Outside Archives - Bigger Than the Three of Us

Summer Patio Reveal

July 19, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 40 Comments

Are we to the actual middle of Summer yet? It seems like it here in Missouri. Actually, it seems like it’s close to being over. School starts in early August, so that only leaves us a few more weeks of soaking everything in. We’ve been filling our days with swimming, swimming and more swimming. Well, add in science classes and summer reading and you really have a good view of what our summer days look like. Not much gets done around here lately, but lots of memories are being made. The important things are being done. =)

A few months ago, I started a patio makeover series. Do you remember that? I totally fell off the bandwagon, but the gist of it was that I wanted to give our patio a spruce-up on a very tight budget. Like I said, I fell of the bandwagon.

When Ursula from Homemade By Carmona asked me if I’d like to take part in a Garden Party, I jumped at the chance. What’s a “Garden Party” you might ask? Well, it’s basically a load of garden, patio, outdoor inspiration coming to you from a group of awesome blog friends. So, naturally, when you fall off the bandwagon in revealing a patio spruce-up… you totally say yes, when someone else asks you to reveal one. LOL!

It was the little kick in the rear that I needed to just get everything freshened up.

So, without further adeiu… welcome to the Modern and Bright Summer Patio Reveal.

I added a few new plants (like this asparagus fern) early this summer. I love the texture that they add to the space and really can’t wait for the fall when I can bring them indoors to add more life to our indoor areas.

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How To Make a Tightrope for Your Kids

June 22, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 9 Comments

I don’t know about you guys but we are four weeks in on Summer break and Greyson is already bored. The first week of break, we chilled at home and did a few playdates. The second week, he went to Florida and did the whole Disney thing. The third week, he did superhero gymnastics camp from 9-12, Monday-Friday. The fourth week (this week) we’ve been to two swimming pools (on two different days), the lake with my family, the library (twice), regular errands (grocery shopping, etc. ), and have another lake day planned with friends on Friday. All of that is to say… we’ve been going places and he tells me he’s bored. Are you serious? Yep, he’s totally serious. So, to combat boredom, I looked for new toys. Then, I thought… I’ll make a new toy and make it an outside one. That’s where this tutorial – How to Make a Tightrope for Your Kids comes in.

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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my link.

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DIY Planter Pot Table Combo for the Patio

May 16, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 31 Comments

Are you the type of person that’s glad it’s Monday or not? I’m not really sure where I fall. I definitely like structure, so if the weekends lasted longer they might bother me. But, I could take a three day weekend every week with my boys at home. I could definitely handle that. Random thoughts for Monday, right? How was your weekend? Do anything special? We spent most of the weekend moving my mom (she just bought a new house) and moving some our furniture back in from the sunroom. It was definitely a full weekend.

Have you been catching up on Snapchat? I love snapping and chatting over there (I’m biggerthan3ofus). There’s no pressure for anything to be pretty – it’s just real life. Anyways, pop over there if you want to see more of us; or more of my crazy, weird personality; or just more of what I’m thinking about and doing. Today though, I want to share a tutorial that I did for eHow. I made a DIY Planter Pot Table Combo for the Patio.

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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my link.

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Landscaping with Rock instead of Mulch

April 18, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 29 Comments

We are still working on the patio spruce-up. Today, we are talking about Landscaping with Rock instead of Mulch. If you missed the first installment of the patio spruce-up, or the DIY Scrap wood rolling planter, make sure to check those out! Or if you want to check out my recent shade garden update – you can find that here. Basically, we are working on sprucing up the patio over the next month or so… on a serious budget! So, let’s chat about our decision for using rocks instead of mulch and what that entailed.

Replacing Mulch With Rock

Two years ago, we spruced up the patio with mulch. Actually, we spruced up all our flower beds with mulch. They all looked great and the patio was no exception. But, at over $600 in mulch to get all the areas looking nice, it was just too much. It would have been ok if that $600 lasted a few years, but really the mulch in our area needs to be done yearly. We have tons of trees on our property and on the property all around us. So, between the branches and leaves that constantly fall, we are out there with a leaf blower trying to keep the spaces cleared. Well, the leaf blower not only takes care of the leaves but it also moves the mulch around. So, about six months after we put in all that mulch – it went to looking pretty bad.

Some areas in our yard can look more ‘organic’ or less manicured. The patio area definitely pulls traditional and needs the mulch areas to look nice.

Luke and I finally came to the realization that we just couldn’t keep up with all the flower bed areas and we had to start making some changes. One of the changes we made was to replace all the mulch around the patio with river rocks and possibly all the flower beds with rocks instead of mulch.

My step-brother and I started landscaping with rocks instead of mulch last fall and it’s been working well for us. I wanted to wait a bit to share because I wanted to give my honest opinion on the mulch vs rock look. I felt like I really needed to see how the river rock looked over time before reporting back in on the mulch vs rock around our patio.

Using Rocks Instead of Mulch How-To

The first thing we did was to rip out all the old plants. The plants looked ok in the photo above but two of them were dead and only two had flowered (when they were all the same type of plant to begin with). So, we ripped those out and then started raking off the excess mulch.

