A Deadline Can be a Glorious Thing

Good grief what a week!
Actually, two-and-a-half weeks...
You see, a few weeks ago we (and by we, I mean I) decided hosting a Derby party sounded like a great idea! Not just an excuse to have friends over, but to have a theme party, and to convince everyone to wear crazy hats! And I do always enjoy watching the race, so why not share that joy?

Now here's where all the craziness comes in: Hubby and I decided there were just a few things that really needed to be finished before everyone came to see what we'd done to the house in the year since we bought it. And to be fair, my list was MUCH longer than Hubby's... his was really just "move boat up to driveway." Which we did- into the garage actually.

I think the plan is to roll it out into the driveway tomorrow morning and rig it up in order to show it off properly!

Now some of my list you've seen already:
- Paint orange out of dining room
Check!

- Prime and paint guest bed
Check!

- Pull rug up in guest bed
And Check!

Not bad couple of weeks worth of work, eh?

Well, it didn't stop there! Here's the rest of the list:

- Paint bathroom trim
- Find grey for wall in living room
- Rake back yard (.5 acres)
- Clean under porch
- Remove trellis under porch
- Assemble telescope
- Paint front and back door
- Dig and make front walkway
- Plant rosebushes
- Make porch curtains
- Paint bedroom window exterior
- Paint porch yellow

PHEW!!
Now, I didn't actually get through the whole list- the porch is primed, but not painted, and the porch curtains are stitched as of midnight last night, but I haven't put them up yet- but in addition to that list I've:

- Expanded the front garden bed
- Put in new plantings
- Made patio under deck
- Made my derby hat

DOUBLE PHEW! And a couple of ow's while I'm at it... all that digging makes a gal ache!

I'll show you all I've been up to, but for now here is the transformation under the deck.

It used to be that when you walked out the basement door you'd see this:

And now that I've pulled down a couple of sections of trellis:

Good start... but then after laying the front walkway we had about 10 extra bags of stone, so we used it to make a little patio under the porch:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Better, huh? We've got to pick up a few more bags to fill the rest of the perimeter, and well put that trellis back up on the left side there so we hide the storage area a bit, but at least now it's usable!

In a few days I'll show you what I've been up to in the front of the house. Here's a little preview: