Adding Some Curb Appeal

It's been a while since I've done a post, but we have definitely been some busy bees around this house!

The hubs and I busted our asses over a two day span to turn our yard from this:

To this:







We worked on this at the same time we were working on our patio project and are pretty happy with how things turned out! 

So to start from the beginning...

We first and foremost went online to Diggers Hotline and had them come out and mark where our utilities were so we knew what to avoid.

Since we had the sod cutter rented out for a full day we figured we would make good use of it and cut out the front yard from this:

To this:

and the backyard went from this:

To this:

Once we got the heavy sod loaded into the trailer and dropped off at the dump we came back and laid weed block down.....



We covered it with mulch and tried to figure out the layout for the plants.  We set them out and tweaked them until we were happy with the placement!



The hubs then went to town planting them all in their new homes!  We used a variety of plants including: Day Lillie's, ornamental grasses, lavender, some ground cover and I transplanted a burning bush that my wonderful dogs kept stomping on when they were "saying hi" aka barking their brains out at any person walking on "their street". 


They may look a little small now, but with time, love and a lot of Miracle Grow we're hoping for a lush, pretty front yard!  Now that we placed all of our little babies aka plants out we know what more we need, and where we need them, so the hubs and I will probably be out asap buying more!


...and after about SEVEN heavy, wet (after all the rain we got) yards of dark brown shredded mulch things were starting to take shape!

I really like the transformation in the side yard from this:



To this:



We had a bunch of field stone around our yard so the hubs used his creativity and built a drainage area or "rock river" off the downspout from the garage:





He also used Mississippi stone that we have a ton of from the sides of our house to use in the middle.  We always had a problem when it would rain, the water coming through the downspout would move the mulch everywhere leaving exposed dirt.  We were able to have this tested out recently with some big storms through our area and it works great and dispersing the water!

 

I still have to get my plants in the planter boxes and pots I have around the yard and my vegetables planted, but that will have to wait till my next off days! Until then, the hubs and I are still super excited with how the yard has transformed! 

Hope everyone has a happy and safe Memorial Day and remember to thank a soldier and remember those who gave all!