Thursday Thoughts

Happy Thursday! Hope you are having a great week and looking forward to the upcoming weekend. I had planned on sharing this post on Monday but somehow time went speeding by and it is now Thursday. Things have been rather busy around here so I thought I would update you on a few random happenings.

A little while back I came across an exciting-to-me find in the bookstore – my shower curtain was included in Better Homes and Gardens New Decorating Book! It is only a very small picture (the green one with blue tabs in the center) but it certainly was thrilling to be flipping through a design book and come across something I made. You may remember the curtain was part of this BH&G basement bathroom story.

The warmer weather over the past weekend was motivation to finish up a few inside painting projects (who wants to be inside when the weather is nice!) and begin an outside project that has long been on my mind.

So Mr. RDH completed repainting the two upstairs bathrooms. Both went from SW Aria Ivory to BM White Dove. The change is subtle but one that was well worth the effort. The master bedroom no longer has a blue ceiling and now is more in keeping with the feel of the attached bedroom.

We spent the second half of the weekend removing a whole bunch of myrtle that we had planted years ago on a small hill next to the driveway. The plant was becoming invasive so it was time for it to go.

Now we are left with a dirt hill and no plans for what to plant. If you have any ideas please let me know. I was thinking lavender but I would love to hear your opinion. This area gets a good bit of sun and tends to be very dry.

Besides the above I have also been filling my time with a few sewing classes to learn how to use my new-to-me sewing machine! For those of you who have been followers for a while, you are probably very familiar with the story of my old sewing machine.

I purchased a nine year old Bernina and I am just so excited by all the new capabilities I now have at my disposal. It even does embroidery which will allow me to customize stockings with names in my Etsy shop. Although I absolutely love my Singer Featherweight and will never part with it, I knew it was time for an upgrade. I plan to share more on my new toy later as I have been making several new stocking designs – including the one shown above - for this upcoming holiday season.

Finally there is all the little behind the scenes prep work which needs to be completed for next week’s photo shoots. I have a few smaller projects which I am working on which might be included in a few of the pictures.

Have a great weekend! I look forward to hearing your opinion about our dirt hill.

2011 Goals – How are you doing?

Can you believe we are only a few days away from the half-way point of 2011? The first six months of this year have just flown past way too quickly. Summer is officially here and it won’t be long until another holiday season will be upon us. Yikes!

At the beginning of the year I participated in The Nester’s 2011 Home Goals Party. I am guessing many of you did too. You may remember instead of making a laundry list of things to buy and projects to complete around my house, I choose to create seven simple goals which focused on appreciating my surroundings and using what I already had to its fullest potential.

Since half the year is gone, I thought it would be a good time to revisit these goals to see how I am doing. More importantly, I also hope to inspire you to do the same!

Here is my list with an update of my progress:

Plan my garden before planting
I am happy to say this goal has been achieved. Instead of randomly buying plants as in years past, we have designated sections of the garden for herbs, vegetables, and ornamentals. It was worth the small amount of planning and I will continue to plan before planting from now on.

Use the herbs I plant
This one is in the “kind of category.” I have used some basil and a small amount of the oregano. The dill, cilantro, thyme and parsley, however, have been neglected. Time to get cooking!

Be a tourist in my own town
This is the goal on which I have made the least progress. I hope to remedy this during the coming summer months by taking advantage of all the local things my home town has to offer.

Organize and clean out
I have been doing a pretty good job. I started the year off with a bang by cleaning out a lot of unused items but have slowly let things return to normal. I need to regain my enthusiasm and continue where I left off.

Learn how to use my sewing machine attachments
I have played around with some of the attachments but as you can see from the picture above I definitely have a ways to go. I have to admit it has been fun seeing all the different stitches this old machine can sew!

Learn how to use my camera settings

My photo taking skills have improved as I have moved beyond the auto setting and I am now playing with the aperture setting. Next on the list is learning how to adjust the shutter speed.

