Garden and nursery progress

This past weekend my sweet mom flew up for a couple of days to help me paint the nursery!  It was so nice to see her and get to spend time together!  Here is the before picture of the nursery:

And here is the after!

The crib :-)

We still have a lot of color to infuse through curtains and decorations, and we will be adding a rocking chair/glider.  But I love the soft gray and white, I think it is sweet and calming.

Paint makes such a difference in a room!  Remember this hideously green guest bathroom that we inherited? (I love green, just not such a bold color in such a small, windowless room...it's overpowering.)

A couple of weeks ago I decided to repaint it.  I used some tan paint that I already had lying around and now it looks like this!

Ahh, so much better.  Now the shower curtain can be the star instead of the Kermit the frog walls.

In addition to painting the nursery, my mom helped me revamp the flower beds lining the walkway in the front yard!  She and James did a lot of digging because we have clay here in Maryland which is not conducive to growing flowers, so we had to dig out the clay and replace with garden soil.  I definitely could not have done that by myself and I am so thankful for their help!  Here's the before and after shots.

This was taken before we moved in, and the flower pots up at the front did not stay with the house.

And here it is now.  

We removed the ugly bushes by the front door and planted knock-out roses instead.  They should look great when they grow bigger.  And don't you just love the cheery marigolds and begonias?

Speaking of plants, my veggie garden in the back has taken off! One of my strawberry plants has given me about 5 little strawberries so far, and I just found two little green tomatoes that are starting to grow.  So exciting! It's a lot of work to garden, but I love the payoff.  A lot of beauty and some homegrown veggies are worth it.  I'm loving having my own house so that I can do these projects that I couldn't do in an apartment.  So fun.

Tomatoes and basil right after planting

Tomatoes now.  The basil quickly got eclipsed by the tomatoes and never grew.