Working all afternoon - paint, planting and DIY planters

So yesterday...Jimmy and I had exactly 4 hours to ourselves.  We dropped the kiddos off at my parents house.  After we finally got them both down for naps, we were pulling out the driveway and he said- "Ok, let's just go home and take a nap."  For like five seconds, I was seriously tempted- but no, we had big plans.  First Home Depot for plants, Quik Trip for gas and lunch (duh) the we had three things to accomplish at our house- and we were determined to do them.  And we did just that.  And I'm not going to lie- pretty darn impressed with our efficiency.  We were a few minutes late for dinner at my parents house...but they didn't mind!!

So what was in our list!!?? 

Here is goes:

1 - Paint our foundation.  Did you know people do that?  Well ours looked super ghetto.  And I was starting to feel like our curb appeal was seriously lacking and neighbors were giving us the stink eye.  Especially since the parade of homes started this weekend in KC and one of the houses on it right behind ours (eek.)

Saturday afternoon after naps, we made a family trip to Home Depot and color matched exterior paint, picked up a few more supplies (including an awesome nail gun), and then I started with this on Sunday--- 

After a coat of paint (which included scrapping all the paint that was falling off off with my hands) on the foundation and the semi-ghetto wood arm rail that was there when we moved in...

Pretty crazy what s difference (in my view) that makes!!  I did the other side of the house too.

2 - Dig up the side flower bed that has nothing in it and plant!!!

Before-

And after!  Jimmy picked out some lilac and something else.  Then I think we are going to get Azelea to put in that big hole!  Maybe it won't die like all the ones at our old house did (oops!)

3 - So what was Jimmy doing this whole time? Don't worry he was hard at work!! Building planters!!! Check it out!  I picked out these plans for him (sorry the link to the exact plans isn't working right now - I will re-try and post later) from Shanty 2 Chic website

 and wahla - in just a few hours he had them cut, assembled and ready to go.  He even got everything cleaned up after.  What a good guy!

I'm going to paint them a dark gray that matches our shutters and throw them in between our garage doors.  Or... Maybe by he front door and make him make one more for in between the garage. Hmmmm...decisions decisions of having a handy husband!

So we did that...and went to Aldi for a quick grocery store run all in less than four hours.  It's amazing what you can do when you don't have two human lives to be responsible for!  But of course they had so much fun with my parents and sister and Casey; they went to the park, played hide and seek, rode bikes and ran around the backyard.  As always!!!  

Now our whole bodies hurt from all that work.  But love the results so far!! Planting more this week!!! 

And what I'm still loving? The view of he sun set from our front porch.  NEVER.GETS.OLD.

OMG I think this might be the first post in forever that I didn't put a picture of my kids too....