One of the things I love about this house and this neighborhood is the mature landscaping.  There are no scrawny saplings or yards covered only by a patchwork of newly-laid sod.  Everything is established and adds to the charm and beauty of this neighborhood.  For that reason, I was hesitant to start cutting down trees and ripping out bushes, but after being in the house for a few months, I needed to acknowledge that much of the landscaping would need to be removed or heavily cut back.  Bushes had grown together and several were way too close to the house.  The maple trees were in desperate need of thinning and a few of the small dogwoods were struggling in their shadow.  One dogwood had been completely choked out by a thick hedge of overgrown, woody bushes, leaving a tangled mess around a dead tree.  You could see that it was

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Lamps Plus.  As always, all words and opinions expressed in this post are honest and my own. If you missed the post a couple of weeks ago, I shared the new lights from Lamps Plus we installed in our hallway.  You can find that post HERE.  As a recap, we swapped dated, single-bulb lights for THESE beautiful star-shaped lights with six bulbs each!  The difference was amazing.  You can never underestimate what good lighting can do for a space.  With that success under our belt, I was eager to change out the exterior light fixtures of our 1970s ranch house.  I know “original lighting” sounds charming, but these were builder-grade, cheap light fixtures that had lived a good, long life.  They no longer added to the beauty or charm appeal of the house but detracted from it. There were six of them to change,