Thank you for the well-wishes and thoughts on going back to work back last week. Its a lot to get used to and a lot of bags I’m schlepping to/fro but we did great and no major fallouts so far (we’re still sleeping, yay!). :*

One of my favorite things to say is “I have an idea.” Unfortunately its also my husband’s least favorite thing to hear. Right behind “Can we talk about something?” We’re working on that.

The whole reason I wanted to buy a home is so that I can have as many ideas as I want and the only limitation to doing them is budget. And getting someone to help, but I’m good at that. I love our suburban neighborhood for the quiet, big mature trees, and decent lot sizes. Many of our neighbors are the original owners which is nice, but tends to mean that the homes aren’t the most modern looking. My current obsession that Teeps actually agrees with me on (yay!) its the sad state of the outside of our home.

Our house is a ranch style, solidly built in 1969, with some decent upgrades (windows, french doors, flooring) but the landscaping needs some major love.  I’m a product of the 1970’s so I love a lot from that era, but the landscape design was awful.

I guess I hated it so much I didn’t even take a good photo when we moved in so this is from Google street view. Not terrible I guess, but not great. There’s a huge wisteria vine growing over the garage and front door that is beautiful in the spring, but a a tangle of dried-up branches in the winter (now). The biggest offenders were the red lava rocks filling the planters and a bunch of 70’s-style juniper trees and I swear a couple of living Christmas trees that were planted in the corner. Rando.

Here’s how it looked a couple weeks ago while the wisteria’s leaves were still hanging on. We both hated the rocks so much we had someone scrape them out along with some dead plants. Teeps thought we could wing it and throw something together over the summer but A.) I was super pregnant and trying to figure out how to have a baby,  B.) I don’t wing these kind of things without designing first,  C.) I don’t know anything about landscape design.

So, no more red rocks, but now there is plastic in the planter beds and random plants that make no sense. One of the benefits of knowing how to use Photoshop is that I can render my ‘idea’ up to see what it will look like before torturing family members and contractors into helping it come to life.

After some fresh paint and new plants we have a huge improvement! I added a pendant over the door instead of in front of the house (its so dark now), updated some lighting on the front of the house and added modern house numbers (fonts matter.) This isn’t exactly how the plants will go (again, I don’t know what I’m doing) but gone is the wisteria in favor of a cleaner line and more focus on the front door. These plants are still very random but my main goal was to add color, texture and graphic pops with the plants. Also, being in California, we are in the midst of a huge drought (and working on the marketing campaign) so saving water is on the top of my mind. My husband loves a lawn, so that will be our compromise.

The door was the most fun to play with and what I think will make the biggest impact.

I also really like the black so that might be a contender. What do you guys think?

Yesterday we met with a landscape designer to talk about a design plan for the front and back yard. I can’t even get started telling you about the backyard. Disaster. We’ll see what she comes up with and hope we can start rolling out some ideas this year!

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