#FamilyProjects at Home

I can't believe it's been two months already since we moved in into our second home.  We have been busy  organizing, putting things away, fixing things, and doing little projects around the house.  Here are some  outdoor projects we have done so far.  

I am not sure why the  former owner got rid of   the plants around the house but I've seen so many  stumps of  plants that were  used to be  around this house.  I think it has to do with  his age and  the maintenance of  the garden was  hard for him already that he decided to  eliminate the plants.  

I love gardening so as soon  as we closed the sale of this house and  we started working on it, I started doing some gardening projects  months before we even moved in.

We always encouraged the kids to help us on whatever we do because  it's a great bonding experience for us with them and they learn things.  

The mailbox on this house was  so old  so we  bought us a new one and we  installed it in  the week after we moved in.  

I ordered the mailbox online because  my husband does not like the ones that we see  around here.  It was expensive but I think it would last a long time since it is heavy duty.  The mailbox also came with a doormat that is heavy duty.

The front porch on this house is longer  than what we had over at our former house so  our patio furniture is  perfect to use here.  

We will need a  another set of patio furniture for our back porch as we also have a bigger size  at the back.

We bought this Whitehall Custom mailbox at Mailbox Works for $403.97.  It was painful for me to pay that much for a mailbox but as my husband always say, you get what you pay for.

My daughter helped  by reading the instruction for his Dad.

The Whitehall mailboxes is  larger than most premium mailboxes that we've seen in the store so even packages can fit inside without a problem.  This is supposed to be  manufactured from die-cast rust free aluminum but I already see rust forming  inside where the  door is hitting it so that is a problem. 

   I love that the deluxe post comes complete with the decorative scroll brackets which looks awesome.  I did not order  a side panel with our name on it because it was an addition 88 dollars which is ridiculous!

So now the fronr of our house is a little bit prettier than before.  My husband told me that I skouldn't bring the rocks that we have  laid in our garden over at the other house but I insisted to do it since I wanted to use it in this house.  I need more of it though because  this house needs a lot of  face lift in order  add some  curb appeal to it.

I planted some plants around the  new mailbox .

So here it is, our new mailbox.  The rocks around it  is from our travels and walks.  We always  pick up some rocks when we go somewhere as remembrance  and we have a lot of it already so I thought of using it there.  

We also transferred our  flag from the other house to here.  I didn't want to leave it there because it is one of those things that I got from blogging so I want it to  remain part of our new home.  Besides, the house here in the neighborhood doesn't have flags so I want our house to be different.  

I think we encourage some people coz I've seen one of our neighbors put a flag on her porch which is nice.

I want to remove this big  crab apple tree in the front because the roots are  getting big and I don't want it to tear up the  sidewalk.  I think a dogwood tree or a Japanese maple tree would look great here instead of this messy crab apple.  That would be our project in the future, w hen we finally sold the other house.

Glad to see the plants we planted during Mother's day are now blooming.

I got a lot of calluses in my hands doing this garden projects but it's okay because it looks nice when you drive by.  The neighbors are very welcoming and they  compliment me for the plants hehehe.

 I also planted some hostas, day lilies, and burning bushes along the drive way.  The hard part of this project is  digging the  grass because it was so thick and I only used shovel  to removed it.  It wasn't an easy job but I got it done.  My husband could not help me with this one because he was doing the wood floors  that time.  

 I brought the red bricks I had at the other house.  My husband was like "No one will buy this house  now because you are stripping it down" lol.  Those bricks are expensive so I don't want to buy again although we did buy some more (the tan ones) because  the red ones  were not enough.  I used almost 150 pieces of bricks on this project, so glad I only have to buy over 50.

I have a lot of lilies and hostas at the other house so I transferred some of them here.  Why pay if I already have some that I can transfer right?  Hopefully, the plants will grow back thicker next summer.  

We still have a lot of things  to do on this house but that would be in the future, one by one.  Our priority would be  to replace the old windows.  If we sold the old house, that would be the project we will do first so that we will have good seal on our windows during winter.  The kitchen of this house also need a face lift so that would be another project to tackle in the future.