Bricked Up

As noted in a relatively recent post, my husband replaced the post for our mailbox. It looked so nice that I wanted to jazz it up even more. A number of homes in the area have little stone circles around their mailbox posts filled with plants, and I think they look lovely. However, I did not want to spend the money on large stones, so I decided to recycle the bricks that we were in theory using to provide extra support for the garden fence. We never finished laying them anyway.

This project took longer than I would have liked because the soil around the mailbox post was nowhere near level. Being my father's daughter, I used an level and an angle-measuring tool (like a protractor but swankier) to help get things the way I wanted. Most of the time was spent getting the nine-brick first layer level, and then I just laid bricks on top.

Westley was not allowed to help.

He was displeased with this arrangement.

Then I went to the local garden store, bought some asters and snow-in-summer. They met three important criteria: a) deer don't like them (unlike my poor yellow mums). b) they have pretty foliage, and c) they flower nicely in the summer and fall (purple and gold asters, and white snow-in-summer). We already had leftover potting soil, so it was just a matter of filling in the planter.

Taa-daa!  We'll see how it holds up,
but I like the look.  It's cute!

Just Hangin'

Once upon a time I had a blog....oh wait, here it is!

I can't help but notice that my last post predates my husband starting his new (and excellent) job.  Funny how trying to cram all of the cleaning, meal-planning, and various other errands and chores into three days (when he used to spread them out over the week) means I have very little time for home improvement, let alone blogging about it. Plus, our weekends lately (and upcoming) have been packed full of social and work-related activities.  Which is good, but it would appear the blog is the first thing to slip.

Never fear, though, for I have new and spiffy stuff to show you.  But first, some sad news: the cold weather killed my baby squash plants.  Apparently the hoop house was not sealed up as tight as we though, and the 1 mil plastic isn't thick enough.  I am very sad.

However, the green beans are still happy, and we finally (finally) harvested some bell peppers!  They are wee and adorable.  We weren't sure how big they were supposed to get but once they went from green to purple and appeared to stop growing, we picked them.  Perhaps too soon?  I must eat one and find out.


I am also putting the finishing touches on the mailbox planter and will post photos soon. However, the rest of today's post is about the gallery wall that I finally finished up today. There is a good-sized hallway wall immediately as you exit the entryway that seemed like a great spot to hang photos.  Originally, I had a combination of photos from Thailand and Sicily on the wall in double and triple frames, but it felt really crowded and cluttered, and the frames were not all the same color (twitch).  So when I repainted the hallway, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to start over.  I poked around on the internet and found all sorts of really nice ideas for gallery wall layouts.  Given the space that I was working with, I decided on one called "chain reaction", which consists of paired 5x7" and 8x10" images on either side of an 11x14" image.

Here's my mock-up to test the style.  Winner! 

Next, I poked through the most striking of the many photographs I took when we traveled to Sicily in 2011 and picked out the prints I wanted.  Definitely needed help from Nick to narrow it down.  Armed with coupons, over the course of a couple of weekends I purchased the frames that I wanted from Michaels' - simple black frames with white mats.  Given the light gray walls I hoped it would pop nicely.

Once I had my frames, I followed online suggestions and cut newspaper templates the same size as the frames. I used these templates as position markers on the wall so that I could move them around easily.  This involved lots of measuring and pencil-marking, but eventually I got things about right.  I measured from the top of each frame to where each piece would actually hang, Then I put up the nails and hangers through the newspaper and took the newspaper down. All that remained was to hang the photographs...

I love it!  The measurements aren't quite as perfect as I would want them, but they're close, the black and white pops against the gray just liked I hoped it would, and the photographs look great!  Even the large one, despite the fact that Shutterfly mailed to me in a tube so it was curled up.  I had to tape it down to a piece of cardboard in order to get it to lie flat.

Now there is a bit of that wonderful, memorable trip to Sicily in the hallway for us to walk past every day - it's great!