Mother's Day

It is the best day of the year.I used to be so into birthdays. but nothing compares to Mother's Day anymore. (In two years, my birthday is on Mother's Day!) There is just something so peaceful and calm on this day that everyone shows love to the woman that they call mother. Jon made this a fantastic mother's day for me. He knows how much I love picnics and that is all I asked for. I do not need gifts... I just want to spend time with my family. we went to Rip Van Winkle Gardens and had our picnic on the lake. Finn snoozed by the lake while Jon and I sipped on mimosas. My heart was very full. I am so very thankful that I was able to have a child, and a pretty darn good one if I must say so myself! The only thing I wished is that Jon and I could spend Mother's Day with our own moms. Now that I have my own child, I respect every single thing that mom did for me. It is hard being a mom sometimes, yet very rewarding. I can't imagine how hard it will be in the teenage years.

Mother's Day Flowers

The tree when first pulling in to Rip Van Winkle Gardens

Mimosas while Finn slept!

zzzzz....

Beautiful!

Finn loved the peacocks everywhere!

Little guy was camera shy. It was time for bed.

In God's Hands

I have been impatiently waiting to hear about job openings and where in the heck I will be teaching next year. I am not a patient person. At all. Just ask my husband. When I get my mind set on something, it usually has to happen right then and there. So this waiting game is no fun for me. I just want to get excited about my new room, new students, new school, and start to prepare as early as possible. I had a teacher tell me today that God will place you wherever he wants you, and I need to just believe in that. This time will fly by and I will be wherever am supposed to be in a blink of an eye.

In the last few weeks, I have realized that my little man is getting so big and smart. He is saying so much more every single day. And he seems like he wants to just learn, learn, learn! 

Painting time!

Jon created a succulent garden for our island in the kitchen. He as always loved the look of succulents and I am starting to like them. It turned out pretty cute!

Succulent Garden

Jon's little helper

It is crawfish season here in Louisiana. It is quite possibly the best time of year! I didn't eat these things when I first moved here, but I am so glad that I do now! There is nothing like some hot crawfish and a cold beer!

Yum!

Finn likes to play with the live crawfish. They have their pinchers torn off so they can't get him!

We went to Disney on Ice and the boys absolutely loved it!!

They couldn't take their eyes off!

My little man loves to give big hugs these days. It may be the best thing in the world!

DIY Cinder Block Herb Garden

It's project time again and this time it's an herb garden! This is my our first time having a garden that produces food. So, it will be very trial and error! I am not ashamed to say that I am not the green thumb of our family. I can (and will) kill every plant that I am in charge of keeping alive. Thanks so Jon, plants do very well in our house, so we decided to attempt a real garden! Due to space constraints, we agreed on doing a simple herb garden since we love to cook so much. To match our new DIY Cinder Block Bench, we found some great cinder block garden ideas on Pinterest. Not only are they very inexpensive, but it also matches all of our reused and upcycled look of our backyard. And I just love the industrial look with the love garden.

Let's get to work!

 

We have a very small space to work with due to the fact that we don't want to take a ton of our grass and yard away in order for Finn to have some playing area. We decided to go right in front of the walkway that Jon put together. The space shown could not really be utilized in any other way. We first dug up most of the grass, but not all.

 We then put cardboard down as the first layer. We read that this will kill all the weeds that will try and snake their way up into the garden. We will see about that. Jon then placed 14 cinder blocks in a rectangle to utilize the space as much as possible. We wanted the river rock from the walkway to continue along the front so it would look like one area

Jon took charge of the outside ring of plants. He had a pretty clear vision on what he wanted, and I think it turned out perfect. There are some grass plants, succulents, flowers, etc. Nothing edible in the outside area. And I LOVE the river rocks in every other hole. Great job, hubby!

Now it was my turn. And boy, was it hard. I had no clue what to get. First I wanted to grow mt herbs from spices, but then I read that if it was your first time that it would be easier to grow from plants. (Next year, I will grow from seeds because I feel like I am cheating). Then, I didn't know if I should add flowers or not.

