Goodbye Dirt Patch, Hello Sod!

We finally have grass in our backyard!!  Woot!

We've been waiting to run into Ahmed Hassan of Yard Crashers at our local Home Improvement stores that we frequently visit, but finally decided after three years, that's probably just not going to happen.  Now that Kalia is here, and her and I love spending time outdoors, that got moved to the top of the to-do list for this summer.  We decided to section out the project because our backyard is pretty big.  I didn't get a before picture, but our backyard is pretty much all the same.  This is the section that we're waiting to redo.  Kodi wanted to say hi and he missed you guys too!  Do you see all of the weeds and dead sections?  Ugh!

First up Chris sprayed round up all over the section we decided to sod to kill all of the existing weeds and little bit of grass that was there.  After we let that sit for the better part of a week, I took the metal rake out there and raked and raked and raked during Kalia's naptimes.  I got about 80% done with it all before Chris came out after work one day to help me out.  He said he didn't know how I didn't make him rent a plow to pull it all up.  It was such hard back breaking work.  It was actually the hardest part though, so thankfully, everything got easier from there.

I might have told Chris that the success of our marriage depending on nightly massages while all of this was going on.  :-)

Chris rented a tiller from Home Depot and tilled up the dirt and few remaining stubborn areas of dead grass/weeds that we couldn't get to come up.

That part was actually easier than I thought it would be.  We rented it for 4 hours, and had it back in plenty of time.  The only problem with the tiller was that he hit the sprinkler pipe in a few places and had to patch some holes.  But after he patched that up, he laid fertilizer, weed killer, and bug killer on our fresh dirt to give the sod a good base to stick to.  Next up, we were ready for sod!

We had the sod guys deliver three pallets of sod on Tuesday of last week.  They didn't show up until after 6, so  we didn't get to start on laying the sod until 730 - after we fed Kalia, ate dinner, and put her down for the night.

Chris removed the fence panels and had the delivery truck just take the sod straight to where we were laying it.  My back loves that man!  So smart!

I have no idea how most people do this, but when we get to an edge or around a tree, we our big tree pruners to cut the sod.

And then we just push it down.  So simple!

We managed to get two pallets laid before it got too dark and we had to call it quits.  Chris rigged our dolly with a piece of plywood across the bottom and we loaded up all of the sod onto the dolly, rolled that over to where we were laying, and just emptied from there.  Again, my back loves that man!  Here's what it looked like before we went to bed (and a picture of Chris's dolly rig):

On Wednesday morning we got up and laid the last pallet of sod before Chris hurried off to work.  Kalia woke up well before the sun rose that day, which was only good because it meant she went back down for her first nap as the sun was rising.  Let me tell ya though, we were not so chipper laying down that 3rd pallet as we were for the first two!  But man, is insta-lawn (that's what I call pallets of sod vs. seeding or plugging!) so nice!

After we got the third pallet laid, we realized that we overkilled / underestimated how much sod we'd need.  I told Chris I wanted to leave a small dirt border around the sod so that we could keep the new stuff away from the weeds and such, but this was a little bit much.  Especially with a Kodi and a Kalia!

So Chris headed down to the sod place (they'll only deliver 2 + pallets for free) and had them put 500 sq feet of sod into his truck.  That thing was weighed down!

After laying that the night before we had to leave for my sisters wedding, we decided that the next big section of the yard isn't getting done until the Fall.  We're actually going to put another 1/2 pallet back here, because we still have more dirt than we'd like with Kodi and Kalia.  We need to resod the sidewalk part of our front yard anyways, so we'll just over load Chris's truck and do them both at the same time shortly.

After all our hard work, here's what our new back yard looks like today :

So much nicer!!  Kalia and I have already thoroughly enjoyed it this week too.  We borrowed one of those big sprinkler things to get a patch wet that looked like the sprinklers weren't hitting, and her and I had a grand 'ol time running through the sprinklers.  Ahhh, to be a kid again.  Life is good!

Hope everyone is having a great week so far!

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Staining the Fence

Wanna know a great way to lose an extra few pounds and your mind at the same time??  No?  No one else wants to go crazy too?  Well, it's a rhetorical question, so I'm gonna tell ya anyways!

Decide the afternoon before one of your best friends is coming in town with her 9 week old baby to restain your entire 400 linear foot fence.  All while the house is a disaster.  I at least started on it while Kalia was napping, and she thankfully took a two hour nap before waking up!  Chris was on baby duty while I finished up.

