Southern Living Idea House part 1

 

Girls weekend

I got to get out of town a couple weekends ago to see some of my favorite people.

 

Not much has changed amongst us over the years.

2013 Smith Lake

2007 My bachelorette weekend at Grayton beach

I love my girls!

Back to school

Thank goodness the kids started school today!  We were about to all go crazy.  All three boys love school and didn’t think twice about walking through the school doors and every one was too excited to bother saying good bye.

Retaining Wall Garden

The side of our yard was a drop off from the drive way to the back yard.  It was dangerous to try and walk down, the kids would just slide down the hill on their butt.  Chris got sick of having to cut the grass on this hill and we were having some problems with the hill eroding into our bottom deck so we decided to get the problem fixed by professionals.  

This is the only before picture I could find.

The workers got the whole project done in 2 days doing the whole thing with just shovels.

After the workers left I quickly went up to the nursery and went crazy buying plants and getting them in the ground.

I still need a lot more plants before I can say it is completely done and the way I want it but they are going to have to wait till spring.

You can see I put the weed tarp down in this picture and the pine straw is sliding down but I will take that any day over having to pull weeds.  The grass to the left is going to be taken out eventually but I wasn’t sure what to plant there and got burnt out so the grass is staying until I get motivated to get out there and work again. 

This is the part we did our selves.  We layed the stone path because it was only $100 for us to buy and do it ourselves versus the contractor doing it for $800.  I plan on planting grass between the rocks and flowers all along the path.  The path flows nicely to the lower deck Chris added. 

Next on the “to do” list, is to put horizontal boards along the bottom of the deck and finish the stone path there. 

Give all these new plants a year or two to establish and fill in and I think we are going to be looking very nice.