Summer Projects

One thing about summer is that it does give some extended time & daylight hours to be able to work on projects.  Especially during quarantine when you’re still mostly staying at home except for the essentials.  

This summer is the first summer that my hubs and I are in our home together.  We’ve done things all throughout the year since we moved in here officially in September, but I actually remembered to take pictures of the summer projects!  (Of course, I’ve searched and searched for the “before” images from when I moved in here during my undergrad but I can’t find them anywhere!  And I was too excited to snap any images before diving into the painting.)

I’ve had my heart set on a nightstand for the front porch to do all cutesy with the plants and stuff, but my impatient self couldn’t wait so I went with this idea instead.  I bought two crates from Home Depot, chalk painted both in two different colors, and used antiquing glaze (thanks, Chance & Kellie!) when I was finished.  I plan to stack them in my front porch next to my bench and use them to showcase my flowers (as long as I can keep them alive anyway).  

Another project I’ve been wanting to make is a pallet to hang all my Rae Dunn coffee mugs I’ve been collecting. My husband is a hoarder of pallets collector of future, unfinished furniture, so I snagged this one that I thought would be perfect!  I stained it using leftover dark walnut stain we had from our wedding projects and whitewashed it when it was dry. With ample help from the husband (because I broke off the flimsy screws when I was impatient and independent), I (we) added some hooks and voila!  It looks so great in my freshly repainted breakfast nook. But wait... there’s more!  Thanks to a striking halfsies deal with one of the besties (thanks, Karla), I used our new Cricut to make some vinyl signs for a coffee-themed gallery wall. 😍😍😍

And finally, I have no green thumb whatsoever. But I wanted to spruce up our back deck because my hubby loves to be outside. Now that we’ve cleaned the grill and can have people over, it just needed some beautiful color. Unfortunately, by the time I wrote this post, the lilies have succumbed to something... one of my lavender spruces has died, and I have a bird who’s built a nest in my begonias!  But using the Planta app, I’m trying to remember when to water them and keep the annuals looking beautiful and the perennials ready to come back next year. I also had some serious canine supervision thanks to Sugar.