-
Easy Way to Keep Mosquitos Away
These Plants Naturally Repel Bugs If you’re looking for an easy way to keep mosquitos and other bugs away, plant a container garden full of naturally-repellent plants! It’ll enhance your outdoor patio or deck while repelling those tiny pests! Bug-Repellent Plants Isn’t it great there are plants that bugs are naturally prone to dislike?? You don’t need chemical sprays or anything fancy to keep mosquitos away. Just a few trusty plants! Any combination of these plants will work:
-
How to Make a Cheap 30-Minute Plant Stand
Quick, Easy Plant Stand Adds Warmth to a Front Porch Watch this how-to video and build your own trendy wood stand for a planter of any size! Perfect for adding height and texture to your porch, deck or patio. And it only costs $6 in lumber! Materials 1×2 cedar board* pocket hole jig*(newer version of what I used) miter saw* tape measure*(my favorite!) drill/driver wood chisel* wood glue* clamps* sander* planter (personalized crock like mine) Obviously if you don’t have all of the tools and screws on hand already, this project will cost more than the $6 piece of cedar. But it’s still a great, easy piece to make! Cut…
-
How I Kill Weeds Without Chemicals
Kill Weeds with Items You Already Have Using household items you already have around your home, you can easily kill weeds in sidewalks, driveways or flower beds. Hot Water Depending on how many weeds you have to kill and their location in your yard, you can use hot water to kill them! Boil a pot of water and pour directly on any weeds and it will burn them dead.
-
Curb Appeal Update 2018
How Our Yard is Looking One Year After Updates About a year ago I shared how to make vinyl shutters look brand new. It was supposed to be a series of ‘curb appeal’ posts about small things we did in our front yard. But best laid plans…? Old Plants One of those small things was updating the plants in the front beds. We originally planted gardenias there. And slowly over the 6 years they were there, they lost their leaves and didn’t look very healthy. After treating them for bugs and fertilizing them, I did a little research and learned that afternoon sun is basically just bad for gardenias. Hmm..that’s…
-
Cherry-Picked: AcuRite Rain Gauge
My Favorite Wireless Rain Gauge? You might laugh when I say I am not a weather nerd. Yet here I am confessing my love for a rain gauge!* But it’s all because what I am a total nerd about is my yard. And everyone knows that you need water to make your grass and plants grow. I’ve always had some kind of rain gauge. Until now it was always one of those plastic tubes that can hold about 5 inches at a time. I’d check it after a storm, dump it out, and loosely keep track of how much rain we’d get throughout the week. My goal is an inch a…
-
“Treeing-Up” Bushes
A fun, and easy, way to prune bushes I’ve always referred to the process of pruning a bush to look like a tree as “treeing it up”. But upon searching that term on the interwebs, I apparently made that up. The most-returned result referenced a dog driving a raccoon or other animal up into a tree. So pretty close! 🙂 We had this overgrown Loropetalum bushy tree in the front yard. It was like bedhead-crazy with limbs sticking out in all directions. After Brandon attacked it with our hedge trimmers, it looked like this:
-
Chelsea’s Choice: Hanging Planters for Mom
Enter Below For a Chance to Win Hanging Planters for Mother’s Day! **This giveaway has ended. Scroll down to see winners and click over to my giveaway tab to see my next giveaway! I. Am. Obsessed. with these planters! I mean just look at how cute and modern they are! They really play off of the macrame trend that’s seeing a resurgence lately. But they are made of traditional kiln-fired ceramic, so you know they’re going to last for many Mother’s Days to come. What’s great about these for a Mother’s Day gift is they don’t come with a hole pre-drilled. So Mom can hang them inside, maybe in the…
-
How I Reused an Old Wood Window
Repurposing a Window and Planter Box Looking for an inexpensive way to add some character to the outside of your home or garage? That’s exactly what I did with an old wood window and leftover planter box. Find the Right Trash The best part about this project? 100% free! I already had this hand-me-down metal wall hanging on the outside of my garage that faces our backyard. But I was ready to change things up. You may remember an earlier rendition of my dining room had this old wooden window hanging in it. It was removed from one of my dad’s construction company‘s jobs several years ago. And one man’s trash…
-
Hanging Herb Garden How To
Our back deck is right outside of our kitchen and sunroom. So it’s a great place to keep plants and herbs we use when cooking. You may remember last year I created a centerpiece with some small pots and fresh herbs. This year, though, I thought I’d mix it up a bit. So that’s just what I did by creating hanging herb gardens!