Busy, Busy Weekend

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We really had a busy one. We spent time with friends and family and did a lot of work at the house.

On Saturday morning, I weeded the back yard and trimmed back some of our unruly plants, the gigantic rosemary bush and lanky roses. I also planted three new knockout roses in the garden and placed path lights along our stone walkway.  I'm really excited about how everything looks, when the plants mature it will look really lush.  Then, Kevin and I went shopping in Raleigh for the afternoon. I've been so focused on decorating and doing stuff at the house, I haven't bought clothes for myself in a whiles. So, I used my birthday money and gift cards to get some cute new clothes. I also got a new case for my iPad 2, which I'm really enjoying.  It will be even better when I can use it on the wifi at home ;) ...we are finally getting cable and internet installed tomorrow!  Saturday night we went to dinner for Kelsey's surprise birthday party at Angus Barn. It was fun and delish as always!

Sunday morning I woke up early to paint a dresser that we're working on for the guest room. Then, we went to La Farm, our usual weekend breakfast place, lol. Afterwards, we went to church for our pastor's last Sunday.  He's moving to a new church at the coast next weekend. It was an emotional morning and afternoon for everyone.  He was the one who married us last year and we were sad to see him go.

On Sunday afternoon, we came home to a long list of things yet to be done.  We first stopped at Sherwin Williams to get paint for the guest room. We picked SW Oyster Bay. It's one shade darker than Comfort Gray and I think it kind of looks like a really pretty muted sage color.  More on this later.  Then, I went to Lowes to pick up a ton of things for the yard. I managed to pack 6 bags of mulch, 4 bags of dirt, 10 bales of pine straw, and a couple other random things in my car. The guy loading the pine straw didn't think it would all fit, but I managed to find a place for it all, lol.  While I was at Lowes, Kevin went to his mom's house to pick up some stone from a pathway she's changing around.  When we found out that her stone was very similar to what we already had on our stone walkway we decided to take some of her stone and beef up our walkway.

So, late Sunday afternoon we got to work putting down pinestraw in the back yard. Then we attacked the large boxwood shrubs in front of the house. They were huge and looked like they haven't been pruned in years... so we trimmed and cut them down. It took a long time and a lot of work to get them into shape.  Then we ripped up the old walkway in the back yard. We placed the new stones along the path and debated over placement for a while, it was like a 3D puzzle with really heavy pieces. With the stones in place, we had to excavate under them in some places to get a level-ish walkway and make room for the gate to open.  We filled the room between the stones with dirt and worked for a while to get everything how we liked it.  I'm really excited how this looks, I'll post pictures tomorrow hopefully! We're not done with the walkway yet, I'm hoping to plant some ground cover between the rocks, but that may have to wait a while until I find the right plant. We also placed new path lights on the front of the house. I think it really helps to make the front walk much more  inviting, the porch light just wasn't cutting it before.

Oh and finally, late Sunday night, I edged and painted most of the guest room. I need to go back with a roller and brush to finish it today, but it's almost done.  I got new curtains for this room on Saturday, they're this Waverly scroll print. Can't wait to put them up and see how they look with the rest of the room.

So yeah, it was a crazy busy weekend. But, we got so much done! I can't wait to post the pictures and more details of these projects. Have a great week!