Pining for the Fjords

On last week's blog post, I mentioned that I needed to share pictures of the inside of the house, but I was waiting to clean it first, so I could take nice shots.  That finally happened (it has been raining on and off for the past few days, so the muddy dog prints finally got to me), so behold:  before and after shots of the new digs! I know I shared the before shots in this post, but I wanted to put them in here again, just for the sake of comparison. First up, the kitchen.  While the majority of the kitchen remained the same (we want to replace the cabinets one day - we like the style, but they're starting to show normal wear and tear - that's in the far off future), we did paint the large wall that the sink shares with the front door. The before - the kitchen upon our move in The after - we added some personality, mainly in the form of fridge magnets You can see how, in the shot above, we painted this large wall a turquoise kind of color with

Hey everybody!  So we've officially lived in the Long Beach house for almost 90 days now, and while the inside is all done (yes, I'll do a blog on that eventually, but that'll have to wait until I dust the place and clean all the dog slime off everything to take pictures), we're still hard at work on the outside.  You'll see that I've titled this blog post Part 1 of X, as I really have no idea how many of these we'll end up doing... Anywhoo, the front yard is great - it was already designed when we moved in, and other than adding a few herbs (basil, rosemary, and cilantro) and pulling out a few plants that were overcrowded/dying, we haven't done much there. Here's the official Zillow shot of the front. Decomposed granite landscaping with tall hedges and palo verde trees. All low irrigation, which is awesome. Some shots from the front steps: Agave plants with lavender Itty bitty basil in the front row with more succulen