Summer of Landscaping

The "Summer of Landscaping" is more accurate than it sounds! We finished our Paver walkway on Memorial day, May 31, and I began landscaping our yard on June 1. The final piece of sod went in in late July, although, I was still working on some other "curb appeal" items until August.

Here's the Front before:

And after:

Not only did we landscape the front, but the entire back. It started out with no plants (other than the large trees in the far back of the yard), so we had our work cut out for us!

Here's the back Before:

And the after:

I also did some landscaping in the back corner of our yard. What had been a muddy and shadded area with a dirty shed, is now refreshed with a little mulch, some new plants, a couple of replanted shrubs (previously in the font yard), and flowers. Plus--a perfect place to relax on a hammock on a nice summer day! What an easy change!

We also spruced up the side of our house. Before, it was just a blank slate of grass running into the house, but now, we've built up the ground around the base of the house, and transplanted some Sedum bushes from the front along the side!

One of our first landscaping plans to be implemented was our new garden. All of the brick for the raised garden came from our font rock bed (which is now thankfully gone).

We quickly realized we may have over planted...

Which was obvious by the later part of the summer...

I finished landscaping 2010 with some dirt and sod that built up the land to be even with the edge of our side driveway...

It was so much work, but completely worth it in the end! We get some many compliments from neighbors, friends, and family!

Along the way, we gained some additions to our family...

Our new puppy (to be named...)

Our birdhouses were a hit right away, and we have a new backyard bird (I think it's a finch)

Connor's Bday 2010

In the midst of our summer of landscaping, my cutie nephew Connor turned 3! He is a big fan of "pretend" playing the guitar, so he had a Rockstar party!

Make a Wish!

I think that this might be my favorite picture of my Dad ever!

Grandma and Grandpa bought Connor a tent for the yard...here are Grandma and Connor playing in it! Connor did pretty well with gifts...good thing he got a tent so he had somewhere to put them all!

DJ Connor...I can't wait to go see him in the clubs!

Rockin' the Paver Walkways

From the moment we bought the house last summer, I have been talking about my plans to "get rid of all of the rock in the planter that ran across our entire front of the house and put in a paver walkway up to the front door". As soon as the snow melted...operation landscaping 2010 began! We had A LOT of rock. When we would tell our neighbors our plans, they all said "good luck...there's a lot of rock there"...and they weren't kidding. We started shoveling the rock up in early March. Our goal was 2 wheel barrows a day. We finished only 1.5 weeks before we planned to start putting in the patio--that was May 16 Here's a picture of 1/3 of the rock we removed. Thank goodness for Craigslist--we were able to get rid of all of the rock by giving it away! Once the rock was removed, we had to dig up the ground where the Paver walkway was going to go. We planned to put the dirt around the base of the house (to build up the foundation). That ended up only taking about 1/3 of the dirt, and we still had as much dirt to get rid of as we had rock! Needless to say, the piles of dirt, rock, and other materials quicly got on my nerves! My mom was a rockstar and came to help dig for 3 days--the most humid days of the summer, none the less. We couldn't have done it without her--she is so awesome! Here is the trench once it was finally done!

Day One started with filling in the gravel for the base. Jeremy did an awesome job with the equipment...here he is compacting the 6 inches of gravel base.

Then we put a layer of sand down for the bricks to lie in...day one was finally over!

And boy was it a messy one!

Day two was where the fun began! I laid out all of the bricks (except for the ones that needed to be cut) in the Herringbone pattern. My vision was finally starting to come together!

Getting to mallet the bricks into the sand definitely helped to remove my frustrations!

Day Three was all about sawing the bricks. In typical "Steph fashion", I choose the most "sawing intensive" pattern, and made it tougher by adding multiple curves. I marked up the bricks, and Jeremy did the sawing. We made a great teams!

All of the cuts made for such a fabulous pattern!

Nearing the end of day 3....so close to the end!

On Memorial Day, the sand finally when on, the the paver walkway was done! We were so pleased with our work!

Of course, it really just meant that our landscaping project was beginning....

I am most proud of this part of the walkway...planning out the curves, putting everything on an incline, and marking the correct cuts took a bit of work, but was definitley worth it in the end!

By the end of the summer, it was one of many fabulous additions to our house!

Easter 2010

My cute nephews the day before Easter...proof that sometimes they do get along!

Ian helped me with the tradition of decorting the rice krispie bunny....this year, both ears made it to Easter....

...it's more fun to eat it though!

Connor loves his Grandpa, and getting to sit and watch tv with him...

Back in Black

You might have noticed...we've been a little MIA lately. Life has been busy, and in addition, I lost my camera battery charger in the move and haven't been able to take as many pictures as I would like. That being said, We really have been having so much fun lately...I wish I had the photos to share! We've had oodles of visitors to our house, we've made bunches of updates to the house (and continue to do so),and have been all around the city, state, and even into some other states over the past few months! I am going to do my best to share the few pictures that we've taken and hopefully do a better job sharing more of our happy moments going forward. Thanks for sticking with us, even when we don't have any news to share!

My Kind of Town

Last week, Jeremy and I took a mini-vacation to Chicago. We haven't had a chance to visit since last year, and so decided to take a break from reality for a couple of days.

While Chicago is known for it's Deep Dish Pizza, typically, we don't have it while we are down there. Since we had a few meals to cover, we decided to stop at Giordano's for a delicious Chicago lunch. Of course, the pizza was so filling, we ended up having left overs which we shared with a man asking for money on the street.

We also decided to go to the Shedd Aquarium. Jeremy had never been there, and I haven't been since High School. It was a fun way to spend the afternoon!

Almost better than the Aquarium was the view from the front of it. If only I could look at this view out my window every day!

Since it was such a nice day (40+ degrees), we decided to walk back to our hotel. We enjoyed the views of the architecture!

And even tried to relive some favorite movie memories (If you cannot tell, I'm trying to look like the little girl in the movie "Adventures in Babysitting")

Little did we know we own a piece of downtown!

We walked through Millenium park, and got to see the "Bean" in person. It was really cool to see...it's amazing how reflective it is!

What a fantastic Getaway!

She's My Cherry Pie

In February, Cherry Pie was playing at our bowling alley the same night as our league, so we HAD to stay after to enjoy some of the rocking music of our past!

In the first few years after I graduated college, Angie, myself and some other friends became fond of Cherry Pie--an 80's Cover-Hair band. They played all of our favorites from our younger years. Of course, as time went on, we didn't get to see them as often, and before we knew it, over 5 years has passed.

Of course, in that time, the band members have gotten older and the crowds have gotten larger. None the less, the whole evening was hilarious and fantastically fun!

They truely are an 80's Cover HAIR band...and they dress every bit the part!

Jeremy definitely didn't know what he was in for when he agreed to go...I think in the end he had a fun time, though... :)

Angie and I tried to do our best to mimick some of the dances we saw from some of the Cherry Pie Groupies. The dances were interesting, to say the least...

Here is the guitarist/keyboardest/etc. for Cherry Pie. Back in the early days of Cherry Pie (i.e. the year 2000), he went by the stage name "Lucious Rod". Now, it's just Josh. I guess there is a point where you are just too old for the bad stage names. Yes, both he and Angie are standing at the same level.

Here is a video I took during the song "Talk Dirty to Me"... Enjoy! :)