In the last couple weeks I have been up to a lot. Catching up on backlogged renovations, enjoying the summer and friends, and in general trying to fit my life into a routine.

On top of perfecting my Neapolitan Style Pizzas dough recipe (I plan to share in upcoming weeks – don’t worry) I have been working outside a lot to clean up our outdoor space.

We just bought our house, why does it require so many renovations and cleaning you may ask? Well I will finally get into our house renovation story and why I am now in outdoor beautification mode.

What is the deal with our house?

So there have been a lot of me talking about the house we bought last year. Yes we are one of the many people who bought a house in 2022 when the housing market was insane. Does that mean we are totally screwed financially now? Luckily not! BUT we are super busy all the time doing house projects.

Our house is a 1970’s trailer on blocks on it’s own 2 acre lot. A mobile home on land is a very common occurrence in Maine. However, they were asking too much and the land and the trailer were horribly maintained.

This buy was honestly very crazy for us to undertake. We put a TON of sweat equity and made all the improvements we could to the inside. After a lot of blood, sweat, and tears we have a very cute and not at all gross home to live in. We were very lucky to have a lot of family and friends willing to help do construction and demo work.

That being said – we have a great house! This house has been a lot of work, but it was exactly what we wanted. Cheap, in the forest, rural area, and we even lucked out with being surrounded by conservation land. Sammy and I are very fortunate to know what we want, be on the same page as each other, and be willing to work for our goals together.

That being said, this shit was gross moving in. The inside is no longer gross, but the outside 100% is still nasty.

Beautification vs functionality

A lot of my garden series 2023 has been me alluding to the amount of work it took to make the garden. This wasn’t only a matter of trying to make a nice garden with healthy soil, but also SOO much preparation work to make it possible to have our garden in that location. I plan to write a post going into more detail into the journey of our garden next week. But needless to say, our outside was dirty.

We spent so much of 2022 just making the inside functionable and cute for us to live in and now 2023 has been spent trying to save money when we can and make the outside look nicer.

Some goals that we have planned for our outside space:

• Clean up the thick layer of leaves around the property (I am not kidding when I say there is a 6″ thick layer of leaves all around our property)
• Clean up the rotting trees that have fallen
• Manage the forest – a lot of it is new growth all trying to out compete each other for sun and very unhealthy
• Plant clover on our lawn

mosquito heaven

Guess what? All of those rotting leaves and tree attract the hell out of some mosquitos. We also have some wet areas of our forest that do not help.

We really don’t love the idea of using chemicals to stop mosquitos – so we have taken the more beautiful and natural route. PLANTS!! (and mosquito dunks)

We got 2 large plants (pictured above) for on our deck. They smell so good. We also got SOOO much lavender to plant all around our deck!

Pallet-wood planter boxes

Where will all the lavender go, you may ask? I have decided to make some planter boxes to fill the ugly void underneath our deck. We have a bunch of pallet wood we got for free and spare dirt.

The cost of this project will be the cost of the lavender I bought and the screws I used to create the planter boxes!

This is not only a beautification project – it is an attempt to make the mosquitos stop making us so itchy. They can have my blood, I don’t care. I just don’t know why they steal my blood then make me itch. Insult to injury.

I pulled the pallets apart and just screwed the boxes together, rototilled the ground under the boxes, added more dirt, and planted my lavender. Yes, there is space for a little doggy-door to under the deck. That is where Bear sleeps to cool down in the summer!

Will this non-treated pallet wood last forever? No. But it works for now and eventually when I have more money I can upgrade the wood. Or I could just collect rocks around the property. Not everything has to be done “the right way”. You can do what works for now and upgrade it later when you have more resources!

Shopping at local greenhouses

In general I recommend going to local greenhouses to buy plants. Sometimes, it can be more expensive, but a lot of times it is not! I have bought plants from Home Depot and I know the appeal, but if you have a local greenhouse you can go to, it is so worth it!

Lavender is a herb. You can buy small pots of lavender that will grow huge with time for like $3 a plant or less at a greenhouse. To buy lavender at Home Depot, you will most likely only have the option to buy a more developed plant for more money! If you are willing to wait for your plant to grow, you can get way more savings at a greenhouse. Plus it helps your local economy.

Also, greenhouses have great deals late season for herbs or veggies. Want to add anything to your garden mid-season? Greenhouse have amazing deals to help you. The local one by me was Buy One Get One Free for herbs. That means I spent $1.50 per lavender plant! Such an amazing deal.

Plus they have 25% off perennials the week I was there, so I got 3 lambs ear, 4 stonecover plants, hens and chicks, that beautiful columbine, 2 hosta’s, a beautiful hydrangea, a citronella, a lemon-scent geranium, 16 lavender plants, and 5 hot pepper plants (for fun) for only $200. Yes – that is a lot of money. But not for everything I got. And most of them are perennials that I will be able to enjoy forever!

Subscribe to our page for more updates on the beautification process!

Also – follow us on Pinterest for more content!

• Pinterest