Trying to catch up

Hi there! Sorry I was gone for so long again. Blogging seems different to me lately. I'm finding more and more bloggers are "doing their thing" on Instagram instead of keeping up with their blogs and it's easy to understand why. Posting one photo and a blurb takes a few minutes versus a blog post that can take at least an hour by the time you're done uploading and editing photos and writing a post. I sometimes simply lose my writing mojo, too.

Yard work continues around Comfy House. Brian recently finished cutting down a bunch of dead tree branches that were overhanging the fence. Not our trees, nor our fence. This is the neighbor with the dreaded mulberry tree. We desperately need some professional help with landscaping this year. We have a huge bare spot in back of our house where we had a lilac bush dug out last year. It runs most of the back of our house where there's barely any sun. We can't even get grass to grow there. We also need some landscaping done on both sides of the sidewalk (we tried ourselves - and failed) and we'd like to have bushes planted in front of our house. We need a load of fresh dirt spread under the arborvitae trees that line our back yard. We've had a couple of landscapers out here for estimates but they didn't work out. Another is coming tomorrow afternoon. They have excellent online reviews so we're crossing our fingers.

May is one of my favorite months. The landscape is finally lush and green and beautiful and all the plants are coming to life. The weather is still fickle...daytime temps can be anywhere from the high 40's - low 80's and you never know if it's going to be sunny or rainy. We've grilled twice and patio season has started - hooray!

Some plants around my yard right now ~

Bleeding Heart...

Ferns...

Bishops Cap...

Peonies about to burst open...

Celandine Poppy...

Hostas lining the walkway to the patio...

I made my first trip of the year to a favorite garden center last week.

It's still a bit early for there to be much to choose from, as far as annuals go. You can see that they start all their annuals from seed and that a lot of plants are just now growing.

So all I came home with were some lettuces (which have doubled in size since last week) and a couple of herbs. 

I normally don't buy a lot of plants at the big box stores, but the other day I was grabbing a few groceries and there was a Home Depot in the same shopping center. I stopped in to look around and found daisies ~ one of my favorites. I only grabbed two plants, thinking I'd plant them in a smaller planter, but the plants were too big. My neighbor-friend just passed along this lovely planter to me, so it was perfect for the daisies. I need just one more to fill in the area in the back of the planter.

Now for the not-so-fun stuff. I mentioned in my last post that we were busy with some projects, one of which was some updates in the kitchen. We are still looking for a general contractor. A good one is hard to find! The one we thought we were going to use turned out where they hardly do any of the work themselves; they simply suggested other businesses that could do each job. We do not want to hire five different contractors just for some kitchen updates! Another contractor that was supposed to stop by a couple of days ago to give us an estimate simply didn't show up. I didn't receive a phone call, email or text - nothing. 

We decided to start with something easy - a new ceiling fan in the kitchen. I know some people don't like ceiling fans in kitchens, but we happen to love having one in there. I do a lot of cooking, plus this is where family and friends tend to congregate, as the kitchen truly is the "heart of the home". In the warm months, the extra breeze from the fan is a big plus. We've never had a problem with grease on the fan. We hired an electrician because we needed some other electrical work done in the house, as well. We went out and bought a ceiling fan we thought would work, but dummy us didn't measure how far down the fan would hang. Turns out this fan is 1) way too low, 2) way too dark for our kitchen and 3) way too bright since the light is LED and we don't have a dimmer switch. And...we still have dead zones around the kitchen with one big LED light, so we need recessed lighting in the ceiling, too. So now we are stuck with a fan we hate until we find another one. The electrician said we should get one that comes with a remote where we can control the brightness of the light or else he can install a dimmer switch on another type of fan. We also obviously need a flush mount fan. And I think a white one would be best. Of course, the big box stores don't have anything like this in stock. It would have to be special ordered. Who would've thunk that something as simple as a ceiling fan could get so complicated?

The excitement doesn't stop there. When the electrician was up in the attic, he found torn screening hanging down from the center of the attic ceiling and a big pile of dead leaves. He said it looked like we had a nest of squirrels in there over the winter! We couldn't believe it. We haven't heard a thing overhead...no scratching or scurrying. And Brian was understandably upset because a neighbor-friend who's a roofer just did some minor repairs on our roof last fall. So these naughty rodents must've chewed through something to get into the attic. Brian got on the phone to an exterminator right away and they're coming out tomorrow morning. We also recently discovered - via our cat Monkey - that we have mice in the basement. Oh, the joys of home ownership! Now that we're *ahem*, getting older, I am starting to see why people move into townhouses or condos when they retire. Sometimes all this upkeep is just too much.

(sunset on our neighborhood lake)

Thanks for hanging in there with me and my sporadic blogging as of late. Hope you all are doing well and staying healthy and safe.

💓

outdoor before and after

Hello, friends!

 We recently had a lot of hardscaping done in the front of our house and I thought I'd show you the before and after photos. 

Our driveway was in terrible shape, as you can see by this photo. It was beyond repair and sealcoating. It needed to be dug out and replaced with new asphalt.

Once the old asphalt was taken out, a layer of gravel was put down.

