Category: Current House

It’s been fun poking around other’s gardens, hasn’t it?  Well, we’re wrapping up this garden week with Kim and Scott from Yellow Brick Home.  We love Kim and Scott for their fun, colorful style and fantastic, down-to-earth personalities.  Enjoy!

Hello! We’re Kim and Scott from Yellow Brick Home, and we’re thrilled and honored that Amanda has asked us to share our patio and garden space with all of you.

First and foremost, it’s important to mention that we’re Windy City dwellers. We don’t, um, really have the fantasy garden of our dreams (we’ll get there someday), as our home is just a bitty footprint (all 675 square feet of it) in a big building of over a dozen homeowners. We do, however, take pride in our equally teeny patio, as we especially love our summers in Chicago.

After a too long winter, a lack of spring, and countless chilly days, our outdoor space was looking pretty darn sad. There’s no sugar-coating this mess:

And our garden planters were certainly worse for wear.

While we don’t have an abundance of space to create sprawling landscapes and private lounge areas (ooh, how lovely that would be!), we still put ourselves to work to ensure our own relaxing oasis of sorts – that is, as much as it can be on the second floor of a shared building. Lucky for us, we have some pretty great neighbors, which makes up for any lack of privacy.

This year, we whipped that 8′ x 10′ chunk of outdoor space into shape using our existing table and chairs – and fluffing it up with freshly painted planters and textiles.

Because our patio is mostly shaded (only getting about 3-5 hours of partial sun during the day), we rely on trusty impatiens every year, mixing in a few other light-fearing greens for interest. We are absolutely smitten with our hanging chenille plant, so much so that we’ve named him Sully (our red-haired version of Monster’s Inc. fame, and no, we do not name all our plants. The line must be drawn somewhere).

We think of our outdoor space as an extension of our home during those summer months – spending the majority of our time gathered around the table. Neutral chair cushions, patterned pillows and a textured rug help make the patio feel like an additional room.

With our comfy cozy outdoor garden, you bet we’re dining al fresco. After giving up on the tablecloth hunt earlier this season, we decided to make our own. Who knew a drop cloth and fabric paint could be such good friends? And while we don’t keep it on the table every day, we enjoy bringing it out for company and relaxing dinners.

Most recently, we added a string of café lights to keep us outside a bit longer. The moody glow pairs perfectly with a cold glass of wine, and we can almost pretend we’re lounging ocean side on a warm night. Okay, without the sounds of the water. And maybe that’s a stretch, but hey, being surrounded by our flora is pretty darn good, too.

Which, by the way, we haven’t killed yet. Three cheers for that! Scott and I are bona fide black thumbs (not proud of it), and we’re amazed at how well our little guys are doing. Muggy days and an over-the-top rainy summer has certainly been a gift in disguise, but we like to think our persistence and song-singing has paid off.

But perhaps our favorite part? Outdoor dining and plump pillows aside, you just can’t beat that “city” view from our bedroom window.

And if you’re wondering where anything came from, here’s that trusty source list:

Table and chairs: Ikea
Rug: Overstock.com
Tablecloth: DIY drop cloth
Pillows: Restoration Hardware
Chair pads: Ikea
Plants: Sprout and Home Depot
Planters and liners: Home Depot

Thank you, Amanda, for having us!

Thank you, Kim for sharing your outdoor oasis!  

Today, we are honored to have Jen from IHeart Organizing to share her deck garden with us today.

Thank you so much Amanda for having me today!  I am über giddy to be guest posting on one of my fav blogs, such an honor!

Amanda asked if I could share a little about our garden this year and I have to admit, we dropped the ball when it came to planting anything veggie related, as we had the latest of springs/summers which totally threw me for a loop!  However, we did do a couple of things to ensure we added mini-flower gardens around the home, just to give the outdoors some life and color!

The biggest impact was adding some pretty deck boxes, we found these at Home Depot and they were the perfect solution for our white pvc deck rails!

I love how they snap on and they are durable in the crazy weather that Wisconsin brings.  Inside, I just added some pretty colorful annuals, they really bring the whole space to life!

I am also a huge advocate of photographing your flower gardens/boxes, because it makes the best art inside the home also!

Speaking of bring the outdoors in, we decided to add a couple of pretty planters inside to plant our little “herb garden”!

We actually let the kiddos handle this one!  They scooped the dirt and planted the seeds!  They did fantastic, however, they mixed up the planters so we don’t know which is which!

