It’s Time to Live {Spring planting and nice weather}

This past weekend, it suddenly became Spring and we were both ready for it.  On Saturday we got the supplies we needed and on Sunday we spent the entire day planting and transplanting.  Our plants were far too crowded in their pots, having grown some over the winter.  We still need a large pot for our elephant ear plant, but for now it is scattered all over our house in smaller pots.  We quite literally have plants in every room of the house now (except the bathroom, but that will be changing soon too!).  It is so nice to wake up in the morning to bright green plants growing by your head.

Without further adieu:

Jerry working hard in the back yard.

The very welcoming entrance to our humble abode.

While Jerry was mostly working at transplanting and doing doctor with them, I got the joy of finding dog poo in our front garden.  I admit, we always neglect the front  sectioned off bit of dirt garden.  My first year here, my mom planted Hostas there, but since I never watered them they died rather quickly (unfortunately this is a less than ideal place for a garden, since it does not get a lot of sun or rain (under the roof over hang).  This year, I decided to try an assortment of wild flowers that were suited to less sun.  Hopefully they sprout up (although this morning I noticed a very light frost on things…. fuck).  I think I will throw some more seeds down in a week or so just in case.

These plants are in the front kitchen window.

This baby pot has some dwarf marigold seeds in it.

We found this cool glass planter at a thrift store, and knew it would be perfect for our ever lasting ever green plant. The photo really doesn’t do it justice.

More plants, at our back door.

Another thrifted planter I found. I know that the image has sun damage, but I like how muted the colours are. Plus I love robins!

I failed to take photos of the plants now residing in the bedroom… but when I have another plant update (and I will!) I will be sure to include them.  I also didn’t take photos of the back garden area.  Jerry spent a lot of time edging the concrete pad and sweeping the area.  He planted some peas in one part of the garden, and I planted sunflowers in the other.  I also planted some mystery flower seeds in a hanging basket and in the robin planter.. I hope something grows from them! We moved the plant stand out of the kitchen, which also freed up some more floor space and makes the room feel less cluttered.  One step closer to the kitchen being “decorated”!

After all the work we did, it felt great to relax outside.  We let the kitties out to enjoy the weather too and explore a bit.  They love being outside, but are generally too timid to go outside of our back patio area.

Spring was moving in the air above
And in the earth below and around him,
Penetrating even his small dark and lowly little house
With its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
It was small wonder, then,
That he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor
And said, “Bother!”
Something up above was calling him.

(Segment from La Dispute’s song Seven)

xoxo

A Walk in the Park {casual photography}

Due to the incredibly fair weather we have been having here in London, my partner and I decided to relax by having a mini adventure to the Thames River.  We got to climb trees, make bridges out twigs (we don’t recommend that…), crawl into possible animal hole caves (I shouldn’t recommend that either, but nothing came of it so.. go for it?) and just generally enjoy the outside.

Did I mention the gorgeous sunset we were able to enjoy?

The home organization is going great.  The bookcase that was in progress during my last post is done, and just needs a little fine tuning.  I also finished another craft swap yesterday, so expect a post about that in the next few weeks!

xoxo

Spring Cleaning {year long super purge continues}

This is a quick update about how the house re-decorating, de-cluttering, organizing and losing my mind overall is going.

As you know, I have been focusing my decorating efforts in the kitchen.  I can’t wait for the consistent nice weather so that I can finally paint the doors to the kitchen.  If you remember  from my “before” shots of the kitchen, one area that was in dire need of re-organization before I could even consider what to do with the space was the small counter beside the fridge, seen here:

if you can believe it, I actually tidied up the counter before I took this picture

As you can see, the microwave took up almost all of the counter space; also, thanks to poor outlet locations, we are required to string a heavy extension cord across the window and allowed to just hang out awkwardly in the bottom left hand corner there.  My partner and I discussed the possibility of moving the microwave to the other counter.. but that seemed worse.  So, we decided to try to go a full week without using the microwave, to see if we could do it.  We even taped the door, so that if we forgot, we didn’t accidentally use it (I do admit that we used it once during the week, to use our last pack of microwave popcorn).  After the trial week was over, we moved the microwave out of the kitchen:

Now, there is so much more space!  I am excited about this simple change, it gives me a lot more area to work and forces us to eat a lot more healthy on a regular basis.  I’m still not entirely sure how to decorate the spot, or how I should organize the kitchen to utilize the space as efficiently as possible.. but one thing is for sure: I really don’t miss that big, ugly microwave.

But, being the super crazy person I am, I am not never happy with doing only one thing at a time.  Today I decided to do some super organizing/ purging in the living room.  So far, I have sorted through two storage ottomans, the TV unit, our “coffee table” (which is really just two milk crates staked on top of each other with a tray on top), and now I am tackling one of the worst offenders: the book-case.

Here is my current progress shot, which I am avoiding at the moment to write this post:

We have too many books for the book cases we have.  That is a sad fact that we are hopefully correcting soon (Ikea here we come!), and so I will probably be putting a lot of these books away until then.

I have also been playing around with the Iphone and taking photos again with it.  You may have noticed that my new photos today were both taken with it (hence their slightly funky colorations).  I found a new app to play around with called Photo HDR, although I’m not really sure how well it does high dynamic range, it does offer some fun possibilities.  Here is a photo of my living room, a complete mess, taken with the Iphone:

If you are online, and bored, I also found this website that might eat up all of my free time: http://random-tutorial.com/

It’s a site where you just click a button and you are brought to a random craft tutorial.  However, one downside is that you have to go to the actual blog site and post in order to pin it, which kind of sucks.

xoxo