Happy Monday! I hope you all had a really great weekend! I’m back on here after another weekend of being social media free so I thought I’d share some of the projects we accomplished around the house these past couple of days.

We worked for hours on Saturday getting our little garden set up in the backyard. We decided to do one side of the house with vegetables and the other side with fruit. We ran out of room to plant our strawberries and melons so we’re still trying to figure that one out… I think it would be really awesome if we could either thrift a metal feeding trough or DIY our own large planter. We have to find something soon though because we need to get everything planted ASAP!

So far for the vegetables we have: 4 types of tomatoes, 2 types of bell peppers, jalapenos, sweet onions, green onions, zucchini, yellow squash, and spaghetti squash. I still need to plant some lettuce, Brussel sprouts, and green beans. Some of them I had started in pots about a month ago, some we bought as pre-planted little pots, and some we planted just as seeds. I will say (and Stephen would agree) STARTING a garden is not cheap. We had to put a large portion of our budget this month towards the yard. By large I mean the vast majority of our ‘bucket‘ money for the month. The packets of seeds aren’t expensive but the soil, mulch, fertilizer, etc. really adds up. We hope that it’ll be worth it by the amount of produce we get out of it and even if we don’t get a ton, it has been so much fun to work on!

For the fruits so far we have: 3 blueberry bushes, 1 raspberry, and 1 fig (her name is Miss Figgy) plant. I still need to find a place for all of our strawberries, cantaloupe, and watermelon.

The back of our house gets partial sun throughout the day and the front of our house gets full sun. We plan on planting hydrangeas in the front and all of the fruits and vegetables in the back like I mentioned. The plants would all be smitten if we could do the opposite and put the hydrangeas in the back with the produce in the front but we didn’t think the HOA would approve… Hopefully it all ends up being alright! We picked a very resistant species of hydrangeas so we’ll see if we can keep them all alive and thriving…

Sunday afternoon we got to see pilots from Stephen’s squadron come home and be united with their families. It was so sweet and such a joyful time! I couldn’t help but feel so excited for all of the wives to each have their other half safe at home with them.

Later in the day after we got home I started working on a headboard I’ve been wanting to update. It was supposed to be a painless and simple project. Well, things didn’t go quite as planned (more on that later), unfortunately, so I went outside and talked with Stephen while he was working on another project. I was pretty frustrated at that point so I started trying to think of other things I could accomplish. Stephen started to clean everything up (it was around 6:00 PM by this point) and I said. “Hmm… I’m going to stain the fence.” I’m like a dog with a bone, people! This was something that has been on our to-do list and we had all of the material we needed but we just hadn’t gotten around to it. Within 15 minutes, I was back there gettin’ to it.

Before Staining (no editing):

Two hours later I was done, covered in stain from head to toe (hair included), and hired by the next door neighbor to do theirs as well. I’m not even kidding! HAHA! We think it came out great! Also, can you see my new toy Stephen got me? Oh man am I in love…

After Staining (no editing):

This is the stain we used and this is the sprayer I used.

Keep your eyes peeled for what’s coming up on the blog this week and if you haven’t already, please subscribe! Here’s what we plan on sharing:

• All about the dreaded word… Budget!
• How We Use Every Dollar
• Week 4 Menu + Shopping List
• & possibly more! 😉