Weekend Warriors--Back At It

 After a long, long, break from dealing with the house, we were back at it this weekend!

The poor drought and intense heat wrecked havoc on our lawn this Summer.  We spent the first couple of months trying to keep up with the watering--but when we started to see how much the water bill was, we decided it was time to wave the white flag.  After all, we were paying big money to still have a brown lawn!

Not only did the lawn go dormant, but we lost some grass as well--our poor yard became VERY splotchy!  Just two years ago we overseeded the yard, but after the kind of summer we just had, it was already time to do it again.

I love my husband to death, but sometimes, he refuses to listen to me...even when I'm right :-)  Haha!  We had marked off this weekend as our "overseeding weekend" and earlier this week, I mentioned he MAY want to reserve a seed slicer...so what did he do?  He waited until Saturday morning to rent one! The local rental store was all out, so he had to drive 20 miles to Junction City to pick one up, drive all the way back, overseed the lawn, and return it back to the Junction City store--all within 3 hours!  At least he was a good sport about the hiccup and didn't complain any ;-)

Fortunately, the morning was absolutely GORGEOUS!  While Justin operated the seed slicer, I planted the last of our hydrangeas for the year...we have some low spots in our landscaping near our front porch, so I'm hoping the hydrangeas and monkey grass that I planted over Labor Day will fill in the voids come next Spring!

Oh, and I should give our yard SOME credit--not all of it got fried!

This poor section, though...it never had a chance!  We were going to sod this area this past Spring, but never got around to it.  Thus, most of it was nothing but bare dirt!    However, we literally "over seeded" it this past weekend, laid down a bunch of straw to assist with moisture retention and now we just have our fingers crossed.  Hopefully, within the next few weeks, we'll see new grass emerging!!!

While working in the yard, I noticed that our Zebra Grass was starting to throw plumes.  Generally, I hate plumes on grass--I understand why grass has plumes, but I've always wished that it wasn't necessary.  Well...except for Zebra Grass.  Holy smokes--these plumes were amazing!  They sparkled in the sun and had the prettiest tint of pink--it's moments like this where you really stop and appreciate the nature that has been created for us!

Much to my surprise, we spent all of Saturday in the yard--I had no idea it would take that long AND cut into my other project!

Earlier last week, I picked out a few different paint samples for our bathroom.  Because the other rooms in our bungalow have very "colorful" walls, I decided it was time for a neutral colored bathroom--but naturally, I would still liven it up with accessories!

After trying out countless samples, I quickly realized why I don't bother with beiges.  Most of them were pulling too much yellow--but at the advice of a relative, I checked out some beiges with a blue undertone and guess what?  It worked!  However, our bathroom was full of test "spots" and I couldn't live with it any longer--the bathroom had to get painted over the weekend!

When we bought our house over two years ago, the bathroom looked like this...

At the time, I didn't want to rip out the floor or the tiles above the shower-surround, so I tried to work around them.  I decided to go with a retro-theme and for the time being, it was just fine...but I started to tire of all the black-white-khaki-ness.  And having a wallpaper border.  None of it went with the rest of our house...

But after finding the perfect shower curtain to tie all the rooms together, and after finding the right beige paint, and tearing off the border, the bathroom was getting a facelift!  We went from that ^, to this:

A fairly accurate representation of the new wall color!

I still need to accessorize the bathroom like crazy--but it's already 10-times brighter than before!  Hallelujah!  At some point, we'll rip out the Hollywood vanity light and install some up-lighting that's a bit more modern!  Much to my dismay, the Hollywood bulbs are screwed into the medicine cabinet so it's going to take a good dose of courage to tackle that one!  The final bit of bathroom "renovation" will be the flooring.  Like I mentioned above, I have always hated the vinyl peel-&-stick tiles--and thankfully, Justin melted the tile a few weeks ago when steam-cleaning the floor, so we feel a little bit better about ripping them out and installing real stone!

But before we replace the flooring, we have one MAJOR project to tackle!  It doesn't involve the bathroom, nor the kitchen, nor any of the bedrooms--even though the whole process is really stressing me out, I'm super pumped about it and will be sure to keep you apprised of the progress!