Continue to remember a house is just a house. It is the people who live inside and the friends who come to visit which are most important.

I consider this to be my most important goal of the year. I try to remind myself daily to remember what is truly most special in my life.

There you have it. Overall I believe I am doing well but have room for improvement. Luckily there is still time as there are as many months ahead in 2011 as have already past.

So, how about you? How are you doing on your 2011 goals? I would love to hear the goals you have accomplished and the ones you need to start focusing on. Thanks for sharing!



Details of My Garden and Fire Pit Information

When I wrote about building a fire pit, I had no idea I would receive so many wonderful questions and comments about our garden which can be seen in the background of most of the pictures. Thank you!

The sketch above shows the general layout of the raised beds and paths. The garden itself is about 20 feet by 20 feet, with the paths being about 4 feet wide. The 8 foot by 8 foot center square features a large urn surrounded by a formal arrangement of boxwoods, lavender and licorice plants. The four triangular planting beds are where we plant our herbs and vegetables. Our selection is somewhat limited as this space of our yard does not receive as much sunlight as a garden should.

Mr. RDH and I began creating our garden shortly after we moved into our house. After clearing the area of trees and brush, the first step was making a level surface. We built the retaining wall – shown above - and began the fill-in process one load of dirt at a time. Since we do not own a tractor the dirt was taken from other parts of our property the old fashioned way – with a wheel barrow, rake and shovel. Lots and lots of hard work!

Rather than having straight rows of planting beds, we thought it would be much more interesting and fun to have a center square surrounded by triangular beds. To create the beds we used 2” x 10” boards along with 4” x 4” posts and galvanized screws. The bed frames were assembled first and then attached to the posts with the screws. You can see the top of one of the posts in the photo below.

We put down landscaping fabric – to reduce weed growth – underneath the paths and then hammered the posts into the ground to secure the beds. The garden beds were then filled with good quality soil and the garden paths covered in pea gravel.

To make an entrance to we used large rocks we found on our property and an arch which was purchased through Walpole Woodworkers. There is a small space between the outside edges of the planting beds and the caps of the retaining wall because the original plan was to enclose the garden with a white picket fence. I am not sure if the fence will happen or not as we like the ability to walk around all sides of the beds and have not had an abundance of critters eating from the garden.

The space next to the garden where our new fire pit is located was initially planned for a garden shed. Mr. RDH has been drawing plans and I have been saving images for several years now. Overtime somehow our purely utilitarian building has morphed into something completely different and much more involved. We realized it would be years before we tackled this project, thus the fire pit.

The fire pit was purchased from a local landscaping company and included the metal ring as well as the blocks. The name of the manufacturer is Cambridge Paving Stones and I was told it is possible to buy the metal ring separately. As I mentioned before, we have already enjoyed enough s’mores for an entire summer!

I hope I have answered all of your questions. If I missed something please let me know. I realize Blogger has had issues with comments as I have tried and been unsuccessful at leaving comments on many blogs. If you tried to leave a comment or question and it did not work, I would love for you to try again!

Building a Fire Pit

I mentioned earlier in the week that our fire pit is all finished and has already seen lots of roasted marshmallows. From the picture above you can see we decided on a built-in style rather than a free standing model.

Making this fire pit a reality turned out to be a very quick and easy project. I think the entire process took under an hour! We simply ordered a “kit” which included all of the blocks along with the metal ring. The only component missing was the rocks used to fill the bottom half of the fire pit.

Here is the building process.
Level out the ground and use a tamper to pack the area on which you will be building the fire pit.

Use the metal ring as a template to lay the first course of blocks.

Remove the ring and begin adding the second course. The blocks should be staggered so that no joints align.

Test your design to make sure the ring still fits correctly.  Make adjustments if necessary.

Remove the ring and continue the above steps until all blocks have been used.

