Painting the old bench

Ever see things on pinterest and get motivated to do something?  Then have a huge fail in making it look like you saw on pinterest?  That's what this post is about.

We have an old nasty bench in our backyard.  I don't know when it was built, I imagine from the first owners (we're the third), but nothing much has been done with it.  While I would like to spend $600 on a really cool one I saw on One Kings Lane, I don't really think that's in our budget anytime soon.  Man I want everything on that site.

Yep, nothing pretty.  don't mind my ghetto hay as I weed the back area.  It's a jungle out there, I'm in the process of getting it weeded and mulched.

I hate this bench.  I really wanted to break it down and get a nice iron one, but then I saw some cool ideas on pinterest.  So I bought some paint.  and painted the whole thing.  I originally painted it all white, but thought that was a little bright.  I used the below paint from Sherwin Williams in marshmallow (or something like that).

I used my cricut to cut out the word Welcome and glued it down so I could get a stencil - like  i saw on pinterest  hahahah....FAIL.   That didn't work out so well.  

So I made a few touch ups.

And now it's not perfect, but it's much nicer.

Clematis Josephine

Our backyard is mostly shaded.  I have two spots I wanted a climbing vine that flowers and everyone I asked thought a Clematis would be the best option.

When we went to the nursery by our house, I went down the line of Clematis' trying to figure out which color I wanted.  Then the last one I saw, was a variety called Josephine - my daughter's name!  It was a sign to get that one!  So now we have two Clematis Josephine's in our yard.  They've already grown quite a bit, maybe it's the fertilizer.  Hopefully they get enough sun to bloom a bit next year!

First location on the side of the house.  Gets more sun than the other spot, but not full sun for sure!  Here's hoping!

 The back.  Doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight, just a little bit.  The hydrangeas love it, so hopefully the clematis will too.

The plant was about half this size when I bought it, it's grown quite a bit in a week!

 Look at them wrapping around the trellis!

Update:

In a few short weeks, check out the growth my clematis has had, as well as the new flowers on it!  Too bad it's not 63 degrees out.  Hopefully it doesn't freeze and kill them. Should probably look up how to care for it....