Longing for Fall!

Hello Everyone! We haven't fallen off the face of the earth! Between getting to share our home with people we love dearly, going to camp, going to Kamloops Canada for a mission trip, and just trying to keep our lives somewhat under control through all of this, things have definitely been a whirlwind! Summer in the life of youth ministry is definitely busy, but we are so grateful for where God has planted us. More and more, Artesia and the people that we love here is becoming home to us. Thankfully, our actual house is becoming more of a home to us as well.

God has been doing more and more in our lives and in the lives of the students around us that have been direct answers to prayer! We are getting a deeper connection with those around us, both adults and students, and God is forming a deeper love for those we share life with out here. Some of the ways that God used to do this were through our great time at Highland Lakes Youth Camp this summer and also through getting to serve together in Kamloops with Bridge Baptist Church. We got to see four of our students come to a saving relationship with our Father through camp, and many others grow more comfortable in who God has made and is calling them to be! That was just a small snapshot of camp.

Our time in Kamloops was perfect by my standards! Bridge Church Baptist and their staff were incredible to work with, and challenged Tim and I in such a big way. They were using the place that God had given them to minister, connect and love on the community while still boldly sharing the truth that God made a way for us to have a relationship with Him through His Son, Christ, and He is the only way that God lovingly made for us! It is safe to say that God really used our time there to remind us of the importance of boldly and lovingly sharing this truth with the world around us. It is what we are here to do, and the best gift we could ever share with those we love! We worked hard with all of the people who came with us and had a blast at the same time.

Another thing that was perfect by my standards was the weather in Kamloops. It seemed to rain every day, while still clearing up in time for us to finish painting the Church. It was the perfect blend of the beautifully dreary, overcast weather that I love and the mildly sunny skies that we needed. The temperatures were in the mid-seventies each day, and the scenery was beautiful. Don't get me wrong...I love New Mexico, and it has some of its own charms. However, if I had it my way, our entire state would look and function weather-wise like the states of Washington and Oregon! Another thing that I just adored about Kamloops was how much everyone took great pride in their curb appeal. Each street was adorned with hanging baskets overflowing with beautiful flowers and well-orchestrated planters that invited you into their homes and businesses. The scenery was spotted with beautiful blue atlas cedars, cherry trees, raspberry fields, and my personal favorite, red maples!

All this made me a little sad to come back to the 100 degree, New Mexico weather and landscape. More than that, it made me LONG for Fall to be here! Those who know me well can vouch for the fact that I get about one month or so into summer and start longing for the sweet smell of cinnamon, roasted winter squashes, pumpkins on the porch and the beauty of the colorful landscapes of fall! I know I have to hold tight for a while before we really get to experience the beautiful charm of fall, but I could not be more excited about it.

In preparation of what to do with our planters this fall, I stumbled across the Flores del sol blog on autumn planters. Not only was it very inspirational for fall planters, but for every day decor! This can tide me over until the crisp cool of fall makes its way to all of us!

A Time to Plant, and a Time to Uproot: Part 4

This post won't be as exciting as the rest of them because we are still in the process of growing our grass, and pretty much every other thing on the side of the house, but it's worth posting. Much is changing.

It is so wonderful to see the huge bush gone from the side of the house. My mom primarily dug up the planter on the side of the house, and it was such a blessing! Tim got rid of gigantor, the huge bush on the corner. We transplanted our small little bush to the back yard and planted these orange rocket barberries on the side of the house. Of course, these have wonderful color all year, but especially in the fall. What can I say...we are bringing fall colors & foliage to New Mexico! We used all of the mulch created by our stump grinding and covered these on the side.

We also planted a bradford pear tree on the side of the house to eventually create some shade for our air conditioning unit and for the pantry and utility room window. Right now, during the summer, the utility room turns into a dry sauna because of all the heat coming in through that window! We are very much looking forward to the tree creating more shade over there. It is having more of an adjustment to being planted on the side, but leaves are starting to sprout!

Tim spotted a great clearance find in this golden arborvitae at Wal Mart last night. It will be planted in this pot for a topiary look that will stay much more contained on the corner of the house. It also only grows to three feet tall, so it will be absolutely perfect to create focus without taking over on the corner!