Our old sidewalk leading from the driveway to the front of the house was dug out, too. You can see in this photo from last summer, how the sidewalk wasn't level anymore and was leaning into the ground.

After the sidewalk was dug out, we also had the contractor extend the gutter downspouts on the front of the garage with PVC piping. He then ran the pipes underground (the lawn had to be dug up) and into the swale in front of our house. Same thing was done on the other side of the garage. Previously, when it rained, the water from the downspouts would pool by the garage and the water would sometimes go under the garage door and get in our garage.

Framing for the sidewalk going in. Instead of the sidewalk having sharp angles like it did before, I wanted it to have a curve.

The finished sidewalk! We also chose to have the sidewalk flared where it meets the first riser of our porch. 

We bought fountain grasses and solar lights at Home Depot and put those along the sidewalk. But silly us...we put grass seed in the dirt in-between the fountain grasses, forgetting that we would need to mow the grass or use a weed whacker ~ without whacking the plants! So, I don't know what we're going to do now. I also think we need to add some kind of edging along the sidewalk on both sides so that dirt doesn't get all over the sidewalk. Live and learn!

Another thing we chose to do differently was the brush strokes on the concrete. The contractor did make traditional horizontal brush strokes in the middle of the sidewalk, but then he asked me what I thought of brush strokes going down the sides of the sidewalk, following the curve. He started to show me what it'd look like in the wet cement and I told him to go for it. I'm glad I did. I think it gives boring concrete a more interesting look.

Brian's been working very hard getting our yard on both sides of the driveway back to normal after the ground being all torn up from installation of the underground gutter pipes. He had to level the ground, pull out all the weeds, put on some fresh top soil, sprinkle grass seed, and then he laid some fresh straw and netting over the entire area, as suggested by the local landscaping company.

Have a beautiful weekend!

out of the house, around the house

This past Saturday, Brian and I took a little road trip to our favorite vintage shop, Secret Treasures. They're currently open for online orders and then you pick up curb-side. It was so strange to see the empty streets and sidewalks that are usually bustling with traffic and people, especially on a weekend.

Brian had ordered a lamp for his desk and I had ordered a brass horse bookend. When we were standing on the sidewalk waiting for our purchases, I window shopped. I found a beautiful glass cake plate and dome, plus two pieces of vintage pottery that also came home with me.

 We ordered a sandwich online, picked it up curbside, and took it to our favorite park by the lake. Sat on a bench and shared a sammie, enjoying the beautiful day. There were lots of people out and about, walking dogs, playing Frisbee, having picnics on blankets with their family, but keeping their distance from others.

 One of my favorite Lake Michigan views.

A store we were able to check out in person (donning masks and keeping our distance from others) was Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse. From their website: 

The Evanston ReBuilding Warehouse is a non-profit organization that promotes the reduction of waste in landfills through sustainable deconstruction and renovation building practices. Reclaimed building materials are sold at our warehouse at low cost to the community and the proceeds support our education, job-training and job-development programs which foster individual, community and economic growth in Evanston and beyond.

This place was much bigger than we expected with aisles overfilled with anything and everything you could think of for inside and outside a home. Love this bathroom sink made by Jacob Delafon, Paris. Too big for either of our small bathrooms though.

Isn't this old range amazing?

The back right burner was like a "well" and had a silver pot down inside.

 Does anyone know what this was used for?

If you have a huge kitchen, how about this amazing Miele ventilation hood? Great price. These go for over $2000 brand-new.

Lots of chandeliers...

All kinds of interior doors...

So, back at home, here are my two pieces of gorgeous vintage pottery from Secret Treasures. The green one is Shawnee and the blue one is McCoy.

I added the pottery to my collection on the shelves in the living room.

The lamp that Brian found is filled with old radio tubes. Brian is a big radio and electronic aficionado, so this lamp is perfect for his office. We're still looking for long, floating picture shelves to go on this wall above his desk ~ and that's where this propped up art on his desk will go.

 My brass horse bookend...it may not stay here; I just put it here for the time being.

 I don't collect horse figurines, but for some reason, this bookend spoke to me when I saw it online. I did have a horse when I was a teenager and living in Kentucky...a beautiful brown and white quarter horse named Judy. I still miss her, over 40 years later. And I've always thought that horses were one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen...so maybe that's why I was drawn to this particular bookend.

 We're still experiencing an overabundance of rain. These past few days have been in the high 80's, too so with the heat index, it's in the low 90's. Too early to be this humid! On the plus side, everything is so lush and green now.

 The heat and thunderstorms weren't kind to my lilacs this year. They were here and gone in a little over a week. Barely got to enjoy them.

We're in the middle of contracting renovations in the front of our house. It started with our little Village redoing our front swales and an asphalt company digging out our old driveway. Today the concrete contractor is digging out our old sidewalk that leads up to the porch and digging trenches in our yard on either side of the driveway that lead down into the swales. They're installing pipes on the downspouts in front of our garage that will go down the trenches and into the swales. When this work is done, then the new asphalt driveway can be put in. 

Hopefully, before and after pictures to come in the near future!

Have a good week, my friends ~ and stay well and healthy.