Happy 30th to my cute Hubby!

Peter's 30th Birthday is today and I want to wish him a wonderful day!  Love you so much!

Labor of Love...the Patio!

Well, we've been working on beautifying our back yard for a while now with the main focus on building a patio.  When we moved into our house there was a tragic looking deck off the back that was very small.  The deck was removed in April and we were left with this:

Big Mess!

Then life got very busy with the end of the school year for me and a lot of out of town weekends in May and June.  So in early July Peter and I started the removal of all the stones in the yard.  It was also the hottest weeks of the summer...perfect time to start an outdoor project!


A lot of heavy lifting!

Then with the help of my Uncle Tom we started to prepare the ground for the new patio and put in proper drainage to get water away from our house.

You may notice all of the old stones stacked alongside the house!  All were eventually removed!



After the drainage was complete we then layered the ground with gravel and sand.  We also put in a little wall because of the slope of our backyard.  Basically, there is a little step down to a lower patio both about the same size.

The sand is smooth and leveled...ready for the pavers!

Top tier of the patio is almost complete...Gary (a friend of my uncle) is finishing things up

And the patio is finished!!  Now we need furniture!

And here the patio is really complete with furniture (thank you Mr. And Mrs. T), an umbrella and plants!  P.S. Ranger loves the patio too because he wasn't allowed out back during the building process!

The whole process took a lot of work and time but thanks to my Uncle Tom, cousin Luke and some of his friends we were able to do it ourselves and we love it!  Now we just need to grow some grass but as Tom said, Rome wasn't built in a day so it will happen eventually!