Backyard Boot Camp Round 2

Ding ding!

This part is by far my favorite part! Saturday after our bike ride around the lake, we headed out to the local nurseries and Lowes to check out potential shrubs for our new garden. Tony and I both decided we wanted to go for more of a native Texas feel rather than just tons of annuals and little flowers. We had fun quizzing each other on the names of the plants we saw. Tony has become a little Texas native buff and I was impressed! He's so cute when he gets into something because he has to learn EVERYTHING about it!

This was one of those great days where the TV stays off ALL day! From 8 am to when we went to bed the TV stayed off and we pretty much stayed outside. I love spring time!

Saturday morning heaven for me!

I didn't buy this pretty Lavender Saturday because we wanted to read up on them to see how they would do in our soil and climate, but I'm totally coming back for a few of these soon! :)

I'm totally getting a few of these for my pots to hang above the garden!

We brought them home and started playing with the arrangement. Tony didn't like how straight and exact the first arrangement looked so we moved them around a little more to allow for future growth.
My boo planting my pretty shrubs!
Zig zagged for a better effect.

Here's everything minus the mulch. After this we went off to the landscaping place to get the pretty black stuff.

Here's the view from our upstairs game room.
My pretty sweet brooms and Tony's wispy grass stuff that he really wanted.
Pretty sprawling Rosemary.

That Creeping Phlox I said I wanted is going to go in hanging baskets on those holders above the garden.

We still have the huge side gardens to fill in but we're making big progress!

Backyard Boot Camp

Let me preface this with saying that this was a HUGE project! It doesn't look like much from the pictures, but man was this a beast. I'm so glad we had the whole week to work on it. First thing up was for Tony to aerate the yard. He and some of the other neighborhood husbands rented an aerator to help our yard drain better and promote prettier grass (lots of other technical reasons, but I'm a girl and this is what I say it does). I left on Saturday to Houston to try on bridesmaid dresses for my friend Megan's wedding. This is what I left:

These little holes are what I came home to all over the front and back yard Saturday afternoon. These holes will help the soil breathe and make the grass pretty (again, I'm a girl and this is how I break technical stuff down to).

Our plan was to make a really large flower bed that went the span of our back fence. We want to put in some native Texas shrubs and plants and one day a tiered water fountain. Here's our boring backyard before all the work started:

In order to do this we had to tear up the sod all along the fence line. To do this, Tony started out with our edger to make a line of where we wanted the flower bed to be.

After our initial plan of digging up the grass with a shovel failed miserably, I convinced Tony to go rent a sod cutter to get this business done quickly! Tony is such a boy and LOVES any kind of landscaping machinery so he got really excited when he realized he was going to learn how to work a new toy. He watched some videos on how to use it, and watched a few DVR'd yard shows for confidence and he was off!

A couple of hours later the sod was cut and it was time for the hard work.

We rolled up so much sod and good night it was heavy! Good thing for us that the lot behind us is still empty, so we tossed them over the fence. I have never had a workout this tough in all my years of playing sports. I found new muscles I didn't even know I had (primarily in my hamstrings, triceps, and abs) and I made them very sore! After hours of work here is what it looked like:

My hands looked like this for days!

The next thing to do was to get the dirt we would need to make our garden really healthy. Our soil is clay soil and Tony wanted to make sure we brought in really good soil to help with drainage and nutrients. We went to the landscape yard and bought four truckloads of dirt to haul into the flower beds.

Imagine this:

four times. Each load is about 2,000 pounds of dirt that we brought home, shoveled into wheelbarrows, hauled into the backyard and leveled out where the beds will be. So after it was all said and done we had unloaded about 8,000 pounds of dirt together. Big project...huge! Our neighbors kept asking us if we were burying dead bodies in the backyard with all that dirt!

Here are the beds as of now. We ran out of time and pretty weather to actually plant the flowers and shrubs. We plan on doing this in the next couple of weekends as well as bringing in mulch to finish it out.

Even though this project was so big and difficult, I am so glad we did it together. I get what people mean now when they say it was a labor of love. I love so much that Tony works so hard to make our home a beautiful place to be. He spends so much time and energy making my visions come alive and it's a huge reason why home is my number one favorite place to be in our free time. He's my hero and this project made our marriage so much stronger because we worked on a common goal even when most would quit. It also gave us a chance to laugh a lot, curse a little (me), spend time together, and make our house more of a home. I'm so lucky for him and for this memory we'll always have!

I Spy...

Our new shutters finally came in!

On a rainy Tuesday the nice man came from San Antonio and installed the plantation shutters in our master bedroom and the upstairs game room. Yay! We were so excited to take the paper blinds off that have been up since we moved in two Decembers ago!