Now we just wait until they are fully grown so we can add some pretty labels to the planters!  Until then, they are well on their way to becoming the perfect garnishings to our meals!

So there is the lowdown on some of the “gardening” going on at the Jones abode!  Thanks again Amanda for the opportunity to stop by and share today!

In the interest of sharing many types of gardens, today, we have Cait from Hernando House to share her plans for a future garden.

I’m so excited to be guest posting for Amanda today! However, when she first asked me to do a guest post she mentioned that she was hoping for something garden-related, and unfortunately I have a brown thumb and our backyard has been looking like this recently:

And this is an improvement, trust me.

My husband, Robert, and I have plans for a reclaimed brick patio in the works, so we recently sledgehammered out some oddly placed concrete (old deck foundation maybe?) and began chipping away at some wavy tile (which we think might cover a former pool deck or an amoeba shaped patio). The plan from there is to cut the wavy portion of concrete off about 12 inches out from the porch wall for drainage purposes, and then re-tile with some terra-cotta tile we got from my parents, which should coordinate better with the brick patio than the mismatched indoor tile below. We’re hoping to only spend about $250 between materials and saw rental, especially since we were fortunate enough to get reclaimed brick from friends and family. You can read more about our planning and budgeting here.

We have had to take a break from working on the yard recently, thanks to Florida’s afternoon & evening summer showers and the thick smoke from nearby wildfires. During this forced break, I have been daydreaming about what our backyard will look like when everything is “finished” (which honestly won’t be for quite a while, even after the patio is done), and refining the plan we came up with this spring (originally created with Better Homes & Gardens Plan-a-Garden, since refined in Photoshop). Robert and I are drawn to a rustic industrial look with modern influences, so most of what we have been planning follows along those lines.

This is the layout I daydream about; not to scale.

We built an outdoor shower surround along one side of our house this spring, and though we have yet to plumb it we know it will get a lot of use after summer yard work and it’s already great for washing our two dogs without getting a drain full of dog hair.

Our galvanized outdoor shower surround.

We’d like to have a walkway from the patio to the outdoor shower, most likely using gravel and stepping stones like the picture below.

from Pinterest

The fence along the back of our yard needs to be replaced and we are considering something galvanized, to fit in with the look of the outdoor shower. This should be fairly simple (assuming our neighbors also like the look) because we already know about working with galvanized sheet metal from building the shower.

from Pinterest

In one corner of the yard we envision a shallow pool made from a livestock tank, an idea that we saw when The Brick House featured the one below (from bigBANG Studio, and it has become very popular on Pinterest recently). We also plan to put a low deck around our pool.

bigBANG studio

I would like to have a couple of galvanized planters along the edges of the patio, filled with Lemon Balm and Purple Heart plants (also called Purple Wandering Jew; the purple plant seen below), like the ones Erica from Urban Grace Interiors has in her garden. My aunt recently told me that Lemon Balm is a great natural mosquito repellant, and my parents have had good luck with Purple Heart plants, so hopefully even my brown thumb can grow those. As for the rest of the yard, we’re planning to try some hardy, drought resistant grass.

As for furnishing the patio and deck, I’m constantly changing my mind. We will probably work with our existing table and chairs when we first finish the patio, and save up for some newer things while we make up our minds. Currently I’m loving the combination of the Ikea Applaro chaise lounge, the Regal Rochester Metal Frame chair from CSN, a couple of Portfolio Outdoor Wall Lights from Lowe’s, and a couple of strings of Commercial Patio String Lights. The plant shown is a Lemon Balm from here.

Thanks so much to Amanda and Ben for letting me guest post today! I hope you enjoyed reading about my plans for our backyard.

We started off garden week by sharing what our garden has looked like over the past five years.  We’ve invited four fantastic bloggers to share their gardens with you as well.  First up, we have Ashley from Design Build Love, a DIY blog with so many inspiring ideas.

Hi y’all, I’m Ashley and I blog over at Design Build Love!  Let’s just say that I was super excited when Amanda emailed me about guest blogging over here, and I was more than willing to participate in her week-long garden series! I absolutely adore Amanda and am in LOVE with her house and her blog, as I’m sure many of you are too!!! And, I’m totally diggin’ her recent AA meeting bench re-do! Go Amanda!!!