After the final course is in place, insert metal ring. (Note: the manufacturer recommends using masonry cement to secure the top two courses of blocks. We opted to skip this step as we wanted to have the option to move the fire pit in the future.)

Fill fire pit about half way full with rocks.  Build a fire and enjoy!

Of course no fire pit story would be complete without s’mores!

We had a few left over peeps from Easter and decided to use them up in our s’mores. This was the first time we tried peeps this way and I have to say due to popular demand I was at the Easter candy sale aisle the next day looking for more!

Needless to say, we are looking forward to summer and many upcoming fires in our new fire pit.

If you have a fire pit I would love to know your favorite things to cook!  Please leave a comment and share your tastiest treats.

Linking up with

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch 

Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Tip Me Tuesday at Tip Junkie

Saturday Night Special at Funky Junk Interiors

Family, Freebies, a Fire pit and Features

Yes, this is a long and random title! I have been a little absent over the past two weeks and wanted to catch you up on where I have been, what I have been doing and what is coming up on Red Door Home.

First though, you may have noticed blogger had an “issue” last week which unfortunately meant many of your comments were lost. As I try to reply to as many comments as I can, I apologize if I don’t get back to you because of this glitch. If you had a question which I did not answer, I would love for you to email me or leave another comment.

Family
I was blessed to have my family followed by my husband’s family visiting for the past two weeks. Since I only see them a few times each year, I wanted to be with them as much as possible while they were here. Thus, my blog was a little neglected but I should be all caught up – hopefully - by the end of the week.

Freebies
The day before my parents’ arrival I was following one of my normal running routes and came across a table with a “free” sign. The table contained an assortment of dishes and other decorating items and I helped myself to the following:

A set of brown and blue transferware dishes, seven glasses, three wooden balls

and two clear glass candlesticks

I will be removing the labels from the glasses, painting the wooden balls and creating a totally free tablescape with these fun finds.

Fire pit

We finished building our fire pit and could not be happier with the result. With all the visitors we have had it is safe to say we have already eaten enough s’mores for the entire summer! I will be showing the completed fire pit area and the entire building process soon.

Features
I wanted to send a big thank you to Kate from Centsational Girl for featuring my living room redo on her Best of the Blog series.

I also wanted to thank Darlene from Fieldstone Hill for using my dining room for inspiration for one of her fabulous ditto posts.

Finally, besides all of the above I was also able to sneak in two painting projects – one already finished but waiting to be photographed and the other half way done. Look for these posts soon as well.

Spring Spruce Ups

The weather was finally warm enough the past few days to begin preparing the outdoor spaces around our home for spring and summer. With the last patch of snow gone in our back yard (hurray!), the patio furniture and urns made their annual spring time appearance and there was lots of raking, sweeping and soil preparation.

I even managed to plant a few herbs – rosemary, parsley and lavender – along with some lettuce, as they seem to tolerate the fluctuating temperatures of this time of year.

It was fun to look around the yard to see if the plants we transplanted in the fall survived the winter. I am happy to report several look good and others we will have to wait a little bit longer to tell.

Source unknown

One project which has been on the radar for some time now is creating a fire pit area. I love the look of the picture above with the four Adirondack chairs arranged in a circle. We are hoping to replicate something similar with a fire pit in place of the large pot. Below is the space we will be working with. The small ring of rocks with the hole in the middle was what we used last year for our outdoor fires.

As you can see, our designated area is more sheltered and sits next to our “in progress” garden. We started the garden a few years after we moved in and have been slowly adding to it one feature at a time.

Our plan is to cover the ground with the same small gravel which we used for the garden paths. At the moment it is all dirt and not very user friendly. We are still undecided about the fire pit itself, right now we simply have a hole in the ground surrounded by rocks. Several friends have the portable type pits like the one shown above, but we are leaning towards building ours out of stone to match the rest of our home’s hardscaping. What would you do? I would love to know your opinion.

I hope to have some updated pictures of this area in a month or so of our progress!
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