Backyard Beautification: Part Three

 

Wow, I'm on a roll with these posts lately huh?!?  Awesome!  Ok so to continue with the backyard patio project.   

 

Yay!  The last of the gravel is in the back!  Finally.  Three yards of gravel is kind of a lot. 

 

 

Cheetah Boy helping level the gravel with his bulldozer.  Awesome job!  You are being SO helpful!  Although, perhaps not as helpful as you think.  But I am glad you are having fun! :) 

 

 

So, fast forward a couple days until I had all the stepping stones laid out.  well not all, but most of them.  So I THOUGHT that I would just lay them out and be good.  They didn't all have to match and be even, like this.  Well not exactly like this, as they would all be there, but see not even. 

 

 

But I only thought this because I forgot I was crazy for a little bit.  Of course I would need them to be even.  (Sigh)  Looks like more work for The Super Mommy.  So I got some old wood that came from something Doggie chewed up.  (Don't worry about it Grumpy.)  As it turned out, they worked perfectly for spacers.  See.

 

Little Miss, why did you decide you needed to dig RIGHT WHERE I WAS WORKING???  Oh yeah, cause that's right where I was working. 

 

And then she decided to walk on the stones I just spaced out.  I had to remind myself that she weighs less than the stones, so she probably wouldn't be able to move them and mess up the spacing.  However, I started putting some gravel in between to help hold them there. 

 

Looking pretty good eh?  We got this like sand/cement type stuff that will go in the gaps and then you just need to lightly spray it down and it will harden.  It sounded easier than cement.  But I don't really know. 

 

 

So it turns out making a patio, when you are crazy and need it all to line up perfectly, and you are trying to do this with a little one walking all over it, is hard work.  And can seem impossible.  So after I did the above, I was feeling like this.

 

 

But then that Little Miss had to come give me a hug. 

 

Ok, maybe I should just wait until Grumpy isn't at work, and I can devote all my time and attention on this project. 

 

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!"

 

Until next time!!!

 

Kisses~

 

Has anyone used that sand/cement stuff you spray?  And would cement just be easier?!?

Backyard Beautification: Part Two

I just love switching projects around on you!  I can't seem to stick with one all the way through until I finish it.  I always have to start another one.  I just have to keep myself busy I guess!  So where did I leave off with the backyard?  Oh yes, HERE.

Well I finished putting up all the lattice around the bottom of the deck and built the fence for Doggie.  Poor Doggie.  I'm sorry that Grumpy hates you to much. 

 

But see all this mud still?!?!

 

 

So much mud!  Everywhere.  I hate it.  The children LOVE it of course, but I hate it, and so does my washing machine.  Its pores are all clogged up from mud!!

 

Oh wait, look!!  Here is some grass growing over on the side yard!  Can you see it in this picture?  I don't have my glasses on.  I feel like you can, but I'm not sure.  I think I took this one when it first started to grow.  And this is over on the side, not in the place of the two earlier mud pictures... although this spot was MORE MUD. 

 

Ok, I got majorly sidetracked there.  Back to the larger mud pit.  I will be making a patio on half of it and half will be bark chips.  (Child safe ones).  We are using these reddish stepping stones for the patio.  This is just some of them. well I think there are 40 here, however we have to get about 200 of them.  Well no like 150 maybe.  I don't know a lot.  And they are like 25 pounds each!   

 

But before we put the stones down, we need gravel down.  That mud pit does NOT drain.  Well our whole yard does not drain well.  It is very annoying.  But I don't want water pits on my new patio, so I read up on it and thought about it and came up with gravel under for the solution.  It turns out this is really what you are supposed to do though for drainage, so I didn't just make it up. 

 

Anyway, we got three yards of gravel.  And we started slowly taking it to the back.  In this picture I know it looks like the wheelbarrow is not totally full, but WOW it is HEAVY.  Who knew that gravel, well rock, would be heavy?!  I didn't!  So yeah, i'm getting a work out for sure.  Grumpy has been helping.  (He has maybe done about oh 1/8 of as much as I have of course, but he has done some.)  I'm kidding he has been working hard too. 

 

I had to lay some out so that I would see what it is going to look like.  This isn't close to being done, but just an idea.  And this picture is really weird because I took it straight down from up on the deck.  But it is making me dizzy looking at it.  Maybe cause I don't have my glasses one.  (Oh yeah, I didn't tell you.  Little Miss broke my glasses!  I have been warring my contacts, but I took them out for the night already.) 

 

So yes, it is going to look gooooooooooood!   

 

Alright.  That is it for now!  There is more to come though, so stay tuned!!!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

Kisses~

 

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Front Yard: Part Three (I think)

Hello.

Do you even remember who I am?  I don't.  Let me remind you.  I'm that hilarious blogger you just LOVE.  Here is my first post to help refresh your memory, or if you have recently joined this program, to let you know a little about me and my blog!!

