This is our home, the exterior of it anyway. This home is our work in progress. A little mid-century modern gem in the heart of Central Phoenix. We found it by chance as it was the last house we looked at on our home buying journey. We all fell in love with it; the midcentury modern exterior, the fresh modern interior and the backyard, oh that backyard. It is small and cozy and it is home, for now. It is our stepping stone, a pit stop in time and a fun little project for all of us. There is so much to show you… The interior, the backyard… we’ve made it our own and yet there is still so much to do. This past weekend we took extra strides in tackling the front yard.

When we purchased the home there was no privacy. Simply western sun baking our front windows in the afternoon and limited curb appeal. I showed you here and shared our inspiration. We have slowly been making progress on what we have envisioned. We have also taken our inspiration and made it our own. We built a cinderblock wall to create shade in front of our large picture window. We also added small cinderblock walls with trellises in front of bedroom windows. Shade during our Arizona summers is essential and there is no harm in added curb appeal.

The trellises were missing something. We talked about vines. We batted around the idea of art. We searched for planter boxes. I wanted succulents. The Mr liked the idea of cacti. In the end I started getting inspiration last month when all of the summer catalogs landed on our door step. CB2 carried this simple, modern oscar rectangular planter boxes. The Mr and I both immediately agreed these were the ones. This is what we would adorn our trellises with in order to create depth and add color.

On Saturday we took the gang to our local nursery and we scouted beauties. I still really wanted succulents. Succulents may be my new favorite plants of all time. However, succulents cannot stand direct sunlight. The professionals lead us to a section of pretty little things. The girls and I quickly picked out some beauties. We decided that each planter box would contain different plants to create color and depth. We picked up three different celosia to fill four of our six planter boxes. The other two would be filled with ipomoea. Red. Green. Orange. Magenta. It’s a beautiful little display. All the girls contributed. Filling planter boxes with potting soil, digging proper holes to place the flower bulbs in. The family contribution was complete.

There is still a bit more to do. We must update our mailbox, it’s just blech right now. We would like to add depth in front of the larger cinderblock wall with planters, a gabion bench or simple planted deer grass. And we are planning on adding large planters behind the cinderblock wall so that when we look out our large picture window there is beauty to be seen. The railroad ties lining our front walk need to be anchored. The agave that was originally planted was planted wrong and therefore needs to be replanted or replaced with something different to line the walk. And we would like to add some type of liner to differentiate between our and our neighbors yard in order to prevent the grass from growing into our rocks.

But, y’all, we’re making progress and it feels so good. In my humble opinion it also looks good.