 

Isn't my little helper so cute?!

I decided on just herbs and no flowers. We were worried that the herbs would get big and start to take over the flowers. I guess it is a waiting game now to see if we made the right decision.

Next step was to make the markers. I would love to say that I came up with this idea all on my own, but it was yet another Pinterest find. I can take the credit for drinking the wine and having some fairly good script handwriting!

Our last step will be to add some kind of saying on the wall above the garden. We still aren't sure what we are doing there, but I love the look of the frames on the fence.

 

 

 

 

The wine corks were placed on bamboo skewers. We happened to have all of these items laying around our house, so no trip to the store for this!

 

 

 

 

Our Garden Markers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final project is complete! Well, with the exception of the artwork that we will have above the garden. This was a very inexpensive project and I hope that we will have lots of herbs for our meals. I guess I better get to researching on how to make yourself a green thumb!

DIY Cute Bench

Projects are something that Jon and I absolutely love to do at our new house. We like to set a project for the weekend (almost every weekend). The project is usually decided on by how many funds we have in the bank. Some projects have consisted of gardening, some of taking found pieces of wood from around the new construction areas in our neighborhood to make new things, etc. These projects also keep us at home on the weekends, which is something we love at this point because we love our new house! And these projects like this bring such a sense of pride in our home and in our marriage.

We really needed some seating area for the back porch, but didn't have lots to spend. Like hardly anything to spend. But we knew that Finn's second birthday party was right around the corner and we really wanted to have his party at our house. So, I started looking through Pinterest like I always do when I need to get ideas. Am I the only one who goes to Pinterest before Google now? I used to be the Google queen, but it has been replaced with the best thing since sliced bread! I got lots ideas about using cheap items that could be painted and put together from home improvement store, so Jon and I went on the hunt to see what we could find. We love the re-purposed look using pallets and old wood, but we heard that it was an absolute pain to rip pallets apart in order to make something else. We decided on the cinder block look. There were tons of ideas on Pinterest, but this one caught our eye and is what we decided to base our design off of..  DIY Outdoor Seating

It turned out better than we expected and check out the awesome coffee table that my husband made to go with it at the end of this blog! Full project could possibly take an afternoon, but it took us a two days since we had to let the paint dry between coats on the cinder blocks.

Our local hardware store had the wood planks at a pretty good price. We only needed three of these. The cinder blocks ran less than a dollar a piece. We needed 8 cinder blocks. 

Let the painting begin! We used the leftover paint from our house to paint the blocks and wood, which we felt like would make it look like it "went" with the house. 

Painting the blocks was a little bit of a headache. They sucked up the paint pretty quick. We ended up doing two layers using white on the inside of the block and the brown color on the outside. At least I had this cutie to help out!

Mason jar drinks are a must when completing this project! 

The wood planks painted very easily. We didn't sand at all, just applied the latex paint directly on the wood. After looking back, we did not have to paint each one, but we had the paint and the time!

We needed a little break so Finn could play with the neighbors. 

Putting the bench together! We had to saw about 8 inches off the wood planks to get them the length we wanted. We used a regular jigsaw. 

We liked the look of the planks hanging over the bricks. 

The final piece is complete. Disclaimer here... I was going to attempt to sew my own cushions so that we would only have to purchase the pillows, but we ended up finding these at Home Depot and went ahead and purchased them. We loved the designs and thought it would add a little spring to our patio.

Perfect for our cozy little backyard! We ended up having to put a piece of plywood between the planks and the cushion that we also cut to size using our jigsaw (my sister gave this to me about 10 years ago and we have been using the heck out of it lately! Thanks, Jenny!).

Then Jon made this coffee table! We scored the pallet piece already put together and this was the original size. It was perfect for what we were looking for! We wanted something low since the bench is kinda low. We already had the beadboard, but had to cut it to size using a jigsaw. The board was then painted with chalk paint, distressed (it was distressed more after this picture), and polycrylic was applied.