Anyway, because of the lovely weather we have been having, well not today obviously, but recently, I have started a few new outside projects!!  However, this post I will be describing some of the projects happening in the front yard.  If you remember, this is where we started with the ugly front yard.  Or there is this one too.  So we have already done a lot of work in the front.  But I want to do more.  It still needs to be pretty-ed up!  So let's see if I can find some current pictures so show you what new project I am working on.

Well here is the products we will be using anyway!!  ROcks, and rocks and more rocks!!

 

This isn't a totally before picture, but we will just skip ahead a little so you don't get too bored.  If you would notice on the right there is a wall/border deal.  Well it doesn't go all the way to the fence, however for a more polished look I want it to.  We did already get some new bark chips, as you can see, however we will get more to fill it all in after the wall is finished.  And in this picture we did already start with the rock wall.  That would be the rocks on the left side.  They look a little different than the other rocks, but I think it will look good. 

 

Those rocks were f'ing HEAVY.  Eh!  Heavy, heavy!!  I kept having to yell at Grumpy to lift with his knees, but he doesn't always listen well.  And I totally carried way more heavy rocks than he did.  Just saying. 

 

This rock below we named Big Pointy.  Grumpy was angry and felt that it didn't go, however as you will see with the after pictures it all worked out just fine.  I also had to keep reminding him just to do as I say and trust it would all work out.  He isn't creative in the least, and he can't "visualize" things unless he actually sees them so he kept getting all worried.  I had to remind him several times that I'm in charge, and just do as your told and don't worry about it. 

 

You can kind of see in the below picture that there is gravel behind the rocks here, just to help get them in place and drainage/no weeds growing or whatever else.  I don't know how to do this, but it seems to be working!!

 

 

So it is looking pretty good huh??  I can't wait until it is all done!  It will look splendid!!!!

 

Oh and the Super-Mommy is back.  Peace.  Out. 

 

Kisses~

Backyard Beautification: Part One

So now that we have our new lovely deck!  We need to clean up the huge mess that is our backyard.  We need to plant grass in the huge mud mess where there used to be this weird wooden patio deal.  I didn't take a before picture apparently, but you will see the muck as we go on.  So first I had to go to Home Depot for supplies.  Oh wait I am getting ahead of my self!

So we need to play grass, but as you know we have Doggie, who will destroy any grass we plant, so FIRST we need to fence off part of the yard that will be JUST for Doggie, it will be nice because then anytime we are not out with her, she will be in her place, so hopefully will just poop there instead of all over our yard.... So I wanted to fence off the lower part of the yard, and then I had this plan to also put up lattice so then she will have the area under the lower deck, where I don't really want children crawling under or anything anyway. 

Ok, back to getting supplies.  I measured out the amount of lattice and fence I needed and was off.  I went by myself and felt all cool and handy getting out these huge pieces of lattice, 8 feet long each, and I had to get 4 of them.  They were on the top shelf, OF COURSE, so I had to like stand on the bottom shelf to get them down.  And I had to put it on this huge flatbed cart deal, which was really hard to steer.  I had several people ask me if I needed help during the whole ordeal, but I said no because I felt they were all just asking because I was a girl, so I got all offended.

Anyway, this is about how I felt after.

 

Yup, pretty cool.  Then I placed all the supplies in the back.  Se this is the end of the yard being fenced off.  Not this WHOLE part, just the end of it. 

 

Side note:  as I am typing this Little Miss just figured out how to say "Kitty car, meeowww" and she is saying it over and over again.  Pretty f'ing cute.

 

Ok so here is the deck, and you can see a bunch of mud.  Kind of,  The lighting is weird because it was like in the afternoon so the sun is hitting it weird.

 

MUD MUD MUD.  We need grass!  But here this is what is used to look like.  Yeah, huge difference.

 

So I laid all the lattice out and measured to figure out the sizes I needed.

 

Grumpy kindly offered to cut them for me.  (I needed to make him feel useful somehow, obviously I could have sawed them....)

 

 

Ta-da!!  There is some of it.  Oh wait, that is before I actually put it up, that is just all the pieces cut.

 

There we go, that's better.  So see all the mud!!!  And this is before Grumpy cut some parts around the posts so it is a little bent here. 

 

This is what I looked like after.  Oh and I forgot to mention it was close to freezing out during this time, so my knees were like numb.

 

I got mud in my pretty fake nails!  Probably was a bad idea to get nails on right before this project.... as you can see my thumb one fell off.  (sad face)

 

So there you have it.  Well the first part anyway.  It is getting there!

 

Kisses~

 

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A Year of Homemade Gifts: Part 2

So shortly after I posted that I wanted to make all gifts I gave this coming year, I remembered I had a wedding to go to on January 4th.  And I didn't have anything planned or started or knew what to make!  Here is my journey.

 

Oh Shit.  Why did I agree to this?  (Well I guess agree isn't the write word, why did I decide to do this?) 

 

I had a picture to express my feeling of freak-out here and I even uploaded it and was starting to write; buuuuuuuuuuuuuut I felt that it was an inappropriate angle and might have shown a little bit too much of me....  Sorry guys.

