The Grass Is Greener

…in the backyard.  Whereas before, it was a mix of dirt and weeds that left me feeling blue and the kids, well, brown.  I know, kids and dirt.  They go together like peas in a pea pod and I’m a farm girl, I should know that.  Right.  But I also know that trying to keep the dirt from infiltrating the home by capturing said kids before they traipse inside all while juggling a sweet little angel but very needy babe is not my idea of a good time.

So that’s one reason we laid grass in our back yard last weekend – so that we could let the kids roam free, graze, skip, jump, and holler without hollering ourselves to “please stop digging in the dirt!”  The other reason is one I’ll dive into in another post but for now, some befores.

I took these pictures back in February, I think, when spring was around the corner but not quite here.

Seven favorites

Hey!  I hope you had a great Memorial Day!  We spent the weekend and holiday at home doing tons of work in our backyard.  I can’t wait to show you guys the progress!  We’re putting in an outdoor patio right off the screened-in patio and I’d say it’s about 75% done and so far, it’s only cost us maybe $100.

So anyway, we don’t have any finished projects to share right now though we do have a HUGE project in the works that I’ll type of soon BUT I do have a list of about 30 (possibly more) things I keep on my phone of things I want to share – stuff we’ve bought that we love, recipes I’ve found that have been awesome, excellent reads, companies we’ve had great experiences with, you know, mumbo jumbo that you just might find interesting and that we think is worth passing along.  I meant to share five today, thereby making this the old Five Favorites but then I got a little carried away with seeing Memorial Day sales and so we’ve got Seven.  Lucky, I suppose.  ;)

Ahem…

You might’ve heard or read my words about our Berkey water filter.  Well, we’re still super happy with it and are so glad that we snagged one last Christmas.  Why am I telling you this again?  Because, Berkey is having a Memorial Day sale that ends Friday!  You can grab one for 15% off with code ‘BERKEY15’!  The filters don’t need to be replaced very often but even with the price of those and replacement, you’re looking at spending about $17 PER YEAR to get good, clean water.  And then of course there’s no plastic being transfered out into the world, which is huge for us.  Anyway, the biggest reason we settled on a Berkey was because it filters pharmaceuticals like acetaminophen and pesticides out of your tap water like a boss.  I know.  Those things are found in tap water.  Scary, right?  You can see everything else they filter out here.  So anyway, the Berkey.  We highly recommend.  We have the Big Berkey and it’s the perfect size for our fam.  We fill it before we go to bed every night and it usually lasts us all day.  The link above is our affiliate link as is the graphic in our sidebar.  You can also grab one on here on Amazon.

Last year our lawn mower broke right in the midst of summer and it was a $60 fee just to get it looked at to figure out what was wrong, not including repair costs.  Boo.  Anthony wanted to see if he could fix it himself before we shelled out cash but didn’t have time at the moment.  In the meantime, our grass wasn’t growing any shorter so we bought this reel mower off a Facebook resale site and have been very happy with it!  So much so that we’re thinking about just fixing and selling our old power motor.  I love that I can mow the lawn while the kids play around me and we don’t have to worry about buying gas, me throwing my shoulder out trying to start the dang thing, or changing/checking/draining the oil.  I also love that the kids can mow the lawn with a little heaving and hoing.  As you can see, Sebastian is patiently waiting his turn.  :)We also have a friend who owns and loves this one.  As for me?  I think I’m a reel mower fan for life.
 

A lot of homes built in the 70’s and before were built complete with the craziest of tile choices in the bathrooms.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  Those bathrooms with the pink or blue or green or yellow or shmellow tile that adorns the floors and walls and whose color spills over onto the toilet, tub, and sink?

Well, I was so amazed at how beautiful Rebecca made her green-tiled bathroom look by just swapping out the vintage mirror and light fixture for something circa 2017, adding new cabinet hardware, and adding some neutral decor.

There’s budget-friendly hope for the rest of ‘em!

I posted once or twice about the fiddle leaves my sister gave us that I propagated (successfully!!!) and then you never heard about them again and you probably don’t care but either way, I’m happy to report that I planted them in one big pot they’ll share for the rest of their days (or at least until they grow out of it which probably will take years and years?  I don’t know…) and they’re doing great! There hasn’t been any new growth in the form of more leaves (yet) but their stems are growing taller so I’m hoping we’ll have some trees, or at least a bush, in the next year or so.  Go find yourself a friend who is pruning their fiddle leaf and offer to take a few of those clippings off their hands!

A good friend gifted us a Baby Brezza at a baby shower for the twins and we used it for them and every kid since.  Ours steams and then purees the food so all we had to do was cut up the big stuff and toss it in.  I didn’t keep track of how much money we saved making our own baby food for the tots but I know the number was somewhere in the hundreds at least.  If any of that sounds fun to you, you should run quick and grab yourself a Brezza while they’re 25% off with code ‘25food’!  The sale ends tomorrow!

I’m a greek salad junkie and Anthony loves them too though we’ve never been able to find a really good, bottled Greek dressing (that’s fits in our grocery budget at least).  So you can imagine how delighted I was when this recipe popped up in my Pinterest feed one day and, after quickly tossing it together, makes my taste buds sing.  There are measurements for a smaller batch in the comments too since the original recipe makes a boat load. 

Last, take 15% off any pillow cover order of $24 or more in my shop with code ‘MAYIPLEASE’!  The code is only good until the end of May, so tomorrow!  (Where the heck did May go??!!)

Ciao!

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*affiliate links included in post

Wrapping Paper Mat

Are you sick of me writing about a juvenile bathroom yet?  (I’m pretending that was a nonchalant, no…color me oblivious.)  Oh good.  Because there’s more.  I’d fill in space between these bathroom posts with something oh, I don’t know, not about a bathroom but one, two, three, four kids and they all nap at different times these days so, no.  Not happening.  Bigger fish are not being fried here…at least not right now.

Back to the subject matter though…

You might’ve read about the kids’ bathroom mini-overhaul, specifically everything that went on on the right side of the room but now let’s slide on over to the left side.  Here’s what it looked like after a fresh coat of paint several years back (the lighting and poor photography make it look worse than it actually did):

And here it is now:

West Elm Knock-Off Rug

I was set on a black & white rug to set down in the kids’ bathroom.  Black & white screams “gender neutral” to me and since I needed all of that I could get in this little bathroom for two girls and a boy, that’s the direction I was headed.

Enter this little thing:
Not black and white (even though it could argue the gender neutral case pretty well) but a great path to getting there since the other side was a blank slate.  You probably read the post about this rug and how I sewed, cut, and frayed the edges to get fringe. 

Now enter the Torres Kilim from West Elm…aka, my inspiration.
I saw it first on an episode of Fixer Upper and knew it would be super easy to imitate since the lines are perfectly imperfect.  Rug.  Kids’ bathroom.  Now.

Vanity Facelift

The kids’ vanity used to have no reason to harbor the homonymous vice.  I wish I had a better before but all I have is this half shot:

But you get the jist – the only thing the worn, brown cabinets had going for them are the fact that they are well-made, solid wood.  The cream-colored laminate countertop were (and still are) blah-zay (concrete tops coming soon!), the drain on the back of the sink was rusting and the faucet was old and worn.  The mirror was great but needed an upgrade and the lighting was a builder-grade fixture the previous seller put up.  Those 80’s posts/poles/spindles had to go and, this is completely unrelated in that it’s personal decor taste, but who puts a lamp on their bathroom countertop?! 

Anyway, the lamp and everything but the countertop is now much changed and much better and barely cost us anything considering the change.