Last but not least, we have been giving our red plum tree some extra love and attention to bring it back to its vibrant state. This poor little guy went without pruning, regular water and any love for about a year while the house was vacant. Thankfully, it is responding very well to the fertilizer and regular watering.

We will keep working on all of this and hope to have it covered with grass sooner than we realize. As things progress, we will be sure to keep you updated. We still have the front section of gravel to get rid of...on that note...if any of you want it, it's the prettiest of all our gravel, and it's yours for the taking if you simply get it!

Most importantly, it is exciting to start seeing the outside of our home begin to match the inside of our home. Stay with us on this long journey!

A Time to Plant, and a Time to Uproot: Part 3

The next area that has more things planted is our newly dug and sump-free planter by the house! After my mom and I put blood, sweat and almost tears into digging all of this up, the stump was removed, and I got to planting!

It won't take you long to figure out that I absolutely adore the fall colors, and I planted our shrubs with that in mind. We planted crimson barberries, golden euonymus and a bonanza gold barberry in our space. Not only do they provide a beautiful contrast to the black mulch and to each other, they also will provide some stunning colors in the fall.

The crimson barberry, which already has a purplish-crimson hue to its leaves, will turn a vibrant red during fall. They golden euonymus will stay yellow, and the bonanza gold barberry will turn a vibrant shade of yellow. These will also look great with the new paint, trim & shutter color for the house.

Once again, we planted with ease of upkeep & long-term size in mind when we planted everything in the yard. It's funny how removing so many overgrown and mis-sized plants will do that to you! The crimson barberries will only get about two feet tall and three feet wide. The bonanza gold barberry will only get about three feet tall and three feet wide. Lastly, the golden euonymus will get around four feet tall and three feet wide. Thankfully, they all respond well to pruning!

We have one space left in our planter bed to fill with a small evergreen shrub that we are going to dig up from Rex & Melissa's house! We had been looking for something, and it turns out they had just the item and didn't want it in their landscape. Hurray for friends in the middle of their home renovation projects too! This will be placed near the corner of the house, between the crimson barberry and the bonanza gold barberry. It is a nice, contrasting shade of green that will stay around all year long!

Along with all of that, we have a cute little redbud tree with the slightly elevated flagstone planter. On the same day that Makenzie and I tackled the lava rock in the front planter, I used the last bit of my energy to get that tree in the ground. Thankfully, it has been doing great! We will be adding more flagstone to the front to give it more prominence. Thankfully, my parents have some extra just laying around the house. We will definitely save money and just wait until their next trip out here to finish that element!

The last major element is a work in progress...the grass. Thankfully, we do have grass under there. We did have quite a bit of thatch in our yard that had to be removed because of some of its neglect over the past year, and the year the house sat vacant. However, our good grass is starting to spread over the de-thatched areas, and the seed is forming these adorable little sprouts. It is making its way! Tim also worked so hard to get all of our sprinkler zones working properly in the front so our grass can be beautiful, lush and green!

A Time to Plant, and a Time to Uproot: Part 1

It is so exciting to see some things finally start happening on the outside of our house. Last year, we simply tried to get our grass green and mowed while we were working on the inside of the house. Thanks to much help from David Conklin, most of our huge, overgrown trees & bushes were removed from the house. Thanks to the help of the Stubblefield landscaping team, our grass actually looked decent last year. I posted the "before" picture again to help you understand just how much has changed on the front of our house since we got it!

This year, we have been continuing the uprooting of what had become overgrown and what had been hijacking the attention when you looked at the front of the house. Tim did so great to get the large boxwood shrubs uprooted from the planter bed in front of the house. We simply moved them to the East side of our house in our planter bed. After Tim did all of that hard work, Makenzie and I spent a very hot Saturday morning pulling up the 5" of lava rock that lined that planter and breaking up the soil in the bed to get it ready for some plants!

In addition, my mom and I spent another Saturday morning digging up what is now our curved planter bed in front of the house. Thankfully, God gave us a beautiful day to get it all dug up. A few days later, the stump grinders came an actually got it ready for the plants to actually go in!

