Splashing Elmo, and some DIY

So this was the state of our front door when we moved in. What quality workmanship! Notice the huge patch missing, the white showing through on the door panels, the super-visible brushstrokes, and the drips.

Below, we have the door now. Great work, Stace!A closeup of the "before." Stace and I ask ourselves, what person in their right mind would finish something that looks like that and think, "Yeah. Perfect."
We ask ourselves that question about many, many things in this house.
Stace stripped it, sanded it, put on two coats of primer and three coats of red. Our house is a very neutral beige color, so we actually liked the red paint color, and took in a bit of the peeling paint to have it matched when we bought new paint.

Here are the "before" pictures of the strip of our property near our mailbox, next to our driveway. It had some small dying palms, some large agapanthus (which shoots out stalks with lots of little lavender flowers) and lots of crabgrass and other weeds in between.

And after! The gardener dug it all up very deep to get the weed roots, and then redid the sprinkler system. We kept one agapanthus out front, and had the gardener replant the others in the back yard. Then, he put in five bareroot roses, all red, though they look like sticks at this point. The flowers are pansies, to provide a little color for now, while we wait for the roses to flower. The tree by the garage door is an apricot, and we're told by the neighbor that we will be getting fruit from it! I'm excited about that! Also, in the back, we planted a grape plant that should produce red seedless table grapes in a couple of summers. At some point, I'm looking forward to putting in more fruits and vegetables in the back.



And, for your Cora fix, this is how she entertained herself the other morning in the puddle left on the patio by the sprinklers. (Thankfully, Elmo washed up well in our new washing machine.)