Wildflowers

Sorry I haven't gotten a picture of the new window yet! I've been busy working at Sbux, on the house, and helping with VBS this week. Good news... The water problems have been fixed, and I have hot water, the garbage disposal works, water doesn't pool in the dishwasher, and there are no leaks! My dad is awesome.

One of the blogs in my (too-long) list featured a post about wildflower gardens. Have I told you I love flowers? All kinds... the ones you plant in pots, the ones you plant in gardens, and the ones that grow along the side of the road.

You may have noticed that my yard is huge. So far I haven't had to mow it myself yet, because my dad kindly tasks his summer workers to do it once a week. But it is BIG. When I first moved back to Indiana, my mom and I talked about doing a wildflower garden / no-mow yard along the side to make it a little less tedious to mow. Finishing the interior of the house so it was livable was a higher priority at the time, but hopefully next summer I will be able to take a chunk of the yard and have beautiful wildflowers!

Here's some inspiration from around the web:

Maya*Made's no-mow yard

you are my fave says wildflower gardens are my fave

Enjoy!

Windows and Screens

Well, summer has come to The Little Yellow House, and it is a scorcher! I've mentioned turning on the air conditioner to see if it works, but my parents always scoff and say "Already?? It's not that hot!" Unfortunately, of the 8 windows in the house, only one has a completely hole-free screen in it. One other in the bathroom only has a few small holes. So along with being hot and humid, I have no air circulation! (Of course the good screens aren't the ones in my bedroom.) But today Dad rearranged the existing screens so that I'll be able to get a breeze through the house and will be able to sleep at night!

ALSO... Today Dad and the boys are putting in my new, big, fancy front window!!! Pictures to come :) (The only bad thing is that Jack has to be locked in the bathroom so he doesn't escape through the giant hole in the wall, and he doesn't like it one bit!)

Oh, hey there.

It's nice to see you again.

Guess what?!? In five days (FIVE DAYS!) I will pack up my car and trudge across Ohio to take up residence in this lovely little place:

Well... Soon I will take up residence. It needs some carpet first, and then I can move in and start figuring out what the heck is in all those boxes!

April Showers

Well, as they say, April showers bring May flowers... except not to the Little Yellow House, 'cuz I haven't planted any flowers!!! I have big dreams for the future, though. I love plants and flowers of all kinds, and am planning to have a great big garden to grow my own food. (The garden may or may not happen this summer.) But I can't wait to do some of my own landscaping, with trees, flowers, fruits and vegetables, shrubs and bushes, flowerbeds... the whole shebang!

A lot of the existing trees in the yard have been cut down already, because they were dead, ugly, and/or in the power lines. Cutting down trees makes me sad, but in the long run it will improve the overall look of the place. I can't wait to start planting new things!!! I don't have a lot of gardening and landscaping expertise or knowledge (thankfully my family does!), but I know some of what I like!

What are your favorite kinds of flowers and bushes? Here are some of mine!

bushes

lilac

hydrangea (oak-leaf hydrangea is my favorite!)

rhododendron

peony

annuals

gerber daisy

perennials

iris

tulip

daffodil

crocus

poppy

Hello, yellow!

because.its.spring
Originally uploaded by annamariahorner

Check out some of the lovely yellow photos from designer Anna Maria Horner's blog!

Click through here:

Preserve the "Yellow"?

It's time to pick siding!

Currently the exterior of the Little Yellow House is... yellow. :) But it is in pretty bad shape, as was the rest of the house! My mom mailed me some samples so I could pick the new color.

Don't you just love the names they pick for these things? Cypress, granite gray, sterling gray, silver ash, heritage cream, autumn yellow...

I did like the gray shades -- apparently I have a thing for gray right now, because that's the carpet color I picked. Also it's much more fun to write it the British way, with an "e". Grey. See? It looks so much more elegant.

Anyway, I ended up going with autumn yellow! I mean, how can I keep calling it the Little Yellow House if it isn't yellow??? It's the shade on the far right in the photo, if you can't read the names. I took the picture outside to try and get the true color, but who knows how the computer monitors change these things...

The Little Yellow House lives on!

Living Room Color

I picked out a color for the living room! I knew I wanted a bright teal shade, but we picked out some tile for the entryway that was a dark green, so the matching was a bit tricky. The carpet in the whole house is a light gray, and later I'm hoping to add dark brown wood and purple accents. We're going with the left shade -- it's called Teal Bayou.