We were recently invited by Ace Hardware to be a part of their first ever Ace Blogger Panel. It’s exciting and new and the reason for my trip to Chicago (their headquarters) a few weeks ago. Ace’s whole goal is to create a hardware store experience that makes you feel like you’re getting help from your neighbor. It’s sweet and, in our case, couldn’t be closer to the truth. Since moving to our new town of about 26,000 people (a lot smaller than any other place I’ve ever lived), it feels like everyone is our neighbor, including the people running our Ace Hardware–the only hardware store within 30 miles.We’ll be tackling a lot of projects (at our place and elsewhere!) over the next few months with their help and a few perks tossed in for you all, too. The first project we chose to tackle was an outdoor one–the last one of the season? You may remember in this post we referenced our mistake of not keeping up with the exterior of our last house and how we weren’t going to do that again. Since moving in, we’ve kept up on trimming and mowing, but we didn’t want the season to end without putting the lawn to rest the right way to hopefully insure a lush lawn in the spring. The best time to begin to winterize your yard is in the fall after most visible grass growth has stopped but before freezing temperatures have set in–end of October to the beginning of November around here.

First, we raked the thick piles of leaves up. Some leaves left behind to mulch into your grass on your last mow of the season is actually a good idea. You just want to make sure they aren’t matted into the grass or blocking sunlight.