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Gardening

All Things Home

1970 home renovation | yard clean-up day two

A couple of weeks ago, we started working on cleaning up the yard.  (You can read about that HERE.)  As I’ve shared before, we have a great yard with some beautiful mature trees and bushes, but much of it has gotten a little overgrown and wild.  In some cases, I just have a different vision for the yard and would like a fresh start to put in the bushes and plants that I love or simply give the house a little more breathing room.  While I do hope to do some planting this year to get some of the structures of the landscaping in place, I think the bulk of the work on the exterior of the house this season is going to be clean-up.  This is sort of the demo part of the renovation.  We need to peel back the layers, clean things up, get a fresh coat of

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All Things Home

front garden | summer of 2021

I know that many of you have summer gardens that are in their prime by this date on the calendar, but here in Rochester, Minnesota, I’m still planting!  I admit to getting off to a bit of a late start this year, but I have learned that it’s okay to be a little late when it comes to gardening this far north.  We still had nights below freezing well into May.  Anyway, everything is awake and blooming and I wanted to plant a few things to round out the front garden bed. I typically plant annuals along the walk, but I decided to go with some perennials this year in the hopes that they’ll do what they do and just keep coming back.  I planted some bellflowers last year and they came back beautifully this year, so I decided to get some more of those.  I didn’t find them at

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All Things Home

front porch refresh with walmart

Disclosure: This porch refresh is sponsored by .  As always, all words and opinions are honest and my own. Do you remember all of the work we did in our yard and our back patio last year?  We got porch paint, patio furniture, a power washer, and even plants and mulch from their to spruce up a space that had been neglected for years.  We still need to replace the deck, but the landscaping and patio a huge difference in making our backyard beautiful and inviting. This spring, we’re turning our attention to the front porch.  This doesn’t need an overhaul as the landscaping and back patio needed, but it could use a little refresh and some deep cleaning!  Here is how it looked like before a little TLC along with a little commentary on the ways I wanted to refresh our front porch…. The first order of business in

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a slice of life

the work of gardening gnomes & painting peonies

My typical gardening routine each year is to start enthusiastically and then fizzle out as the weather gets hot and beds are overwhelmed with weeds.  A part of that is I was battling beds filled with rocks, deteriorating weed-blocking fabric, and plants I didn’t like.  There wasn’t a lot of incentive to care for it until we did an overhaul.  This spring, we did a complete overhaul of the beds.  It was a lot of work, but I’m enjoying gardening so much more now that I’m tending to plants that I like and we addressed some of the problem areas. We’ve even been giving our grass more attention! You can see how our garden beds have progressed in these posts… Front Garden Reveal Tending to the Back & Side Gardens (before & afters) Patio Makeover Reveal We planted a bunch of Annabelle Hydrangeas, I split and relocated some hostas, and

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a slice of life

favorite recent online garden purchases (and savings)

Disclosure:  This post is sponsored by Wikibuy.  All opinions expressed in this post are honest and my own. I shared about Wikibuy a few weeks ago and have continued to use it while shopping online (which I’m doing a lot more these days!)  I say “use it”, but I really don’t have to do anything.  I simply shop and, when I’m checking out, the friendly Wikibuy box will pop into the top right corner automatically and let me know if there are coupon codes to try or if Wikibuy Credits are available with the purchase.   I am generally an online shopper, anyway.  It was a habit that was started when we moved to a two-stoplight town in PA that was 30-40 minutes from most stores.  But I’ve learned that it’s a quicker way to find exactly when I’m looking for.   And these days, we’re ordering almost everything online, even

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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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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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