Front of the House "Landscaping"

Wow- it's been nearly a month since anything was done to the house! But this past week was spent making the front of the house more visually appealing. We started on Memorial Day by simply taking some of the 4x4 posts we had (literally) lying around and fashioning them to be the border for our front flower beds. We even bought some dwarf English Boxwood bushes to plant under Megan's bedroom window, too. Then on Tuesday I took the kids and went to a local nursery and bought some day lillies for either side of the front steps and put those in. Wednesday was another trip back to the nursery to purchase the remaining plants to put out front and planting them, and Thursday was spent putting stepping stones and mulch in the flower beds to finish them off. We ended up buying a half yard of crushed limestone to fill in some gaps in the drive as well. Here are the pictures I got as we went along each step of this week:

A before picture of the front before we did anything. Jeremy was getting his miter saw out so he can cut the 4x4's to put them down.

Another view of the front before anything was done. Pretty plain, huh?

Voila!! There is a border there now! Just need to get some flowers in there...

And there is a border here now, too! If you look really close at the left side of the picture you can see the SMALL boxwood bushes we bought to plant- we just hadn't planted them when I took the picture.

Ah- flowers! I picked out a variety of day lily flowers for the front. We had them out front at our previous house and I liked them, so I figured I'd plant some again here.

A picture of my son "posing" in front of the planted day lillies... He's such a ham! At least his poison ivy rash can't be seen... (poor guy!)

The other side of the steps with more day lily flowers...and Michael getting in there again! LOL!

I tried to get a complete view of the flowers by stepping back, but they're hard to see. Michael thought he wasn't going to be in the picture, so he laid down on the porch just to make sure he was in it!

We have mulch! And yes, the gravel is different colored in the picture- you aren't seeing things. There are two reasons for this. One- it rained and some of it got wet, and two- some of it IS actually lighter than the rest. What we bought to fill in gaps is lighter than what the builder brought in to finish the drive with.

Another view- the opposite side of the steps. You can even see the stepping stones we put in the flower bed in this picture, too! They lead up to the water spigot that is on that side of the house.

A closer view of the side of the porch and in front of Megan's window. The three hosta plants I planted are bigger than the boxwood bushes! I also planted some petunia's (Jeremy's favorite) right along the front... not something I would normally do, but they were so pretty and I thought he would like them there... in the future all our annual plants will be in hanging pots along the front porch.

Here is the final picture- complete with garden hose. I know it seems kind of plain, but I figure the plants will get bigger, so the space will be filled in more in the future. But we like it. After all, that's what matters, right? LOL!

So, that's it for now. Our next "big" project is finishing the garden. Jeremy put up the posts to make the fence, but we've been waiting for it to rain so that the posts will set. Since it rained last night and it looks like rain today, we think we'll be good this weekend to start getting the fencing up on the posts! We also plan on putting out the seeds in the garden this weekend, too! Woohoo!! Let the growing begin!