New Coats of Paint vol.1

I wanted to spruce up our home a bit more. After living in it for over a year I'd had a chance to discover some things I wanted to change. A lot of what I wanted to change was the colors in our home. So I jumped right in. First the outside.

Green Door becomes a Red Door.

After more than 6 coats I stopped counting and taking photos. Moral: it takes a lot of paint to get a red front door. But it is so inviting. The red is actually leftover red paint that I had from painting the kitchen. It's interior paint, but with the glass door in front of it, I figured we'd be ok. It's been a few months now and it seems to be holding up ok. The color is Red Delicious by Glidden. It looks great in the kitchen and on the door. Win/win. The metal on the glass door in front of the red door was dark green and so I painted that black with flat exterior paint.

Stay tuned for more chronicles in my painting saga!

The Yard

The advent of warmer weather around the South has brought with it household repair season at Patterson Place.

There have been projects we've been wanting to do since we moved in but we felt it was good to live in our new home for awhile to decide what order we'd like to do our projects.

First on the list for safety reasons was the giant 30 foot maple in our front yard. It had to come down. It was such a gorgeous tree--especially in the fall. It bloomed the rosiest red. The tree trunk split into two about 5 feet up and then we found out from some tree experts that the split actually went all the way down. It was overhanging some power lines and had the potential to fall back onto our home. So,  inevitably we had to have it cut down. The silver lining is that before you couldn't even see our home because the tree was so large it totally blocked the view but now you can!

Emma playing last fall by the beautiful maple tree

Emma was enthralled and frightened by the men who came to remove the tree. (There was literally a guy climbing the tree with a chain saw hanging from his belt!) We found out when they were here that the tree was actually diseased and rotten in the middle, so it ended up being a blessing that we took it down before it did any serious damage to our home or the surrounding area.

We are sad to lose such a gorgeous gem but so grateful for the extra sunshine on our lawn to grow some grass! In fact, we are working on growing the grass with some seeds now! And I have removed a couple of bushes from the front that were dying. I was SORE for days but it was worth it because now they aren't overcrowding the growing ones. I planted some white azaleas and a peony bush (my favorites!), and some day lilies to grow by the mailbox. Since I took the picture below I have also trimmed the Japanese Maple (on the left side of the photo) back a bit so it's not quite so overpowering.

Sweet girl the day the tree came down. (The bush beside her is one of the ones I removed)

The first peony that bloomed in our garden!

Lots of new growth in our front yard--I'll post again to give more updates on what's going on inside the house! Lots of updates!

Toddler Time

At some point our tiny Emma turned into a toddler. I have no idea when this happened. Sometimes I feel like she's still a tiny baby (this is usually right after bath time when she's snuggly in her jammies). Lately she's started to seem so grown up. She's getting so tall and can communicate so much. Granted, as her mom I feel like I understand her communication better than others. (Cue...Emma whines and I say "she's trying to say she wants her milk". Ha!) I fall in love with her more at each new stage, but I just can't believe how big she's getting!

{MSP}