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Decorating

All Things Home

Patio Makeover Reveal

Disclosure: This patio makeover post is sponsored by .  As always, all opinions and words are honest and my own. Welcome to a typical suburban patio makeover!  These are scattered all over suburbia…the concrete pad just off the walk-out basement sliding door, shaded by the deck.  It’s the builder-grade default. We’ve seen our neighbors do some beautiful things with this space…resurface the concrete, extend the patio out beyond the deck, use it as a pad for a hot tub, etc.  Ours was a sad, neglected dumping ground.  It was where we dumped rocks that we removed from the front garden beds.  There was a burn pile, wood from a sectional that was delivered a few weeks after we moved in, wires and cinder blocks that were left by the previous owners, and lots of weeds.  Even as I look at it now, it’s just sad.  I’ve said many times on

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All Things Home

Edging & Painting the Concrete Patio

Last Thursday, the weather was lovely.  It was sunny, wasn’t too hot, and there was a light breeze.  It was the perfect day to get the patio under our deck painted.  Oh, this patio was so sad and neglected.  It felt so good to finally give it some attention! Before we could paint, we had to get it all cleaned up.  We did the majority of that during one of our family workdays.  We burned the sticks, bagged the trash, put things in the garage that we wanted to keep (like the cinderblocks) and power washed the dirt and debris off. It looked so much better after a good cleaning, but the power washer (we have ) did not remove the paint splatters from when the previous owners painted the deck.  The best option was to prime and paint to achieve a nice, clean surface. I started by edging around

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a slice of life

family work day

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, this is the year we get our yard looking more presentable.  Not only were the beds overrun with weeds and filled with plants I had no affection for, but things were just looking messy and untidy.  The black plastic borders were popping up, grass was creeping into the beds, certain spots along the hills were eroding, 15-year-old landscape fabric was ineffective and exposed, bushes and trees needed to be pruned, and the area under the deck was a dumping ground.  I have been largely avoiding all of it for the better part of almost three years.  It just all seemed like too big of a project. My renewed energy from a mostly-healed shoulder and our collective cabin fever from being under stay-at-home orders since March became the perfect recipe to get our whole family out in the yard and working together. In

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All Things Home

more picture frame molding & slipcover progress

I have planned on adding picture frame molding and chair rail to the sewing room and master bedroom for a long time.  Well over a year!  It kept getting pushed aside, though, and there was no way I could do it when my shoulder stopped functioning properly last summer.  My shoulder is getting better all the time, so when Jeff decided to take the week off for a stay-cation to help me on some projects, installing the trim was at the top of the list. I have to admit that neither of us really felt like doing it.  It’s a pain to move all of the furniture out of the way, but it was time to just make it happen…take a deep breath, put on some motivating music, and start pushing the furniture away from the wall. We installed all of the trim in the sewing room in one day…

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All Things Home

repaired ottoman slipcover

Oh, my lovely followers…  I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed reading through your comments of gratitude on Monday’s giveaway post.  If you just need some encouragement, go read some of them.  Readers are sharing gratitude for simple things like gardening and enjoying a good book to big things like a successful kidney transplant decades ago and the love and health of their family.  Gratitude is a cure for so many things.  Thank you for taking the time to share pieces of your story with me and my readers. Moving forward, I wasn’t sure if I should continue posting on the blog this week.  There are many difficult things happening in the world and I am not an expert on the best way to deal with it all.  Social media, especially, has become a landmine and there is just no way to do or say the right thing that’s

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All Things Home

simple footstool slipcover

Between gardening projects and everything else I’ve been working on, I’ve also been getting some sewing projects knocked out.  A couple of weekends ago, I cut out the pieces and made piping for this footstool/ottoman I picked up at an antique store a few years ago.  I buy these any time I see them for a good price ($40 or less) because they have so many uses!  Of course, they can be paired with a chair to make it a little comfier, but they can also be tucked under tables, or used as extra seating or a side table in a pinch.  This one was clearly wearing some fabric from another decade, so it needed a simple footstool slipcover to match my house… I used some leftover Aviary Toile since it was going in the master bedroom.  I wanted to tuck it under the melodeon to help hide the air

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All Things Home

tending to the back & side gardens

Let’s talk about something I’ve been largely avoiding since we moved into our house almost three years ago…  the yard.  We did do a massive amount of work on the front gardens a couple of years ago, because I didn’t enjoy being greeted by a weedy mess each time I came home.  The youth group at our church was hiring out labor for a fundraiser and we took that opportunity to get this job done and support them in the process. The greatest challenge for me was gardening in rock.  I had never worked with landscaping like this.  How do I plant my annuals in a layer of rock and landscaping fabric?  I just had no idea.  So, we removed buckets and buckets of rock and pulled up the landscape fabric… With a clean slate, I put in some new plants and mulched.  It’s still a work in progress as

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All Things Home

blue toile daybed makeover

I hope you had a good three-day weekend!  We ended up doing a lot of work in our yard when it wasn’t raining.  It was hard, muddy work, but we got so much accomplished!  We dug up a bunch of plants and bushes to replace with hydrangeas and hostas, we moved and raked out a big pile of gravel, we built up some areas that were eroding, and I transplanted some perennials to new locations.  I even took the time to sketch out a plan and make a list of the plants I need to transplant and purchase, so I won’t be overwhelmed when I go to the garden center.  I took a bunch of pictures of the before and our progress, so I’ll share those in another post.  Today, I’m sharing about decorating mistakes and the newly-toiled daybed. In decorating, mistakes are sometimes made.  It’s not a mistake in

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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