 

But then I had an idea!

I remembered this pattern from a really awesome book I have.  And I had just the fabric!

 

Cut, cutting away!

 

I messed up and had to take out some stiches.  Super annoying.

 

Cheetah Boy and Little Miss busy playing while I was working.

 

So, turns out the walking foot is a lot easier to use while quilting things!  I hadn't used it before, but I tried it out with this project.  And it worked great!

 

And, ta da!!  Do you know what it is?  I showed them to Grumpy and he was like "Umm.  What is it?"  Great.  They are little individual picnic mats with pockets for your stuff.  Because you know when you get married you have to share EVERYTHING, so I knew they wouldn't want to share a picnic blanket for goodness sake!  Come on people, you need a little space!  Ok I wouldn't know, Grumpy won't marry me.... but that's another story. 

 

I thought it was pretty cool!  I hope they liked it.  I put in the paper plates, silverware and napkins to try to show them a little better what is was.  I had left over ones from our star wars party.  Yes, they probably would have preferred cash.... well I don't know, they are pretty awesome and I think they would appreciate a home made gift.

 

Here it is all wrapped up and pretty!

 

So not too bad!  I made the gift.

 

However, then I was invited SUPER LATE NOTICE to a 7 year olds birthday party... which was the 3rd.  And well I didn't come up with anything for him, so I just purchased his gifts.  HOWEVER, I got him craft supply stuff, so at least that is kind of in line with my vision. 

 

Score so far.  50% homemade gifts for the year.  Yikes.  I better get making more gifts!!

 

Thanks for visiting!

 

Kisses~

 

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Happy New Years! With the Best Party Ever!

Happy New Year!!  I hope you had a wonderful evening last night and day today; and didn't party too hard! 

What did I do?  Yeah, I had a Star Wars marathon party.  The plan was to watch all 6 movies, but we only got through Empire Strikes Back before midnight because we started a little late.  But it was still fun!  Here are a few pictures.

Oh wait, before the actual party pictures, first my rant.  SO, the night before my folks took the kiddos for the night, which was AWESOME, and I was able to sleep in a little!  But then I was stressing wanting to get everything ready for the party.  I know, I know, it was just my folks and brother coming over but still when it comes to people coming to my house I like for it to be clean and everything to be ready or whatever.  So I asked Grumpy if he could take Doggie for a walk,  mostly I wanted him out of my way.  But what does he do instead?  He decides it is the perfect time to take down the christmas tree.  I politely ask him not to because I know it will just make a BIGGER mess that I will have to clean up and I already have a million things to do.  He insists he will deal with it all.  What do you think happened??

 

Yup, huge mess that I had to clean up.  Oh, and he chopped up the tree to fit it in the yard debris deal, and I said "Hey why don't you take the tree out first, it would make less of a mess"  Want to know the reply.  Get ready for it.

 

"But then it will get needles everywhere, if it is in here we can just vacuum it up." 

 

"You are worried about getting needles everywhere OUTSIDE?"

 

"Oh."

 

Yeah.  That happened.  Oh well, it all worked out ok.  I guess I could look at it as he gave me something funny to write about in the blog.  But at the time, so not funny.

 

Love you Grumps.

 

On to the party!!  I made some super fun Star Wars themed items.

 

Some pretzel light sabers.

Light side and dark side chips.

 

Some Yoda soda

 

 

Some tie-fighter balloons.

 

 

I had like a million other cool ideas I was going to do, but I didn't have time, sense I was cleaning up after Grumpy.

 

Grandpa Obi-Mon reading Little Miss a star wars book during the party.

 



 Darth Vader Family!!!

 

 

I'm trying to show you my Leia buns, but my hair isn't that long so it didn't work well, and I couldn't get a good picture.

 

Also, this is a picture of a picture of me when Phantom Menace came out.  I was channeling some serious Darth Maul!!!

 

Yeah,  I love Star Wars.  Like crazy-ness.

 

Happy New Year!!

 

Kisses~

Announcing!!- A Year of Homemade Gifts: Part One

 

New year resolution time!  I know, I know.  You make them and break them.  At least I do, or don't, however you want to put it.  And I have the same ones as usual, eat healthier, exercise more, blah blah blah. 

 

However, THE SUPER-MOMMY is going to try to MAKE gifts this year.  Any birthday, Christmas, baby, wedding, whatever gifts, I will attempt to make instead of buying meaningless STUFF.  However, because I know I probably wont be able to make every, single, little gift, I will give myself some wiggle room.  By the end of the year I hope to have made at least 90% of the gifts I give.    

 

We shall see.  So if you have any awesome ideas, or sites for home made gift ideas, let me know!  Maybe you can write a guest post about it!!  Or if you want to on your blog, you could do the same challenge and post about it as well!  Or however that works. 

Anyway.  Wish me luck!!

Happy 2014!!!

Kisses~

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