Before game room (Tony took off the paper blinds before I got upstairs to take a picture):

After game room:

Before master bedroom:

After master bedroom:

Next up on our list is to order the shutters for our three bedrooms upstairs and get a sectional couch and flat screen for the game room. Right now the game room is just sort of a holding place for things we don't use. We want to make it a nice family room where we can have movie nights and just relax without messing up our living room downstairs. We'll update more when we find the right couch...whenever that may be with us two picky people. :)

Slowly But Surely...

We're decorating our master bedroom! So far we've painted the room, bought the bedroom set, acquired our beautiful TV that sadly now brings me as much joy as it does to Tony (see previous posts). Over spring break we're getting in the plantation shutters we ordered almost six weeks ago.

Today we stumbled on a pair of lamps that we both loved! This is no small feat considering Tony likes to have a big say in what accessories we get for the house. As much as it bugs me that I can't just get a pretty floral print (country boy's not so big on floral prints) I love that he really cares how our home looks.

Anyway, here's our nightstands before:

mine

Tony's

And here they are after:

mine

Tony's

Here's a night shot (sorry for the blurriness) of our bed and nightstands.

We still want to find some small mirrors and hang them behind the lamps to give the room some dimension as well as an art piece above our bed. Next on our list is to get the crown molding installed, find the perfect duvet and pillows for the bed, and get a couple of comfy chairs for the sitting area when you enter our room to the left. It's a slow process but it's just the way we wanted it to be to make sure we love each piece we get no matter how long it takes to find.

In other news it's the week before Spring Break!

Today I cooked enough meals and packed enough lunches to be set through Wednesday! Happy Sunday!

Our Nightly Ritual

With a Schnauzer in the house life is never boring. Einstein is a crazy dog that loves to wrestle, run, and play chase. Sometimes when Tony comes home from work, he'll wrestle with Einstein to get him all stirred up. Lately though, right before bed they play chase in our bedroom. It's become a nightly ritual. It's one that Einstein LOVES and one that I beg for because it makes me laugh to see Tony hide behind corners and in our bathroom to scare Einstein.

Here's a video of them playing chase before bed last night. Tony likes to run Einstein out into the hall and then hide either behind the wall into our bedroom or in the bathroom. You can see Einstein totally gets into this and plans out what his next move will be.

This is the ridiculous nightly ritual we have going on at our house right now. Clearly you can tell it doesn't take much to make us laugh!

A Day of Love

Here are some snapshots of our day of love. The roses were personally delivered to my classroom by my sweet on Friday afternoon. We spent Valentine's Day doing all the great things we love. It was a perfect low-key day.

I hope your day of love was all you wanted it to be!

Weekend Warriors!

This weekend Tony's parents came into town. We relaxed Friday night, and then on Saturday we ran errands around town. Saturday afternoon Tony bought a large live oak he had been eyeing all week (literally all week-the boy went to look at it 3 days in a row during his lunch break).

I skipped out on the purchasing, but gave my blessing. This tree would normally cost 3 times what he bought it for, so he was pretty pumped! While he and his dad went to buy and haul, Einstein, his mom, and I stayed home and napped! When he came home with the tree I was surprised at how tall it was.

Space before tree:

Pretty baby Live Oak tree:

Here's my boo being a big strong guy digging a hole for the tree. He dug, and dug, and dug... Finally they tore the thing out of the tub it came in and got it in the ground.

Disposing of the excess soil over the fence. They were actually showing the empty lot behind us to a couple while Tony was dumping the soil over the fence. Eek! We stopped and spied through the knot holes until they drove off and then we went back to doing it again. We're going to have to get that huge flower bed dug before they build a house back there. =)

Here it is in all it's glory!

Hopefully this spring and summer will be good to this tree. We've got a long list of projects to do during our Spring Break off. We're going to put a large flower bed that goes the span of the back fence between the two oak trees back there. We'll be aerating our lawn, expanding a front flower bed, fertilizing, and re-mulching all flower beds. I can't wait! After the tree planting, Tony's parents took us to the Salt Lick to celebrate my birthday.

It was delicious!

Today before his parents left, his mom pruned our rose bushes in the front. They were badly in need of it and she said this was the perfect time of year to do it (who knew you were supposed to do it on Valentine's day!?). I held on to Einstein and snapped the pics while Tony took away the canes (learned that) and chopped off the tough ones too.

This afternoon I'm off to one of my co-worker's baby showers. It should be a fun time! Tony and Einstein are planning a snooze fest on the couch. Tonight we're trying a healthier version of manicotti so hopefully I'll post that soon! Happy Sunday!