We're re-sodding the back yard (post soon!), which is one of those projects where in order to do that correctly, you have to get other things done.  If anyone has ever stained a fence, you know that the stain kills anything and everything around it.  So I wanted to stain before we re-sodded.  So at 3:30 on a Sunday afternoon, I started.

Here's what the fence looked like previously :

We installed it when we first moved in...literally that first week.  I don't know why we thought that would be a good task to take on ourselves, but it's one of the few things I wouldn't do again.  Building an entire fence with two people while you're moving is quite a bit of work!   I did one coat of stain on it a few weeks after we built it, and never got around to doing the second coat.  I actually started staining using a paint brush, and only made it about 12 ft before Chris came home with a spray gun and let me know that was absolutely ridiculous.

The sprayer is so so much quicker and nicer, but it's a pain to clean.  We've got a system that works for us -I stain the fence, Chris cleans the sprayer.  My legs were sore sore sore from staining this.  In order to keep your stain from streaking, you have to do nice and even coats, which means you need to go up and down the fence panel with your sprayer.  I think I did about 1000 squats.

But hey, my sisters wedding was yesterday, and I've been trying to get back into pre-Kalia shape for it!  I get my workouts where I can these days!

The work was definitely worth it...here's what the fence looks like now :

Chris snapped up a few action shots of me moving my stain.  As always, Kodi was helping!

Chris : "smile!!"  Me : "Seriously?!?!"

And here's a good one to show you a side by side comparison of before and after with what a huge difference the new stain makes!

I promise it'll look so much better when the sod is actually laid instead of that huge dirt patch that's in the back.  Stay tuned for a post on that!  We do have one area of grass that's decent in the back, so here's what our nicely stained fence will look like once we get finished installing the sod :

We're actually on a big kick to get a lot of the exterior projects to the house while it's not too terribly hot out.  Anyone that lives in Florida knows that doing a ton of exterior house projects in the middle of the summer can be brutal!

Anyone else getting exterior projects done while the weather is still nice, and not too hot?  I have a feeling the hot summer months are going to slip up on us before we know it!

Happy Monday everyone!

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I'm linking up to the parties in my sidebar, go see what kind of workouts everyone else is getting!

Tree Movers Take 2

Soo...raise your hand if you think it's a good idea for a 37 week preggo lady to move a big 'ol tree?!?!

Anyone?!

Only me? Really?

Yeah...I figured as much.

My brain doesn't follow my body so well, and as I'm wrapping up the end of my pregnancy and getting so tired of not being able to do things that I normally could do, my brain is going crazy. Seriously. I spent Thursday / Friday mainly in bed because I wasn't feeling well and was so exhausted, and then Saturday I up and decided we needed to move a big 'ol tree TODAY. That was enough of this laying around crapola.

Actually, we did a bunch of stuff around the house all day, and then floated in the pool for about an hour before I decided it was time to get to work. Restless exhaustion at its finest!

See this tree?

Now you don't!

That tree had driven us bonkers (that might be my new favorite word, sorry!) for quite awhile. It grows like crazy, which is great, but not so much when it grows on your roof and your neighbors roof. And your neighbor is the kindest sweetest funniest oldish woman that doesn't do much of her own yard work at all. I planted a Magnolia tree for her last summer because she asked if she could borrow my tiny little hand shovel to dig out a hole to plant it. Her plan was to dig a little bit at a time until she had enough dug out to put the Magnolia tree in the hole. Which sounded absurd to me, so I just did it for her. Point being, she loves loved that tree there (I mean, adamantly loved), but we did not love cutting it off of both of our roofs every few weeks.

We have visions for our back corner area of our fenced in yard being a sort of garden / tree / shade area.  We started making it this way last March when we moved a few trees back here.  We moved 2 Magnolia trees, 2  Maple trees, and whatever that big huge pink thing is back there that I love.  Only one of the Maples and the pink thing survived.  Both Magnolia's died.  I secretly think Chris was back there peeing on them every day to make sure they died because he hates Magnolia trees (something to do with childhood trauma and having to clean up millions of leaves).

Anyways, after a little of this :

And some of this...

Hey...nothing like putting some of my newfound preggo weight to good use here!!

We got...giranimo!!!!

(We took a time out to remove the fence panel before actually heaving this bad boy over.  So much easier to carry around the back yard than all the way around the front yard!)

