a door problem.

our door may have fallen out of its hinges a few weeks ago. we may have managed to get it closed temporarily and left our house unlocked for a week while we used the back unlockable-from-the-outside door. and we may have propped our very heavy door up on stacks of magazines, stuffed toothpicks into the holes and screwed everything back in and all is working now. and we might be crossing our fingers that this will hold for another month or two while the custom doors we ordered get made and we can install brand new doors on the front and back of the house and never have to deal with this issue again. maybe. possibly. this could be true.

landscape edging, seven months later.

we've been buying plants left and right recently. one of the plants we bought was a large fern to fill this bit of dead space on the lawn, and this pretty pink plant you can see just to it's right. but as you can tell, it's not very well defined, and we even had the issue of the gardener weed-eating our poor plants a bit. so we decided to build a bit more separation into the area to highlight our pretty plants.

technically, it was a project we started back in december and never finished. it's a good thing too, because we probably would have just edged a straight line the entire way and not done what we decided to, which is to add a nice curve to add a home for the new plants. so we dug a 4 inch deep trench, put down the edging, and filled things back in.

the other thing we decided to do this time was put down a weed barrier underneath the mulch. there's lots of weedy grasses that just keep coming up, and we simply don't have the time to keep up with them.

look how much the colors really pop with the dark red mulch we bought!

day of, we didn't have enough mulch to cover everything, but we've since remedied that - we promise! and the best part! the gardeners didn't destroy our plants any more this past week! success! you can see below that we also have a baby foxtail and another grassy plant to be planted behind it. we really love our plants..!

the holidays, and curtains!

ah, the holidays. we had so much fun decorating the table for halloween, that we had to do it for christmas too! we kept the pretty antique bowl and added pinecones, berry garlands, and decorative candle holders from michaels . oh, and the pretty silver damaske table runner is from sur la table.

outside, we only put some string lights up on the two small trees in the front yard. it's not much, but we didn't want to put too much effort into the exterior decorations just yet this year.

we also put up a small christmas tree in the corner of the dining room (all the same decorations as last year) and - wait for it -purchased curtains!!!!!!!!!!! the curtain rods were from overstock, and the curtains themselves were from target (the sheer are nate berkus heathered herringbone in gray, and the decorative are threshold grayson toile floral in shell and chocolate). and yea, i was too lazy to iron them first, but i figure they'll de-wrinkle on their own over time.

what i really love about them though, is how much warmer and cozier they make the house. without them, and all our white walls, things felt really sharp and cold.

here are really old photos from when we first got our dining table, but they show you what our fishbowl of a dining and living room used look like:

and yea, we've cleared out so much of the erroneous stuff too - the bookshelf is long gone, and other than the wine fridge along that back wall, all of that has been removed and replaced with much nicer things (but that's for another post). it's really starting to feel like a home, guys!

and just a reminder, this is what our mantle looks like:

also, gold frog and rafiki wish you peace and serenity this christmas!