If you happen to head over to my blog, you might notice that I often refer to my blog as “our” blog and that’s because I have an amazing husband named Eric, who’s always by my side to join in on each and every project I dream up! This is us:

We’re young, newlywed professionals who moonlight as designers/home-improvement-DIYers! Our motto: We’re BUSY, we’re FRUGAL, and we LOVE to DO-IT-OURSELVES. We save to buy what we want, and if it’s out of reach, we build it ourselves! We’ll never pay someone to do something that we can do ourselves (unless there’s a safety issue), because we both believe in learning, and with a little eagerness and determination, we usually can accomplish any of our projects!

Anywho… on to the outdoors! If you follow our blog, it’s no secret that we’ve been feverishly working on our front and back yards for most of the spring and summer, but I just thought I’d give you guys a quick snapshot of our front yard.

We started with a fairly unattractive situation when we bought our house. Things were ugly, poorly groomed, and sparse. It’s safe to say that little love when into this…

After holding out for a little over a year (while we tackled some major project inside), we finally plunged, head-first into some major tearing out and prepping of the planters, and ended up with this!

You can see more pictures of the process here and here, but our basic steps were tearing out everything, rototilling the dirt, laying a drip system, planting plants, placing weed cloth, and bringing in the rock to finish it off!

We even potted some flowers to make the front entry more inviting! (please ignore the unpainted strip on the door… it’s temporary while we’re refinishing our solid mahogany door) The pots were a sweet birthday score from my momma! Being the amazing shopper that she is, she snagged these heavy duty, painted pots at Ross for $12 and $15! Score!!! And they totally compliment the colors inside our home!

When we decided to delve into yard projects, we wanted to be certain we got the best prices and selection, but also the most information. So, to properly select all of the plants, we visited our local Lowe’s and our local nursery, Green Acres. Both were extremely helpful, but the local nursery is where newbies like us can really get a great botany lesson!!!

Overall, we are absolutely IN LOVE with our new curb appeal! Our favorite things is probably the rock, the Mexican Petunias, and the Sweet Pea bushes.

The only things that we would change are these ugly square patches of “plants” that someone (no names) convinced us to get… BUT… they’re already gone (sorry, no updated pic at the moment)! Aren’t they totally oogly…

All-in-all, we’re super proud of what we accomplished and can’t wait to see all of the plants flourish! DIYing all of it saved us some serious cash, as well as buying the less mature plants! So, cruise on over to the blog for updates on the growth! Oh ya… and see that paver patio just behind the plants… that’s new too and we’ll hopefully be DIYing a bench for that spot in the near future!!! After that, the bench just might be our new favorite thing!

I hope y’all stop by our blog for a visit! We’d love to have you!

~Ashley

***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries, Thank You!***

You remember Jessica Alpern Cuts Paper, don’t you?  Yes.  Good!  No, well let me refresh your memory, because you’re going to love her and her fantastic work.  We have one of Jessica’s fantastic, intricate cut outs in our bird, tree and feather art gallery.

The black nest to the top left is a hand cut silhouette, filled with charm and character.

My favorite detail is the little feather.  So cute.  And, I love that Jessica mounts the cut outs to vellum or plexi glass, so you can change up the background color if your room (or mood) changes.  We also picked up a Spork, Welcome to the family cut out for our kitchen, but those weren’t the only cut outs we loved.  In fact, it was hard to choose.  Jessica has everything, from real, nature inspired cut outs like these:

Leaf Skeleton

Dinomite

Peacock Feathers

But, if you’re looking for something with a little more personality, Jessica’s got you covered with light-hearted, humorous cut outs like these:

Long Stride Evolution

I Made You a Mix Tape

Heck, she can make a custom silhouette of you furry friend.

The Goods: One $30 and another $45 store credit, good for or toward anything by Jessica Alpern Cuts Paper

To Enter: Subscribe to follow Our Humble A{Bowe}d, if you’re not already.  To subscribe, click the “Sign Me Up!” button under “Be the first to know.”  Once you’ve subscribed, leave a comment, which can (but doesn’t have to) include our Just for Fun question.

Just for Fun:  When I was younger, I loved when Dave Coulier, aka Uncle Joey said, “Cut it out” on Full House.  What is your favorite TV catchphrase?  If not a catch phrase, favorite funny TV moment that frequently pops up in conversations?

For additional entries:

1. Add Jessica Alpern to your Etsy favs, come back and leave a comment telling us what your favorite item is.

2. Like Our Humble A{Bowe}d on Facebook, come back and leave another comment.

Contest Closes: Thursday, June 30th at 11:59 pm, central time.

Number of Winners: Two!

Ships: Anywhere on the globe!

Other Info: We will select the winner using random.org and announce on Friday, July 1st.  Good luck!!