought the old entertainment center from craigslist for $10, spent $5 on contact paper for the "countertop" and $6 for the bowl which became their sink.  The faucet was found by the side of the road for free (someone put out their old bathroom cabinets, countertop and sink so we helped ourselves to the faucet).  Not bad.

I don't have any 4th of July stuff to share because we pretty much skipped right over it.  We didn't go anywhere or have people over- we were busy with our front yard project.  The local fireworks show wasn't even on July 4th, it was the next night, but we did watch the fireworks on PBS and NBC.  We thought about going watch fireworks the next night but Rex was too tired- they don't start until about 9:45 pm here- so we stayed home and put him to bed.  Wyatt was still awake but winding down quickly.  Things have been pretty busy around here but hopefully it won't be another month before I get another opportunity to blog again!

Our Front Yard Makeover

I have never loved the way the front of the house looked.  It had some parts I loved (the orange side door and the stone facade) but there were a lot more things I didn't like when we bought the house.  Let's call them out, shall we?

Plants that were taking over the house
Orange-y/Pink-y rail fence and porch deck
Gingerbread house style screen door
Brick paver walkway
House numbers
Mailbox

The plants were tamed/removed very soon after we moved in because I couldn't take it.  I remember my  mom saying to me, "Oh, I didn't even realize you had all that beautiful stone on the front of your house because I couldn't ever see it!"

So it was a lot better just after that but the screen door, porch and fence had to go and about a year or two later, we got all that done and then it looked like this.

Things were pretty good at this point, especially in the spring with the tulips blooming.  The new storm door looked great as did the new deck/porch Rob built.  We still had the old black mailbox and house numbers which caused me many fits- I had a really hard time figuring out what to do.  I don't want to share our address so I won't put up pictures of the numbers but trust me, they were bad.  I bought some new ones that I LOVED but they were too big for the space above the door.  That didn't turn out to be so bad because our neighbors put up the exact same ones.  That would've been embarrassing.  I turned my attention to finding a new mailbox (which led to a numbers solution) but it was so difficult.  First I painted the black one orange to match our orange door that I love.  Whoa, bad idea.  It looked terrible.  Rob had a cow.  Oops.  So then I bought a cheapy brass one at Lowe's thinking it matched the brass on the storm door and it would look all tied together but I hated it.  I really wanted a statement piece that said, "HELLO!  We like modern design and have a cool 1950s modern ranch house."  All the mailboxes that said that were very very expensive.  This one was my favorite and at $275, didn't seem so bad (compared to the $600+ ones I had been in love with).

I really liked that it had the house numbers on it already (this one isn't ours, just the example from the Etsy listing). I was seriously thinking about ordering it when Rob suggested contacting a local metal fabricator and seeing if I could get it made right here at a cheaper price.  I found someone and it came out great!  And cheaper!!  And they gave me the cutout numbers to use above the door for our address numbers!!!  It is just raw steel so it is rusting a little and looking really cool now.  Once we got that taken care of, then I really had to do something about the landscaping and the horrendously un-modern brick walkway.  We decided to frame out the planter bed area and do all new plantings.  We rented a rotary tiller yesterday to make re-grading and planting go a little smoother.  It wasn't easy, but it was a lot faster.  Here it is after that was completed.

We replaced the brick with a grey paver path and added some lighting and pea gravel around the edges.  And now, it is a million, gazillion times more our style and better looking and complements the house.

There are still a few minor things to be done but that's about it.  We sat out on the step last night and just talked and looked at it for probably 30 minutes.  Then the mosquitos found us so we went back inside.  We are so happy with it though and really love the new landscaping and hardscaping and the change it made to the whole house.