The Garden is Growing - 2013 Style

This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.
Last year I spoke about some yard and garden work that we were busy with. We had had some trees taken down and grass planted in their places and for the first time, the kids and I planted a garden. The grass grew in nicely in most of the yard,

but there's still a patch that we will need to reseed in the fall.

The garden also did quite well so the kids and I decided to plant another one this year. Unfortunately, the garden started out looking like this:

My husband was kind enough to rip out all the weeds so we could start from scratch. The other area that I wanted to work on was right around this light pole in the front of our house:

Before I planted anything, my go to soil is always Miracle-Gro. It has never let me down and nourishes the plants for months at a time. They've got so many other great products besides soil, not to mention their plant food. You can even follow their fun garden projects on their Pinterest page where gardeners can swap ideas and projects and be sure to like The Gro Project on their Facebook page. They have so many great DIY projects that are simple to create.
Here's what the light pole is looking like today:

I just planted them and already they are blooming like crazy! (Disregard the over-grown grass, we are having some issues with our lawn mowing company...) Petunias do great in full sun and spread out nicely so I'm hoping that it'll soon wrap around the area more. I also planted some bulbs that I got from a fundraiser at my daughter's school, but I'm not sure if we'll have to wait until next spring for them to bloom.
The garden is also doing amazingly well! We've got cucumbers:

Snap peas:

And green peppers:

Too bad the MiracleGro also helps the weeds grow super strong! I need to get another bag of mulch to put around the plants to keep the weeds at bay. As you can see, it's a no brainer to use MiracleGro products because it works so well to nourish the plants and help them flourish.
Be sure to check out this video about MiraclGro's new Gro Project and join the millions of green thumbers!

Garden Update

We are finally getting some real veggies from our garden and we are so excited!! The first plants that sprouted were the snap peas. For almost a month we collected a few handfuls of peas every other day or so. The kids ate them up as fast as we could pick them!

The next veggies that are going to be ready are the peppers:

And I think the cucumbers will be right behind them.

The carrots are still growing like a forest. I looked online and I read that they are ready to be picked when you can see a little orange poking up from the ground. Still nothing doing there...

I'm still on the fence with the zucchinis... The leaves are growing like crazy - really huge!

 

But bugs are eating all them up! Before they are big enough to pick, the tops of them get attacked by little bugs and then they turn brown and shrivel up. Help! Has this happened to you? I'd rather not use any pesticide, but I don't want to lose all those veggies...

In other garden-related news, my hubby went out and got a box for the hose so it's easier to store and looks a little neater. I guess I can take off the sticker now... :-)

Now I just need to figure out what to do about the old hook. (Don't mind the dead moss and patches of grass. We're still working on filling in all the bare spots in our yard and it's been record-breaking hot here so no point in planting any grass seed...). It's bolted in to the bricks so it's gonna be fun to take it out and then there will be two holes left.... Any ideas guys?

What's been going on in the great outdoors by you? Anyone plant a veggie garden and get to eat from it yet?

Painted Front Door Reveal

Now for the long-delayed follow-up to the original door painting post! I forgot to mention previously, the the last two steps I took before the actual painting was wiping the door down with a tack cloth (man, are those things sticky!) and using a liquid deglosser as a final step to making the door ready to paint (much easier and cleaner than actually sanding).

The painting took most of one whole Sunday. I used Behr Premium Plus Ultra (paint + primer in one) so I knew I would have better coverage than using regular paint, but I was not still not super-impressed with the coverage, more on that later.

I would have loved to replace all the hardware on the door since with some Oil Rubbed Bronze ones but it was not in the plans for now. The door knocker screw is painted over on the other side so I couldn't take it off and I was too nervous to spray paint it all. You can see that the originals are weathered and discolored.

I have seen many bloggers use Rub n Buff so I thought that might be a good temporary solution to freshen up the brassy color. It took me a few minutes, but then I got the hang of it. I squeezed some out onto a paper towel and just rubbed it around everywhere until it was looking nice and shiny. Again, gold would not have been my first choice, but since the locks were already that color I was definitely the budget-friendly color to choose.

Here's the full view from the inside. I love the burst of color when the door is open!

And here is the door from the outside. I think the color really pops off the red bricks. From the outside there's gold door fixtures, nickel storm door fixtures and ORB light and mailbox. Color overload anyone? In due time we'll change them to be consistent throughout.

Here's a full house view.

Just to remind you, here's the house with the old white dingy door.

Major improvement!!