The next spot we dug up was the planter bed on the West side of our house, including transplanting the little bush in the picture below to the back yard. However, some of the biggest changes to the outside of our house have come in what we have simply taken away. Tim & my dad worked to remove a huge, dead bush from the East side of our house (on the left side of the before picture) that didn't survive our rough winter. Also, Tim absolutely man-handled the massive bush on the West corner of the house that is about to take over the garage in our before picture. It has been amazing to see how much it has opened up the front of our house by simply taking away those huge bushes.

Oh, did I mention that the middle section of gravel on the side of our house is gone?!? My mistake! Seth Ashley and Aaron Romo came and had pity on Tim ad helped him with the really exhausting task of moving all of the middle section of our gravel, which was also about 5" deep. What do you do with that much gravel? Well, we now have a lovely gravel covered back alley, and some of that gravel is creating a zen, gravel area by the house in our back yard. That is for another post, but it is actually coming along. All of that area is making room for our Bermuda to take over that area (which it is well on its way to doing).

I hope to have the second post ready to show what we have been planting in place of what we have torn out!

A Time to Plant, and a Time to Uproot: Part 2

Finally, we can talk about the planting!!! We have been making some major progress on the outside of the house. We are slowly removing some of the last bits of the former landscaping to create a clean slate! We have got some pretty incredible workouts working outside on our house in this past month, for sure. I’ll simply tell you what we planted in the front flower bed by the porch in this post, because there is so much to share with you.

One of the first things that we actually got to plant was our little round planter in front. After the soil had breathed for a few days, I spent one morning putting in different colors and levels of grasses with a few flowers and some flowering ground cover. As these fill in, they will create different levels of height, color and texture to draw your eye up to the front door. Thankfully, the Cordylines in the back will only grow to be about 2.5' high, so you will still have a clear and open view to our front porch.

I also added the two potted arrangements to frame out the front door and draw you to the front of the house. It also provided a great pop of texture and color from the flowers.

Finally, I added some flowers to our planter box to give you something beautiful to look at up front. The Fushia flowers in the pot have beautiful little pink & purple flowers, and are about to explode in blooms! The flowers in the planter also just provide some nice color to the front. Thankfully, everything we have planted is really cold hardy, and will come back next year!

We are really loving that things are coming together in this area of our yard. I will share more of what we have done in our next post!

Guest Bath!

I could not be more excited about the changes that have taken place in our guest bath! Though it is still a small bathroom, it is turning into a well-lit, beautiful bathroom now! We ripped out the carpet....Let's have a moment of silence for how disgusting that is to have carpet in the bathroom...Ok! We also tore down the pink drapes, pink shower curtain, and the pink tile behind the vanity, and we plan to tear out the last of the pink tile this weekend!

We will be replacing this pink tile with a crisp, white subway tile with this beautiful glass mosaic accent that looks like it was made just for our paint color. I love how it looks like jewelry for our shower! In addition, we will be raising the shower head approximately a foot so my brother-in-law (who is quite tall) might consider ever coming to our house again. All kidding aside, the shower head comes out of the wall about mid-way on MY forehead, and I acknowledge that I'm not the tallest. It is time.

We have replaced the vanity, toilet, flooring, mirror, lighting, and placed a vent fan in the ceiling to get all of that moisture out! My mom did such a great job on our custom shower curtain, and we are hoping to find new hand towels and a toilet seat cover to tie it all together soon.

Obviously, we still have all of the cutting in to do, but we are waiting until we finish tiling the shower to do the final touches. We will hang a bamboo shade on the window and put up the baseboards. Also, above the toilet, we will have a glass shelf for artwork & the necessities like Q-tips and cotton balls.

Our Hallway

This shows you just how much work we had to do in the house...this post is just about what has changed in the hallway! We ripped out our old, 70's style carpet to lay this beautiful tile that is throughout our kitchen, dining room and guest bath. The old, wood-finished doors got a fresh coat of paint and new knobs. Certainly not least, the metal, outdoor flood lights on the walls were replaced with these sleek, wall sconces.

We also painted our hall closet with a crisp, white coat of paint and knocked off the old wooden handles for these sleek, modern ones. I know it's so silly, but it is such a blessing to see this when we walk down the hall. We are slowly reclaiming all of the areas of our home with our style and tastes!