My Secret Shame
It’s fair to say that expectations are high when people come over to our house the first time. Well-meaning friends who have seen our house photos on my blog or facebook are so eager to come over and see everything “in real life”. I feel like I gently have to warn them however- things aren’t as fab as they seem.
Because of our secret shame.
That’s about to be not so secret.
I am going to be honest with you guys. We really, really don’t have time for yard work. :O So people come over, bottle of wine in hand with high expectations of everything being perfectly styled, and before I can even let them in to see the fabulous entry way or the new dining room, or our awesome concrete countertops, they have to pull up and walk to the front door…and see this.
Yikes.
Are we still friends? Guys, don’t leave me. I am working on it. Stay with me. Okay, so remember I told you all that we came home from the Home Depot Garden Party all excited and amped up? It’s because we declared no longer would we hang our heads in shame at the sight of our front yard, no longer would we avoid eye contact with our neighbors, no longer would we have to give the obligatory please don’t judge our yard talk to our friends. We were gonna make that sucker look good.
Spoiler alert, we did. Sorta. At least we created a good foundation to work with. So, for example, we hadn’t trimmed our hedges in awhile. So while we were at Home Depot we picked up this hedge trimmer, went home and I prepared to face my foe. Here’s a before (don’t judge!!!!).
Eeeeeek. But quick look at this next photo!
Yeah!! That’s me feeling the power of a new tool. It was SO FUN to use. It cut the hedges like buttah and—to be honest—I just felt like a total B.A. cutting down the bushes. Rawr!
It was my first time using a hedge trimmer, and it was super easy. So if I can do it, you can do it. Look how good it turned out for my first time!
Guess what Scott was doing while I was doing all of this? Sitting on a lawn chair drinking a beer. Just kidding. He was tackling the severe leaf issue in our front yard. Those two giant oak trees? Really cool, really pretty, really nice to say we are the house with the two giant trees (except when we are embarrassed of our yard). BUT THEY LEAVE SO MANY LEAVES. Please leave, leaves. Get it, see what I did there?
So anyways, he was bagging leaves. I think the total count of yard trash bags full of leaves was 15 or so. It took us 5 hours. But we felt so proud. Not looking totally terrible now, right? (Shh, avert your eyes from the nasty shutters/column issue….it’s on the list to fix!)
Luckily, I have some great resources to get together a good yard plan. Maybe some flowers? Maybe some green grass? Maybe?? 🙂 We shall see!
Glad we had this little chat. Feel free to tell me your secret shame. I’ll even share another- we have a bedroom that doesn’t have drywall on one wall yet, or an air conditioning vent. It’s just full of boxes, and shame. 🙁 Now tell me your secrets and make me feel better!! 😀
Tania Griffis is an accomplished writer, blogger, and interior designer with a Journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma. She started her popular blog, Run to Radiance, in 2011, demonstrating her design expertise through the personal remodeling of six houses to millions of readers across the globe.
Tania also owns The Creative Wheelhouse, a respected ghostwriting agency for bloggers, further showcasing her talent for creating engaging and informative content.
If it makes you feel better, I need to use BOTH hands to count the amount of times I’ve heard people come in and say “Oh your house it so cute…you’d never know it from the outside.” OUCH. But it’s true!! Every time we have declared it “the year of the landscaping” (translation: kill all the weeds), something major comes up and then we have no money for such non-necessities like new shrubs. It also doesn’t help that everyone around us has gardeners and beautiful yards, making the contrast to ours all the worse. It’s been almost six years…maybe by our 10 anniversary…a girl can dream, right??
You did a great job trimming your hedges! I can’t wait to see what else you do with the yard! My front yard never looks too bad because the house we rent belongs to a HOA, so we don’t actually have to take care of it (with the exception of one giant dead plant in front of our front window, because the HOA isn’t responsible for anything within 2 feet of the front of the house… Darn it.). The back yard has always been a bit of a hot mess. I finally pulled all the weeds, racked out the zero scaping etc. and now it looks bland, but not such a mess. My goal is to spruce it up before summer! I have two days off next week while my husband works and my goal is to surprise him with it being all fixed up when he gets off of work!
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LOL! Great start! 🙂
We moved into our house last April and spent all of our time focusing on the inside. We stepped outside one day in the middle of summer and were shocked by how overgrown everythign was. We even shamefully had a plant growing up the fence and into our neighbours perfectly manicured yard. We even had some mint that grew almost as tall as me. There’s even a shameful fence falling apart on one side.
We’re determined to get all that in check this spring.
I can’t wait to see what else you do!
No one tells you how hard it is to keep up with a yard when you’re buying a house! Ours was INSANE when we moved in, and the house had been vacant for a while during a drought. So yeah. Bad bad bad. And, like you, we totally don’t have much time to spend working on our yard…especially when it is eleventy billion degrees outside. We’re just now getting to where our yards look decent enough to start working towards pretty yards {but our 5 yr house anniversary is coming up}. I will say, having a lawn service that comes to mow, weed, and clean up leaves/pine needles once a week is saving my butt.
Love what you guys did with that! Looks great! I can’t wait to see what sorts of flowers and trees you decided to plant next! Maybe a cherry tree? 😀 Some tulips?
There is two types of charm.- Perfection like the Gardens of Versailles or nature in it’s element. One thing I’ve always loved about your home is it’s cozy nature in it’s element feel and then the sparkling wonder of every neat expression of home when you walk in the door. I’m excited as you work more with the beauty around you home! And either way… I love your house!
Our yard is embarrassing – but we are getting quotes on it this weekend. Our house is slanted. Our garage is a little embarrassing, too.
oh gosh, part of my dream for having a home is that i’m going to be able to have a flower garden and plant some fruits&veg — i think that would be all kinds of fun 🙂
Okay so I like you even more now 🙂 It’s good to keep things real. None of us are perfect despite how good some people’s blogs make it look. Great work on the yard by the way. Can’t wait to see what you do next