I didn't intend for this to turn into a product review and I'm certainly not getting perked for anything, but I just wanted to share two things with you. First, Purdy paint brushes are a-ma-zing! I left the paintbrush in the paint tray wrapped in a plastic bag for over a week because I was too lazy to clean it up after spending all day painting. I was really nervous that the paint would be caked on and I'd have to throw away the brush, but every last bit of paint washed out. I was so happy!! This is the paint brush after sitting over a week in dried out red paint. I don't know if it was because it was wrapped in plastic or a combination of it being an amazing brush, but either way I am very pleased.

Now for the paint on the other hand... I paid a little more money to get the paint and primer in one because Behr claims that it has superior coverage and stain blocking.

Uh, not so much. This is after four coats of paint: You can still see scuff marks towards the bottom of the door. I think they are mostly from knocking the stroller tires into the door, but I was disappointed that four coats of paint did not cover them. I ended up doing 6 coats in certain areas and you can still seem them if you're looking. I was surprised because we've always used Behr paint and have never had a problem before so I don't know what happened this time around. Just wanted to give you all a heads-up about that.

So tell me what you've been up to! What brands of exterior pant have you had luck with? Anyone else have neighbors comment on their door colors?

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Father's Day and Other Ramblings...

How was your Father's Day? Our was nice and relaxing. My parents were actually on a flight to Florida so we celebrated early and had a joint Mother's Day/Father's Day party for them a few weeks ago. For my hubby, I found this cute printable and interviewed my kids to fill them out. I wrote in the answers for my four year old, but my six year old did hers on her own. Needless to say, their daddy loved them!

The kids decided to wake up at 6 am for some reason so we had a big family snuggle for awhile because the rest of us weren't ready to get up yet! We had a quick workout at the gym while the kids were at my in-laws and my daughter had a birthday party after lunch so the "boys" hung out. Unfortunately, it didn't last too long because someone on the block started mowing their lawn and when he got close to the sidewalk, my son freaked out. We retreated inside for a round of Chutes and Ladders! :-)



In other news, the weather has been beautiful and the plants are flourishing! (This is how everything looked just under a month ago.) Check out these beauties!! The hydrangeas are breathtaking. I cut just one flower and brought it in over the weekend because they are too beautiful to only look at while I'm outside.

And the veggie garden is also doing great. Check out this forest of carrots. I think I may have planted them a little too close together...

I was worried about the cucumbers because they didn't seem to be growing too much, but there's finally a flower so I hope a cucumber isn't too far behind that.

The zucchinis are also sporting some big orange flowers. Of course it had to close up yesterday morning when I took the picture.

And the snap peas are climbing up the fence and have tons of white flowers. I actually added some trellises to help them grow up because they started wrapping their little vines around each other and getting all knotted up.

I know you are probably waiting to see an "after" of our front door, and don't think I've forgotten. I have painted a few coats, but it still needs a little more work and it's not ready for a reveal yet. But I love how it's coming out and even in its unfinished state I think it looks great, so stay tuned! What have you been up to lately?

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Prepping a Door for Painting

As I mentioned, I am working on updating the front door with a fresh coat of paint. I went to Home Depot the other day and brought home lots of paint swatches. We've always used Behr paint so that's mostly what I picked up, but I also got some Martha Stewart and Glidden swatches.

From this big pile, I narrowed it down to these.

And from there to here:

My hubby wasn't crazy about the yellow so we nixed that and agreed that red would be the best color. It's called "Licorice Stick" by Behr. Once we settled on the color, it was time to start prepping the door for paint.

I mentioned in my previous post that there was some cracking around where we had the original mail slot filled in. Not pretty! The key to success in any paint job is the preparation so I got to work.

I used DryDex spackling which I love because it's easy to apply and it turns white when it's dry so you know when you can start sanding. I used it in my mudroom project and it was great. You'll also want a putty knife and sand paper.

Just apply a thin bead of spackle...

And use the putty knife to smooth it out and really push it into the cracks.

 When I was finished in that area, this is what it looked like:

And here it is when it's dry, before being sanded.

There was also another major sore spot towards the top of the door that needed some work. (Not sure why I'm pointing this out to the world, but that is a dead, smashed bug on the top. Ugh!)

 Spackled...

Smooth and bug-free!

There was also some crackling by the raised panels. In places like this, it's helpful to have a latex glove so you can smooth it with your finger because a putty knife wouldn't work in small nooks like this.

Since I had all the right supplies out, I figured it was a good time to take care of a hole in the dining room that was exposed ever since I hung the gallery wall. I'll have to touch up that paint now, but that should be a quick job.

Next step is the actual painting. I hope to get that done over the weekend and share it with you on Monday. Stay tuned!

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