We rinsed out all of the dirt to make it a bit lighter...

Woop!  Happy Hubs!  Tree is down!!

Next came the hard part...dragging the stupid thing to the back corner.  We made it about 1/4th of the way there before taking a break.

I honestly thought the tree might stay here for the night.  That thing was heavy, and poor Chris was heave-ho-ing most of the weight.  I managed to be somewhat helpful up until this point, but once we took the break, my legs did not want to do squats anymore to pick this thing up.  Because any of you that are pregnant or ever have been pregnant know that when you're this far along, you do not bend over, you do squats.  If you bend over, there's a high possibility that you could topple over forwards and never recover.

But...we were determined, and in the end, this tree made it to the back.  I might or might not have said "I wish you were Hulk Hogan" to my hubs at some point during this.  He might or might not have responded back with something or another about not being able to take the physco out of wife regardless of how pregnant I am.  Awww...the love we have for each other!!  At least we make each other laugh a lot!

We dug a big huge hole, and after a few unsuccessful tries, managed to get the thing standing upright and covered in dirt.

I think the angle I took this at makes it look crooked.  Or maybe it's crooked looking from the back...it doesn't look that way from the front!

That's a view of the tree from the back.  You can see how massive it is from this point of view.  I don't know why I thought it'd be no big deal to move it.  Chris might have a point on the physco wife thing.

Oh, and the entire reason that we moved that tree was because of this one...

This is Kalia's Mango tree that we planted.  It's supposed to get really big, so we needed another really big tree on the other side of it to balance it out.  I think we're technically supposed to wait until Kalia gets here before planting a tree for her, but we're so close, and completely ready!

Here's how the back tree area looks with both of these in their new homes...

Kalia's mango tree has some catching up to do.  Oh, and we moved that flower bush thing back there on Friday night too, but that wasn't as much of an effort.  The big huge tree on the right took the cake.  Now if only the grass would magically fill itself in...

Hope everyone had a great weekend and a great Mother's Day!!  My boys cooked me breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, and Kodi even floated in the pool with me.  Kodi and I soaked up our last Mother's Day together with it just being him and I!  (Yes, we really have a dog that will lay in a float and float around...it's the funniest thing ever.  To see it click on the link above).

Happy Monday!

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Flower Power : Welcoming Guests

Today, my D. Mom and Step-Dad are heading over for a fun-filled family weekend. I love flowers in my entry way vase, but didn't have time to run to the store to get some, so I brought the outside in and got creative.

I absolutely love these little pink flowers that bloom on our tree in our back yard, so I cut off a few branches, and added some of another tree that blooms and smells oh-so-sweet to my vase.

A nice, easy, freebie way to spruce up and welcome our guests when they come in.

Do you have any creative, fun, and easy ways to spruce up a bit before company?  

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!!  I'm linking up to these parties...make sure to check them out!

Garden Party

I'm still not done with my project I've been working on from dumpster diving, but I'm close!  Psst...want to take a sneak peak at my project?  Check it out here!

In the meantime, why don't you go check out Keen Inspirations Garden party? I'd love nothing more than to grab a glass of sweet tea and sit outside to admire some of these ladies garden projects! Too bad it's just too darn hot in Florida to do that right now. I linked up my rock project, rock garden, and my mini pot makeover. If you've got some fun garden or yard parties, be sure to link up too!




Happy looking!

Love is Patient

I overheard Chris on the phone yesterday morning with his Mom and Step-Dad having a good laugh at my expense over my running the lawn mower through the fence ordeal, and I realized that I forgot to blog about it. And since I'm a big fan of people laughing, whether it's at my expense or not, I decided that would be my blog topic today.

First, let me start by showing you my beast of a lawn mower that I (yes, I, not the hubby) mow with:

She's a beast and I love her.  She acts up at times, but the love is still there.  Her name is Bessie.

When Chris and I moved into this house in April of last year, we spent a day unloading and moving our stuff into the house, and then immediately starting working on putting up a 400 linear foot fence.  We've got a 1/2 acre, and a Kodi, so that fence had to go up ASAP.  Initially we had quite a few helpers, and for one reason or another, it wound up being just Chris and I until my T. Mom came over to help save the day.

So the fence has meaning.  We built it.  We love our fence.  We worked hard for that fence.  It was the very first DIY project at our 'forever home'.

