Gardening Wars

I bought the house where I live about 2 and 1/2 years ago (before getting married). Before moving in, I had never been a yard person. I grew up on acreage with my family. I mowed the yard a few times with the riding lawn mower but soon got demoted because I have terrible allergies. So yard work has never really been my thing. I remember the first time I went to mow my yard here. I had to call my dad and two of my guy friends to try to figure out how to start the push lawn mower. I swore sweet Dave to secrecy to never tell anyone that we had that conversation because I was embarrassed that I was so clueless when it came to yard work.

 Anyways, that brings me to present day. Ever since I got married (and even while dating) my husband has been talking about these great plans for our yard.

This is a pic of Philip using our new trimmer that we got for Christmas from his parents.

He came home last week telling me about this great AP on his phone where he can take weekly pictures and document the progress of our fertilizer. He is determined to have the greenest yard on the block. Philip came up to me last week and said that he has a secret competition with our neighbors to have a better looking yard. And would you not believe it, but almost every night since he said that our neighbors across the street have been doing yard work up until the wee hours of the night. We came home the other night around 10:30 and I started laughing because the crazy neighbors had taken the fluorescent light (it looked like the kind you find in a kitchen) and set it up on the front porch while they weeded and planted flowers. 

So what did we do...we planted our own garden.

It was so fun. We spent both days of our weekend going to the hardware store nursery, digging up an area, putting down the stones, and planting our plants. It was such a nice change to our backyard that has 0 landscaping. We high fived and patted each other on the back for a job well done. We still wanted to go buy some hydrangea bushes to finish of the flower bed but we had already started dreaming of our next step. We are going to buy a tree that will provide the dogs plenty of shade during the "dog days" of summer.

Wouldn't you know that not two days later our furry children (we are not for sure which one) dug up almost every single one of our flowers. Not only that, but they bit off the bloom of the flowers too. Philip and I came home from doing yard work for the church on Wednesday night. We were in such a good mood and decided to go in the back yard to admire our beautiful work that we had done earlier in the week. When I saw the sight I almost started crying. I know it is irrational but I felt emotional about the situation. All of our hard work was gone and I felt like the hope of ever having a beautiful yard went out the window too. After letting a few days go by so that I wasn't wanting to kill our dogs I joked with Philip that our dogs were moles...working for the neighbors. It was a sneaky ploy to keep us down in the garden wars. The Meadows will fight back. After all, gardening is almost in our name.

Have a blessed week everyone.

Board and Batten or Bust

  

So my birthday is coming up this week. Tonight while grilling out on the back porch Philip asked me what I wanted for my birthday. 

Originally I had wanted some laser hair removal (because ladies who wouldn't love to save a few extra minutes in the shower). I changed my mind and decided that I would rather have some home renovations done instead. So I told Philip that I wanted to tackle our dining room. Here is my vision:

Board and Batten

I had seen my inspiration on one of my favorite design shows-"Sarah's House". I am a big fan of creating inspiration files so that I am ready at any moment to start a room. I make all of my clients give me inspiration pictures before I start their project because it gives me a clear picture of the direction they want to go. I digress yet suggest that you start one for yourself.

So I saw an episode where Sarah renovated a farmhouse dining room. This is how hers turned out:

I loved how she mixed the textures of bead board and wallpaper. I however have taken inspiration from her pictures and decided to do some board and batten instead. Here are some great pictures to get the point across:

Then after looking for rooms that I liked I discovered that there were different designs in board in batten. I am now leaning toward the additional cross beam 2/3 the way up. I think it will make it just a little more formal (since this is our formal dining room).

This picture doesn't really apply to my room but I think that it is a precious idea for a mud room.

So here are a few pictures of our dining room/"formal" living room before:

Just imagine this room with 3 of the four walls with white board and batten 3/4 the way up and then a deep red paint above. I would like to have a small ledge so I can layer some accessories above as well. I can't wait. I will keep you posted with the progress!

