Landscaping: Before & After

As promised, I am here with before and after pictures of our biggest landscaping project to date. When we purchased the house almost a year ago, the landscaping was pretty crummy to say the least. We spent hours last summer digging out ugly plants and working through the mess. We also planted about a hundred bulbs in the fall. I LOVED early spring when our bulbs were blooming. Afterward though? Notsomuch.

It was time for change!

Here is the before shot:

And the after:

Better, yes? We certainly think so!

We starting by digging up all the bulbs and storing them to be replanted next year. It was a job, let me tell you. I was quite sore the next day! After completing that it was time to weed and weed and weed...we had a lot of weeds! During this time we were researching our options for a raised bed and decided to go with the retaining wall option. This form of bed was a little more difficult and much heavier; thus it should last longer and be easier to maintain in the long run. Plus, it's pretty!

Next came the time to dig trenches, place the stones, and then place more stones on top of those stones. Our initial plan was to do two rows, but quickly we decided we needed to do 3-so, back to Menards we went! We also caulked the stones as sort of a way to seal them together. Stephen informed me that this was an important step and would prevent falling and crumbling. Next we laid weed blocking landscape material, mulch for drainage and lots of topsoil. When I say lots, I mean LOTS. About 1200 pounds actually.

Here are some during photos:

Then it was time to plant! This was the exciting part for me because you could see the project coming together and the beauty it would add to our house. I am all about the curb appeal, so this was perfect! We planted  such beautiful flowers and I plan on adding more too. It's going to be perfect for years to come!

We also spruced up a smaller flower bed near our back walk. It's pretty amazing the difference fresh mulch and a couple plants will make. I was really impressed!

And that's all for this project. We are working on some other landscaping projects now though, so I am sure you will get updates about those eventually!

What about you, have you ever re-vamped your landscaping? How did you do it?

Weekend Wrap-Up!

Happy Monday, friends! Why does it always feel like the weekends just fly by? I don't know if we will ever understand it, but they certainly do just fly by! We had a busy weekend full of shopping, gardening, playing with Louie, softball games and Mother's Day!

Friday we spent our evening laying landscaping material in the big project we were working on that I might have mentioned last week. We had planned on cooking dinner-like it was typed into our meal plan and posted on the fridge. Instead we decided to try a new to us pizza place; Portside. Well, apparently when I called in our order I called it into the wrong location so I ended up going to pick up our pizza twice. Let me tell you...I felt so silly walking in there to pick up our pizza and them not having it. Umm, hello blonde moment! After another 30 minutes I did successfully pick up a delicious deep dish, Chicago style cheese and pepperoni pizza. We loved it!

After dinner we decided since it was such a nice night that we would go ahead and make a trip for the mulch needed for our project. It was such a nice blue jeans, windows down, lightening bugs kind of night. We purchased 15 bags of mulch and quite a bit of greenery, too. It was a successful and fun Friday night!

Saturday was a busy and hard work day! We started out like this:

Louie and the plants we purchased Friday night. Cute right!?

We drove to Rochester, IN to pick up soil and flowers. This was the part of the project I was most excited about because I love, love, LOVE flowers and greenhouses! We spent most of the morning running around and picking up 15 bags of soil and flowers from at least 3 different locations. Then we we back home!

We dumped the mulch:

...and then we started dumping and spreading the soil. It turned out that we totally underestimated the amount of soil we would need. By a lot! So back in the car we went-Louie included! We picked up another 700 pounds of soil and stopped at McDonald's for a sweet treat (have you had the new cheery berry chiller? Amazing!) before heading back home to finish up this project!

I will say...I was ready to be finished!

We got home, unloaded, spread and started planting:

Above: Louie loved playing in the soil. I thought it was so cute-he would dig and lay down then dig some more. He was already getting a bath Saturday night anyways, so we just let him have fun! :)

Below: He also thought it would be fun to eat the flowers. Yes, eat them. He is such a silly dog! We were laughing out loud at his antics! Too funny!

That wraps up our Saturday. I will post before and the final after of the big project tomorrow-so check back!

Sunday we went to church matching, although that was not planned at all:

We left church early because I had a low blood sugar (42) and we needed to leave to make it to Kokomo in time for our oldest niece's championship softball tourney game. It was so much fun!! Here are some pictures from the game:

After the game (they won!) we went to Chili's for dinner with Stephen's Mom & Dad, Sister and her family. It was a great afternoon to spent at the ballpark and we really enjoyed our time! Plus we got to see Stephen's mom on Mother's Day! Win, Win!

Driving home we saw the sunsetting, which was beautiful! I wish I had snapped a picture earlier, but I do love a hit pink sun in the sky!

The End.

Randoms-Louie, Cupcakes and Landscaping

I know, I know...I have kind of disappeared from blogging...AGAIN. My excuse is the same as it always is...life just gets really busy sometimes and since blogging isn't my top priority it usually is the first thing to get dropped. It is what it is. BUT, I'm here today! :)

Warning: this post contains a lot of Louie pictures. I can't say I am sorry about this because we just think he is so darn cute and lovable! But if you are tired of seeing our furry child then maybe you should just come back another week! Otherwise, sit back, grab a cup of coffee and stay awhile!

Louie has been so cute and playful this week. Last week we were dealing with a stomach bug that had us up at all hours of the night cleaning our carpets-fun, right? Thankfully he is on meds now and must be feeling better because he has been acting more and more like himself. We are so thankful to see him behaving normal and with his tail wagging. I love it!

Last weekend my mother-in-law, Bev hosted a Mary-Kay party and has asked me to make cupcakes. Of course I said that was no problem! They were moist with lots of pretty pink frosting-perfect for a girlie make-up party! We even had left overs, which I think Stephen ate the last one last night.

Speaking of cupcakes, I am trying to work on photographing my cupcakes with my new Canon Rebel and its been a little difficult. I can't seem to find the right natural light for picture taking...it's either too light or to dark. Any tips/suggestions out there?

This is totally random, but on the way to the above mentioned Mary-Kay party we drove through a little town that I have always admired because of it's mill. Stephen was nice enough to slow down to 10MPH so I could snap a picture. He didn't want to stop on the road, so 10 was the agreed upon mileage, ha! Isn't it quaint and pretty? They do tours on Saturday mornings and I hope to go one day...maybe soon?

Louie has so much fun when we are outside. He runs and plays and just lays around. I think that he really enjoys it. That is until our neighbors dog, Emily comes over (yes, our neighbor has a dog named Emily...yes, its a little awkward)...and when she does come over Louie will hide under a tree or in the bushes. It's quite funny! Well, he got to spend a lot of time outside this weekend while we worked on a big landscaping project...to be revealed later!

One hint about the project: the materials weigh about a ton combined!

Do you love flowers as much as I do? I love how they can brighten a space and make even a ugly house cheerful. I picked up these hanging baskets at Wal-Mart for $3! Talk about being thrilled with that find! We just love how they look hanging on our front lamp post. Spruces it up wouldn't you say?

And lastly, the before shot of our front flower bed. You will have to wait and see the after...because we are still working on it. This project is a multiple day project, ha! I CANNOT wait to have it finished and see how pretty it is!

Have a happy Thursday everyone...I am so happy the week is almost over!