Cleaning up the deck

The porch corner is up! The contractor dude came out, car jacked the corner up, dug some holes, poured new footings and set er' back down. So. much. better.

I mean seriously every time we had a bad storm I was afraid the porch was going to rip away from the house or sink into the ground! Now everything is nice and sound.

Getting this done of course prompted me into a whirlwind of porch remodeling!

I ripped the old sagging screening off (in the rain, because I'm a weirdo and get bored?) and scrubbed the deck and porch boards.

This product works really nicely, but I did have to clean a second time using a deck cleaning brush and some serious elbow grease.

This was after the first pass of just washing, no scrubbing. I wish I had a total before picture because even this was an improvement. 

And a few days later  is after another rain storm and the second round of cleaning, but it is way better. Looks even nicer when it dries out. The boards that where mildewy and black on the right, now look almost brand new!

So after all that I was left with a deck/porch that the corgis love, but I've still got big dreams for. See those RED vertical porch beams. Going Going Gone!

Porch furniture had to briefly go back out for Thanksgiving, but I'm glad all the prep work is done so I can get on with the fun stuff.

Get excited!
Betsy

Terrarium

This has been on my to do list for a while now and I'm so happy with the results.

First let me say that I am not and will never be a huge fan of faux flowers/plants. But I've got to admit I'm really good at killing real plants and Hobby Lobby has some really great options. {They're faux ranunculus are pretty darn fantastic}

So with the empty Ikea terrarium I purchased over a year ago I decided to give faux terrarium making a go.  Its the white square looking thing in the far right corner. {Bear!}

First I did a massive Hobby Lobby run to gather all my supplies. Michaels has some faux florals, but  they are not up to par.

Not so bad looking, eh?

So for my first attempt I just threw the rocks in. I really like the look of layered ground cover and I though the rocks and moss would be enough.

They weren't. I place a few plants in there and it just looked dumb.

So out to the garage I went and dumped some potting soil in.

Add the river rocks on top and things are already muuuuch better.

Then I just started placing plants.

The soil and rocks did a perfect job of holding the succlents where I wanted.

I got everything all layered up and added my moss. So happy!

Even better was that I ended up only using 1/3 of what I bought. This wasn't the cheapest terrarium to make and probably would cost about the price a live one. However, I won't be replacing plants in this puppy!

I mean really! It looks so good. I don't think you would know they were faux unless I told you, or you happen to read this blog.

So back up on the shelf they went. I've got to learn to photograph in the den a little better. The glare is ridiculous!

See ya'll soon!
Betsy