There's a tight corner on one side of the yard that Bessie barely fits in, but I still try every single week to mow as close as possible to the landscaping and the fence.  I got in too close to the panel of the fence to make my turn, so I put Bessie in revere to get out of there.  Or so I thought.

I didn't switch the lever all the way to reverse, and when I pulled on the arm handle that says reverse, Bessie flew forward.  Crack.

Lucky for me, the top was still attached.  Chris came running around from the other side frantically asking if I was okay, and this is what he saw:

I was physically fine, but emotionally peeved.  So, I did what comes naturally to me (and probably most wives) and blamed him.  I told Chris it was his fault that I ran the mower through the fence because he didn't edge a wide enough area, so I had to try to get it with the lawn mower.  Whaaa?

Chris just looked at me, shook his head, sort of grinned, and walked away.  After I finished mowing the rest of the yard, I went to put Bessie up and apologized, and we worked together to put the fence back in working order.

The whole lawn mower ordeal made me realize something.  I tell Chris constantly that it's a good thing that we have Kodi to teach him patience before we have kids.  He used to have none.

I think that maybe being married to me, who is the biggest klutz, super accidentally destructive, accident prone, and we can do anything (like literally, lets try to move mountains) type attitude has taught him quite a bit of patience over the years.  Good thing...because if our someday kids are anything like either one of us destructive wise, we'll need lots and lots and LOTS of patience!

So what about you?  Are any of you as destructive or accident prone as I am?  Please do tell if so!

Another Weekend Recap

Whew...I'm exhausted! I'm not sure if my weekends are a break from my week or if my weeks are a break from my weekends anymore!

So, lets do the weekend recap, with promises of longer posts with pictures later on in the week.

Chris and I celebrated our 4th anniversary. I can't believe we've been married already for four years. We're officially out of the newly wed stage I guess...someone told me the newlywed term is only valid through 3 years of marriage. We're now an old married couple. We actually took an ENTIRE day and did nothing but fun stuff. I'll have pictures later... And I am the luckiest girl in the entire world for landing Chris. He's the best husband anyone could ask for, and he's my very best friend. Maybe that's why time has flown by...

Friday night Chris helped me shove and lick 100 envelopes for my fundraiser. Seriously, he's the best.

Saturday, he got up with me at 5 a.m. to go run. Again, the best. I ran 6 miles at a pace of about 9 mins / mile. It's freaking hot. Really hot. But that's okay, because the reason I'm doing this is bigger than me being uncomfortable for a few hours running. As long as I keep the perspective, mind over matter will win every time!

We ran around and did a ton of errands, enjoyed some yummy Cracker Barrel, and then headed home and passed out. I had a hard time waking up the rest of the day, but did manage to get a few pictures hung and I worked on my annoying project some too.

Sunday we got up, and Chris did school work while I pretty much finished the worst project in the entire world. Pics to come later...I've still got finishing touches to do! In the afternoon, we tackled the yard. I can tell I'm semi sleep deprived. I ran our lawnmower through our fence. Yep, literally, through it. Pics of that later too.

So, to all who called yesterday afternoon / evening (Janelle, Yulander, Jennifer, Ashleigh), I'm sorry I didn't call you back. I was busy re-building my stupid fence from my stupid lawn mower running through it! I'm a mess!

Stay tuned this week for posts on all of the above! Hope everyone had a great weekend! Happy Monday!!

Rock Project - Part 2

After we finished part 1, we split part 2 into the remaining 3 days. Here's what part 2 looked like to start off with:


*Note the newspaper in the picture. For some reason, Chris thought we were supposed to wet the newspaper, lay it on top of the weeds and leave it for a week to kill them. He apparently forgot that we live in Florida, it's not the rainy season, and wet newspaper doesn't take a week to dry out. That one piece stayed, the rest had to be picked up along the fence!


We got to work again digging. We also had to move two trees that were along this side (and probably would've eventually broken up our concrete for our pool deck...not smart previous owners)!




It took us 3 go rounds with our garbage days to get rid of all of the dirt and rock that we pulled up. We still have some hidden on one side of the house, but our backs say that's enough for now!



And...

TADA!!!!


Chris had tried to convince me to just get rid of the old plants and plant new ones. Instead, I weeding around the old ones, grouped them together how I wanted them, and re-planted.


I've just got to spray-paint the paver's and this part will be completely done too. My finger got a cramp from the other side!


It's almost Friday! Enjoy the rest of the week!!

I'm linking up to these fun parties...go check them out!