Planting Pops of Color.

The same day I planted my succulents, some outdoor planting got accomplished too.  The outdoor stuff is what actually kicked my butt into gear to get the succulents done.

On a recent trip to IKEA, I couldn't resist helping myself to a few planters.  Two of them, you saw here...they live on our front porch.

The third one I purchased is a white, three-tiered plant stand.  I totally fell for the uniqueness of it.  I adore the fact that it's not a typical planter you see every day. 

Hubby couldn't wait to add some life to it, so during a nice weekend day, we headed to Home Depot's Outdoor Center...along with the rest of the world. ;)

We picked out beautiful dahlias for the front porch planters and some colorful begonias for the IKEA planter.

We even purchased two hanging planters of pansies, but removed the hanging apparatus, and put them at the bottom of our patio steps.  They are a great pop of color in our backyard.

Since I love all things ombre, I decided to organize my begonias in an ombre type fashion...going from orange to pink.

Now this fun planter lives in our back porch, and gives us a pretty view, both out the kitchen window and from the back patio.

 

PS-The dahlias on our front porch have now fully bloomed.  When we went to the garden center, we chose the plants that had the least amount of open blooms on them.  We were hoping that if we bought plants that hadn't yet blossomed, we would be able to enjoy more of it's time in bloom.  It seems to have worked, and they are thriving.  Heck, the ones we bought for the back yard have even been thriving!  High five for us not killing our new plants after a few weeks! ;)

Mailbox and Mums

Fall is clearly in the air, and all over the blog world.  I have to admit that I am loving every minute of it!  After a summer of record high temps and zero rain, the crisp, cool air is a welcomed change.

To go along with some interior autumn decorating I’ve done {more on that to come}, the hubby and I decided that our mailbox could use some season-appropriate sprucing up.  Ideally, we would love to replace our entire mailbox.  Its old, and definitely not our style.  The poor thing has definitely seen better days, and I think it was even recently hit by someone….possibly the new garbage truck our town just purchased?!?  Now the lid won’t close all the way, which means it’s become a wonderful structure for spiders to call home.  YUCK!

I always thought I’d remove the cracked plastic sleeve and spray paint it a fun color.  But upon closer inspection, the sleeve is majorly screwed into the mailbox, and those screws and some other areas, have become rusted.  Soooo we are going to make do until we save up for a new one.  And truthfully, a new mailbox isn’t at the top of our priority list.  We might have this pathetic thing for a couple more years.  {Please don’t judge!}

So to make our mailbox less heinous to look at more tolerable, we decided we should create a mulch bed around the base and plant some pretty mums.

Hubby already pulled up what little grass we had in that area before I could snap a picture…so here is as “before” as I could get for you. ;)

And after we planted some mums…

And after we watered and mulched…

The key for this project is to not focus on how grimy our mailbox is, but to look at how pretty it’s base is now. :)  Yea, let’s just do that…because the plastic cardinal sleeve is beyond sad at this point.

Oh, and for sake of keepin’ it real, I’d like to point out that we planted these in say mid-August {yup, we totally jumped on the “hey fall is right around the corner” bandwagon}, so the mums were already in bloom and have since lost their flowers. :(  At least we still have some mulch and greenery around the mailbox, right?!?!

Anyone else in dire need of a new mailbox?