Side note: I already have my eye on our next project. I follow this blog called "the lettered cottage" and they just renovated their small guest bedroom by putting reclaimed gymnasium floors on the wall. I looooove it!!!

I would like to do this on our silhouette wall. To be continued...

God's Faithfulness

So far on my blog I have not done a great job of sharing personal stories with you guys. I want to change that and mix it in some with the design because I think people need to know what God is doing in my life.


"Test me this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." Malachi 3:10




Two weeks ago I was down. I was frustrated and nervous about finances. My job is based on numbers. I need to sell a certain amount every month in order to not get written up. In the past this has never been a problem, but the past two or three months have been slow and low in sales. It was getting on towards the end of the month and I was no where near where I needed to be sales-wise. I knew that it was under control and God would be faithful.

More back story that you need to know. About a month ago we had a guest pastor come and speak at church. He was amazing and spoke about how God blesses people abundantly who tithe over what is asked of them. He told story after story about how people gave above their ability and God immediately blessed them with money in some way. Philip and I decided to give this a shot and double our tithing. We had been very upbeat about it and  verbally affirming that God would be faithful back to us.

Back to where I was two weeks ago. (this is probably about a month after we started tithing more). I had a minor break down about our family budget. I started to freak out because the increased tithing wasn't part of our budget. In my head I just knew that God would repay our giving through making my sales increase at work....that was not happening. I was at least 35k away from breaking even with only 4 days left in the month. I broke down crying one night and Philip tried to encourage me. It was sweet but didn't help that much. The next morning I woke up and started to get ready. I noticed all of these pink post-it notes all over my house. In the kitchen, on the refrigerator, on my car wind shield, etc. My sweet husband had spent his morning writing scriptures about God's faithfulness on post its to encourage me.

This helped renew my faith in a big way. I always knew that God was going to come through but I was afraid that his timing might not be mine. (and when is it really ever the same as mine...but His is always better). Anyways, Monday night we got home really late and Philip went to the mail box to bring in the day's mail. He asked me why we would get another bill from our mortgage company. I had no idea what he was talking about. So I opened up the so thought "bill" and saw a large check. Our mortgage company said that we overpaid last year by quite a bit and that they were legally obligated to return the money. Our mouths dropped. On top of that they were lowering our mortgage payment quite a bit every month. Praise the Lord. I think we stood there stunned and re-read the letter several times to see if there was some sort of fine print. We broke into giddy laughter. God was so good. He came through just when we needed it in a way that we never expected it. We posted the check on the fridge because it was special to us. Jesus sent us that check and it brought tears to my eyes.

My barn overflows.

Then I went to work on Wednesday the 30th of the month. I had one presentation that night and she had given me a budget of less than 10k to do her room (a very good budget). She left that night having spent over 20k. Praise the Lord. I was that much closer to breaking even. The next day as Philip left for work I said say a prayer for me because I need to sell 6k today. Don't you know that an hour before we closed that day I had a lady that I hadn't spoken to in a long time call up and order 6300 over the phone. What seemed so impossible three days later, God did with ease. Philip and I have just sat back laughing at how amazing God is.

We were talking while driving around doing errands yesterday and I asked him, "Do you think God is up in heaven laughing at us right now saying, 'I told you I had this. This isn't my first rodeo.'?"

My barn overflows!
God says to test Him on this. Take it from me, God doesn't lie!

Best bathrooms

Right now I am watching the opening day of baseball with my husband and Dad. With all this testosterone I need to balance it with a little interior design. So I am multi-tasking looking for some beautiful ideas for bathrooms while cheering for the Texas Rangers. Here are some bathrooms that I love.

apartmenttherapy.com

lifestyles.msn.com

urbanjane.blogspot.com

I love the fireplace!

froghilldesigns.blogspot

Coastal Living

I love the towel rack/rope!

DailyDivaDish

by Sarah Richardson

                 All these pictures makes me want to go take a bath. Happy bubbles everyone.