Flower Shots

I'm going to make this post, short and sweet. These are pictures from my patio. No patio make-over shots yet, but we are so close to completion, so they will be here soon. For now, enjoy the sights on my patio!

We picked this new succulent for our shelf.

 Another colorful succulent for our shelf.

 This is on my patio table.

 I was messing around here! I took a succulent and put it under my table.

Almost done!

The patio project is almost complete! On Friday, Audrey and I hit up the local home/garden store one last time and then went over to her house so she could show me how to plant my boxes. Audrey is a great teacher! She had my thumbs green by the time I left her house!

After picking up the boys from school, I went out into the garage to work on my plant shelf. Audrey gave me this very shabby chic leaf shelf. It was originally white, but had weathered from being outside. I was going to paint it a tropical blue color. I wanted a color that would pop on my beige patio, but that would also compliment the succulents that will be placed on it. After two coats, it was complete and I absolutely LOVED the color. It was exactly what I wanted.

So now came the fun part of putting everything in its place. The shelf with the succulents fit perfectly in its spot. It adds so much color and life to a dull patio. My boxes are up on the ledge of the patio, a star jasmine is on the floor to distract from the ugly AC unit, and I have a pretty tropical plant on the table. My Friday garden day was complete!

Here are some pictures that I got from Audrey's backyard:

This is my Freesia. It finally opened the day we went to plant it!

New Additions

This morning, after dropping my youngest off at school, and a Starbuck's visit with the ladies, I came home to find a bunch of new succulent plants for my patio! Audrey's husband Robert dropped them off, along with a very shabby chic shelf unit to put them on. I absolutely love them! Each one is so unique and they will definitely add life to my dull patio.
Speaking of the patio, we are going to plant my boxes tomorrow! Once we get them done, I will hang them, and then all we will need are some festive lights and some art, and the whole transformation will be complete. I will definitely post before and after pictures once we are all done!
But for now, I will leave you with some pictures of my new additions!

 This isn't a new addition, but I did want to share that my bud is beginning to bloom on my Freesia.

 This teeny flower is growing from one of the plants. I used a macro filter to get in close.

 I love this plant. It looks like I have a little person living in this pot!

On last thing, I need to give a HUGE thank you to my friend Sam for passing on her macro lens filters to me. I love them!

Flower Power

So wow, what a difference a day makes! We had a beautiful, warm weekend, and yet Monday is full of gloom and mist. That's alright though because I got together with my friend Audrey and we went flower shopping! Flowers can brighten any day!

We are moving along on the patio project and today I picked up some new additions. We will do all the planting on Friday, so by this weekend, my patio should be all decked out!

In the meantime, I brought along my camera on our shopping trip. I never realized that the local home/garden store would be a good place to get pictures. I always went looking at the park and on trails. What was I thinking! Here are some shots I got today:

I also want to share some pictures I did get yesterday at the park:

I finally got a good bee shot!

So with all these flowers to look at, today's gloom couldn't get me down! Now the construction on the street outside where we live, now that is a whole other story!!

Cruising The Harbor

I don't know how many people follow Groupon, but I do! A friend of mine got me hooked on it and I have been following ever since. I finally made my first purchase last month and since we had BEAUTIFUL weather yesterday (83 degrees), we put it to use!  The Groupon was for a hour long boat rental in the harbor off Newport Beach/Balboa. I bought two, so we were able to combine them and be out for two hours.

We headed down a little earlier than our reservation as we knew the parking was going to be tough. With the weather this nice, it means the beaches get packed. Sure enough, we got one of the last few spots available at the beach.

We checked in at the booth and within 5 minutes, we were taken down to our boat. It was a small 4 seater, but perfect for our family of 4. With this Groupon, we could have upgraded to a bigger boat, but for today, this one was perfect. (In the future, if this comes up again, we will definitely buy again and do the upgrade and bring friends with us!) We were given a map of the harbor and told were we could/could not go, and off we went. It was so nice. The weather was perfect, the ride was perfect, and the scenery was perfect. We couldn't have asked for a better day! To top it off, we even got to see a few sea lions swimming along side of us as well as a pair of dolphins. Like I said before, it was PERFECT!!!!!

So here are some pictures from our day:

Captain Dan:

The Harbor:

Unfortunately, the dolphins wouldn't sit still for me, but I did get a glimpse of them:

I took this one for my Stepmom as she use to work for OCC:

The Wild Goose was John Wayne's old boat and my Father In-law headed up refurbishing this boat in the 90s.

 
Another shot of the Wild Goose. Before John Wayne owned it, it was a WWII minesweeper.

My little dude got to take the wheel:

This sea lion wouldn't stop and pose for me either!

My little dude up on the pier after our ride:

Green Thumb

I'm so excited! We are about to turn our bland and boring patio into a beautiful place to relax! With the help of a great friend, who is also a designer, we are going to bring it all to life!!!

Our first step was cleaning it off and getting it all ready for our new bistro set. We found a really nice one at Home Depot and have already enjoyed sitting at in the mornings with our coffee, and in the evenings with our tasty beverages!

Step two started today. My great friend Audrey came over and checked out our patio. She measured to see how much room we had to work with and offered up her ideas. She knows that we want flowers that have a beautiful fragrance, as well as fillers for look. I really want eye catching stuff that I can photograph! (Yep, I'm always thinking with my camera!)

So after seeing her photo boards, with her ideas of great flowers that will do good in our CA climate, we drove across the street to check out some flowers.  I am really clueless when it comes to what to plant. I love photographing flowers, but I have never grown any. She was really great at pointing out how to pick flowers. She is a HUGE help! No big purchases yet but the wheels are sure spinning!

I did make my first green purchase though!! My husband and I both love the smell of Gardenia, but our small patio doesn't make for much room to have a big Gardenia bush. Luckily though, on our way out, she spotted these small Gardenia's that would be perfect on our patio. She found one with 3 buds and said that was the one to buy. So I did! I have it sitting on our bistro table at the moment. It will soon be joined by many beautiful flowers and set inside a window box that we will strap to the railing on our balcony. I am so excited and can't wait for the day when we have color and fragrance out on our patio!

So here is my new baby that I must nurture, so it will grow:

Oh yeah, did I mention how great Audrey is?! Well she is the BEST and I am so thankful to have her in my life!!!

Playing Around

Nothing much exciting going on this week. We are back into the school grind and I have been laying low at home. I did want to get out my camera and take a few more shots of my flowers before they leave. They are so pretty and I have LOVED having them on my kitchen bar, smiling at me every day.

I brought a few of them out and played around with reflections again. I put up my make-shift set and started shooting. Here are some of my faves:

This one I played around with in PSE. The flower is good, but I don't like how you can see my seam.

Another one that I put a border around in PSE:

I really like this one! It's my favorite:

I'm so glad that today is Thursday! Bring on the weekend! We have rented a boat to take out on the harbor for 2 hours on Saturday. The weather is supposed to be beautiful and warm! You know I will have my camera with me!!!