checking in with Pinterest!

If you're new here, you should know I LOVE Pinterest. I was mildly active before we bought our house, but now that we own a home and are deep into the routine of  married life, I find myself using it all the time! I refer to it for recipes the most, and I keep a running list of decor inspiration and fitness tips to keep me motivated! You can find my profile here or click the button to the left.

Here's what I'm pinning (and doing!) : 

I am pleading with Mark to let me repaint our main bathroom in this slate blue color (shown above and below). It's currently navy, which isn't far off, but we went wrong when we chose to use satin for the bathroom (according to recommendations). It's TOO shiny and a little too dark. Help me convince him!

These look SO good! My mouth waters just looking at them...

I've been dying to make my tiny laundry corner a little more functional, so I've been pinning lots of ideas for worksurfaces. Look for a blog post in the future if I ever get around to it!

We have explored 500+ options for our next backyard landscaping project. Right now I'm liking the below image, but the grass would be pebbles because grass isn't growing in the area we want to do this.

I've seen SO many people repin this and they look super yummy! I have a jar of Nutella in my pantry just begging to be turned into this...

I saw this picture and was like - YES - this is my style, to a T. Do you agree?

I made this baked cream cheese spaghetti last Sunday and it was pretty tasty!

I also had this chicken taco bowl recipe cooking in the crock pot all day Tuesday. It was really tasty, very similar to a chili I make in the fall, but I didn't serve it over rice because we didn't end up eating until about 9:45 that night! 

Love this print... 

...and this one too!

This California club pasta salad is DELICIOUS and perfectly light for summer. I didn't have avocados (oops) so I just put a tiny bit of ranch dressing in there, and it was SOOO GOOOOD. Seriously, this is going to become a staple recipe, which I don't currently have, other than desserts. :)

I'm still trying to come up with things to do for our trip to California in September. Santa Barbara is high on the list!

We've decided on pretty solid plans for our backyard, but now we just have to implement them! I'm thinking of doing a garden on one side of the house. I love this quaint one below! Looks manageable!

Happy pinning!

Phase 1 yard overhaul

Mark and I have been discussing our plans for our landscaping recently. It's definitely been at the front of our minds, because after I put in about 2 hours of yard work on Sunday after lunch (details later), Mark was ready at 5:30 to head to Home Depot and start what I'll call "phase 1" of the process. 

This is what we've been living with:

We have a LOT in store like ripping out concrete, changing the flower bed shapes, laying in a path, putting down a patio, and building a pergola. But for Sunday night, here's what we accomplished:

We started by clearing out the ground cover that was in the bed to the right of our back doors.

We picked up four common boxwoods at Home Depot as well as 8 bags of cypress mulch and 18 7x7" stone pavers.

This side of the yard is the bane of our existence. TOTAL overhaul coming soon!

First, I planted the boxwoods while Mark leveled the area under the kitchen window.

We want a dedicated place for the grill out of the way and off of the 1960's sidewalk, so we laid down pavers with about 1" of space in between.

I took a break for photos, clearly. ;)

...and Mark posed for a Home Depot plug. (not sponsored, but wish we were!)

After everything was planted and set, I filled in the pavers with as much fine dirt as I could. We were winging this, so we might come back with sand to really set the stones, but so far this has worked. Then, Mark laid down the mulch.

Details, people!

And there she is!

Y'all, this is SUCH an improvement to what we had. 

SIDE NOTE: Yes, the beds look really bare right now, but only because we went quickly to Home Depot to grab the boxwoods. They didn't have the rest of the planting I wanted, so we will go to a nursery soon to get the rest of the items. In the meantime, we have a dog that likes to get muddy and dig in mud, so we wanted to make sure we mulched the freshly dug up beds to deter that. Soon this will be lush with flowers and grasses. :)

I really can't believe we got all of this done AND went to the store in 2 hours. I can't wait to see what our yard looks like in a couple months! Get ready, it's landscaping season!

...I'm SO sore...