A Few Side Projects

As those who have been following along on the latest string of projects know, I am hard at work out on the enclosed sun porch. The whole thing is getting a complete overhaul, starting with this:


All the way down to this:

And I'm almost ready to show you the results! We've actually finished with the room itself and I'm just working on updating all the furniture and finalizing the decor so you can get the full effect! Soon, I promise!

In the meantime, however, I had some downtime mid-week while I was waiting for the floor paint to come in, so I knocked a few little side projects off my list.
First up was some cute green zebra print fabric I'd picked up earlier in the week. I hadn't quite decided what to do with it, but the living room needed a bit more color, so I stitched up a new cover for one of the throw pillows.

Doesn't he look cute snuggled under the palm tree over there? I thought so. And then I moved him... out onto the porch, so you can't see it yet! He hee...

So then I headed outside to deal with this mess of a tree:

This picture was taken last summer, a few months after I had attempted to trim it. It had been the same size as the one to the right, which was larger than that portion of the house, which looked a little silly! Unfortunately, I didn't realize that when you trim this kind of cedar, it branches out horizontally. Now go back and look at that photo... see where a horizontal growth from that cut would be? Face height in front of the door! Since it was in such bad shape anyway, Hubby and I agreed it would have to go! (We may attempt to dig up the other, but it's so close to our foundation that might just prove impossible.)
So I grabbed my trusty hand saw and got to it!

GONE! Better, no? Oh, no? You don't think that looks better? Well, let me get that stump up and I'll put something pretty in there! In the meantime we've discovered that not only is there more maneuvering space by the door and more light in the dining room now, there's also more light by the door at night (the flood light is on the wall to the right there,) there are fewer bugs sneaking into the house (I guess they liked that tree!) AND the cat can't hide dead animals so close to the door now! Yay!

Ok, but the paint still wasn't here, so I decided to get a little crafty with the front walkway. I had this extra set of dishes, which were all chipped and cracked, and useless for all practical purposes. So I'd been stewing over ideas for broken-ish plates for awhile and remembered seeing someone making a little garden wall out of them at some point. Can't remember for the life of me where, but ever since we installed our pebble walkway out front, those pebbles have been trying to run away! So...

I made a little border for the walkway out of my plates!

As you may have noticed, I'm a little short. I guess I'll have to go thrifting for some similar looking plates to finish it off! (HA HA! I just googled those plates "Alexandria" by Pier One, and it turns out they're selling the dinner plates for $43 on replacements.com. OOPS! HA ha ha...)


Hubby walked in that night looking a little confused and said, "Honey, why did you plant the dishes in the front yard?"
I said, "Well, I'm a little short on storage and couldn't think of anyplace else to put them..."