Next, we put down weed barrier.

Every twelve inches or so, I would hammer in these landscaping pins to keep the weed barrier in place.

Then, I’d cut a hole in the weed barrier and dig my holes for the plants. This might seem like a lot of work but since I was replacing the mulch around the patio anyways, I wanted to do it right!

I placed my plants in the holes and tucked some dirt in around them. Then, we hauled in lots of river rock.

The landscape area around our patio is pretty large. I think it took about 20 bags of river rock. The total for this project came to around $175.

In hindsight, it would have been cheaper to grab river rock by the truckload instead of the bags. I was just eye-balling the bags and we used way more than I expected to use.

Here’s the after:

So, do we love it? Yes and no! I love the ease of maintaining it. We can use the leaf blower for just a few minutes and it looks great. The rocks stay in place and I don’t have to worry about them.

Overall, I don’t love it quite as much as fresh mulch. I think there’s something really homey about fresh mulch that you can’t quite get with the rocks. However, as soon as fresh mulch starts looking not so fresh then I definitely don’t love that either. I do think once my plants grow to be a bit bigger, it will feel homier.

Overall, we are definitely glad we chose to landscape with the rocks instead of the mulch. It has helped the patio stay cleaner and more put together and, in the long-run, it will be much cheaper. If you want to see more of our patio, then make sure to check out our home tour!

What do you think of the whole rock vs mulch situation? Would you ever consider using rocks instead of mulch or do you love the fresh mulch look?

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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my link.

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Tips for Creating a Shade Lover’s Garden with Monrovia Plants

April 11, 2016 by Ashley Mayes 4 Comments

We are taking a quick break from sprucing up the patio this week. I still have a few things that I want to share with you guys out in the back but I wanted to jump right in on planting season first. Now, that it’s warmed up a bit in April we are so excited to get a bit more interest in our yard. Today, let’s jump to the front yard where we focused our attention over the weekend. We live in a unique area and most of our yard is pretty shady. We kinda have a wetland area on one side of our yard but it’s interesting because it’s also on a slope. So today I want to chat with you about Monrovia plants and, specifically, focus on Tips for Creating a Shade Lover’s Garden with Monrovia Plants.

You might think I’m crazy to say this, but I had NO idea that there were plants meant for shade, plants meant for sun, plants that liked wet areas or plants that liked drought. Seriously, when we first moved into this house – all of that was new to us. Over the past few years, we have started to figure out what plants work well in our zone (we are zone 6 here in Missouri) an which plants work for what areas within our yard.

Besides not knowing about our zone or what types of plants work well in our yard, we were just picking plants based on size and price. We had no idea that the quality of your plant would matter. We have had so many plants not make it due to all of these reasons.

You can be assured that when you buy a Monrovia plant, you are buying a high-quality, healthy plant from a trusted grower. Everything from the fun plant varieties to the custom-blended soil – it’s all well thought out and lots of work has gone into creating a long-lasting beautiful plant.

Now that Luke and I are better educated on what types of plants to buy, we’ve definitely had more fun with gardening and sprucing up areas. This time around, we decided to just focus on one small area in the ‘wetland’ part of our yard.

It’s a bit hard to see but right above the rock bed (on the bottom of the picture) is a small flower bed that’s completely overgrown. I say small, but it’s about 4ft by 12ft.

The first thing we did was head to our local garden center that has Monrovia plants. You can locate your closest garden center here. Monrovia plants are available at local garden centers as well as Lowe’s across the country.

I knew that I wanted perennials and I knew that I wanted a bit of color. I found this Winter Jewels’ Amethyst Gem Lenten Rose and totally fell in love.

I love the look of ferns so I picked up a gorgeous fern as well.

To prepare the area, we raked out the random sticks and mulch. Once we had the area clear, we dug up random weeds and green onions (those suckers grow like crazy over there).

Next we rolled out some landscape weed barrier.

Luke rolled out the landscape barrier and placed it under the rocks.

I grabbed our beautiful, outdoor hammer (LOL!) and hammered in the staples around all the edges.

Within the cleared space, we cut a hole in the landscape barrier where we wanted our plants to be and dug larger holes.

*Tip: Each plant comes with care instructions that tell you how large the plant will be, when to water and how to plant it. We followed the directions on each plant.

It looks a bit sunny in this next picture because the leaves haven’t filled in yet. Soon though, this will be a lush-green area.

After watering the two plants, we spread mulch back over the area.

Gardening and maintaining healthy and aesthetically pleasing green spaces can be quite easy if you follow a few basic principles. Monrovia is available to help provide you with healthy plants and growing tips.

I can’t wait to see these two plants thrive.

Have you planted anything this year? What are your thoughts about your garden?

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my link.

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Summer Patio Reveal

How To Make a Tightrope for Your Kids

DIY Planter Pot Table Combo for the Patio

Landscaping with Rock instead of Mulch

Replacing Mulch With Rock

Using Rocks Instead of Mulch How-To

Tips for Creating a Shade Lover’s Garden with Monrovia Plants

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