Blog de Puree

After purchasing and planting our ‘Winter Gem’ boxwood shrubs from Lowe’s last year (See last year’s blog post here), we are happy to see that our border experiment is working.
To start, we planted what we called the “Boxwood shade gardens,” one on each side of our front steps to fill in the area that was [...]

“It’s time to install a cat door,” Randye sighed. “I’m sick of people coming to the house and looking into our messy laundry room.”
“I’m sure they don’ t mind,” I replied, thinking it wasn’t a big deal.
“Well, whether they do or not isn’t really the main point,” she responded. “I don’t want our son crawling [...]

I’m not even sure I know how to tag this one. (It would probably be more appropriate when our blog was called “The Hot Poop.”) But here goes.
As a huge fan of interior design, I love hearing about new products for the home. Some are certainly more interesting than others and this one is a [...]

This is the corner of our basement where the oil tank used to be. Now it will become a clean, non-smelly, dry storage space.

What freedom from foreign oil dependence looks like.
We now have a new natural gas boiler. It uses gas piped in from our peaceful neighbors to the north, Canada. It’s also about 50% [...]

We made more progress on our stone wall this week.
A colleague and good friend of mine lives near some deserted granite quarries in Gloucester. After talking about the slow progress of our stone wall, she offered all the rocks I could fit in my car from the huge pile of rock and granite near the [...]

Sunday stated innocently enough. After I hearty breakfast, we went to Lowe’s. When we left Lowe’s, our car was weighed down with two plastic shelving systems, shutters to replace the broken blinds in the bathroom and thin plastic threshold strips to be used in the mudroom.
Once we arrived home from the market, my day consisted [...]

Two months after making my original order for 25 boxwood shrubs with Lowes, they finally arrived. It was the wrong cultivar and size, but as it is August, with the growing season closing fast and the fact that this variety is still evergreen in our particular zone, I threw up my hands and bought them [...]

Saturday was a busy day on the home improvement front. Randye and I feverishly worked on a myriad of small projects that needed our attention. Here’s the list:

Install a final shelf in master bedroom closet. With some of the scrap wood left from the closet refurb a few weeks back, we crafted supports and a [...]

Just wanted to add that Paul’s photos make the blue look much brighter than it is — in reality, it’s a soft sky blue. Oh, and lest anyone think potential motherhood has pushed my decorating style over to the “sweet” or “cute” side (quel horreur!*), we’ll be balancing the look with some of my trademark [...]

Nesting has begun.
With the wee beastie on the way, we have kicked into high gear to make way for baby. The closets have been completed and last week was spent painting the nursery. The color we used was “Soar,” a soft, baby blue and we also touched up the white trim throughout the room.
Here are [...]