3 Month-ish Quick Fixes

Whew!!  It's almost Friday!  Thank goodness because it has been a smokin' hot, super busy week around here, and I'm beyond ready to celebrate The Babe's 1st birthday!

Speaking of her birthday, we've made some additional progress in her room.  Last night, we finished painting the 2nd coat of paint on the walls and this morning I got all the outlet covers reinstalled.  We're going to have family in town for the weekend, so having a deadline certainly helped force me into action.  I'm feeling mighty good that we have all the painting done and it is getting time for the fun stuff.  Yesterday, I also cut all of the curtain liners and one of the actual curtain panels.  I also ironed and pinned it, so I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about the next dreaded task of sewing.

Sometimes when things get so busy and overwhelming, though, I feel the need to knock out a quick project so I can have instant gratification. I'm one of those impatient types, and I have always been that way much to Mr. Man's sadness.  I can even remember my dad telling me when I was very little to be more patient..."good things comes to he who waits", "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it", etc.  Unfortunately, despite everyone's best efforts to reform me, I'm still impatient but at least I'm busting it and getting things done.  RIGHT?!

Which leads me into one of my quick, gotta do it now projects.  Back in April when the tornado hit, our backyard took the brunt of it.  We had a bunch of super tall pine trees crash into the house and patio area.  You can see a picture of the damage below (you can also click on it to make it larger).  Well since then, we've been super busy trying to repair it all.  Thankfully the house is done and we've chipped away at all of the exterior repairs. Some of the main things we've done include repairing the broken fence sections, replacing all the landscape lighting, planting new flowers and buying new patio furniture and a grill.

I guess three months of repair work isn't exactly quick, but the latest project I finished got completed in about 2 days.  :)

If you can't tell from the before pictures above, the rear steps leading onto the patio were damaged beyond repair.  We hired the construction of new, wider steps out to a local contractor and once he was finished building them...it was my turn!  

New, wider steps allow for easier entry into the house

I headed out to Home Depot to pick up some wood stain and decided on a nice "dark gray" color from the Behr line.  Ummm, seriously the name was "dark gray".  How very creative, huh?  

I thought it would pick up on the colors from the stamped concrete patio nicely and add a little something special.  What do you think?   Here it is all stained up and ready to go!

I liked the color, but I didn't love it.  So, I decided I couldn't stop with just one color.  So, why not make every other step on the top landing a different color?  I chose white since it would match the house, and I thought it would weather nicely and eventually get worn into a well loved detail that kind of looks like a rug.

Now, I love it.  :)  And that's the end of my super quick transformation on the steps!  I also wanted to give you a quick peek at our backyard and patio area since I haven't really blogged about that since the tornado.  I have a few projects out there I would love to blog about soon, but we'll see how things go with The Babe's room.  Who knows..I may even find a few more quick projects to knock out just to keep me motivated!

So, what do you think?  Love or hate the stripes?  Also, surely I'm not alone in my quest for quick fixes?  I would love to hear some of your stories!

Thanks for reading and have an amazing Thursday!  I'm going to head back upstairs and continue cutting out curtains!  Thank goodness for nap time!