Christmas Can Can

My dad e-mailed me this and I think it is really cute. Go ahead, check it out.

PEEK and giveaway

I did a guest "PEEK" into my kitchen, on my friend, Kristi's blog today. Her blog rocks! Also, I'm sponsering a pretty cool giveaway to enter on there too. Check it out here.

Landscaping: Before, During and After

**Beware: This post contains numerous pictures**

Our landscaping is done now, well, for this year anyway. The difference is huge!! We are very happy with the final results. We did A LOT of work. Well, not us personally, but a lot of work was involved. The results are astounding, to us anyway. First of all, we had nothing but rocks and dirt all around the house. A lot of dirt. We moved our trampoline to the septic bed or septic field, whatever you call it. Then, we set up the playground we had purchased last year, also on the septic bed. Don't worry, we asked the septic guys before we set anything up there, to make sure it wouldn't wreck anything there. We enlisted the help of local company R&D Harris to do the rest. They leveled and graded all the land, hydroseeded it, put in a stamped concrete patio and front walkway, built a rock retaining wall, cut down two trees, planted two apple trees, four high bush blueberry bushes, put in the front gardens and mulched them, and because we weren't completely satisfied with the rock wall, they offered to level, grade and grass the sides of our driveway, on the house! Here are a few before, during and after pics.

BEFORE:

This is the front "yard"

This is the out building. We kept it, but the foundation in front of it is gone.

This is a view of the old driveway, lawn, and how many trees there were. Wow, I thought I had a lot more "before" pictures. Guess not so many of the outside.

DURING:

Finally, nice flat land that the kids fall and trip over anymore.

More flat land, and a bit of a view of the playground. Trampoline is on the right, behind trees.

Rock retaining wall. We were expecting round rocks.

Side yard and top of rock wall, or as Jacob likes to call it, "the cliff"

Outlining the front walkway and gardens.

AFTER:

A view of the patio.

Another view of the patio.

The side yard.

The play area. Yeah, I know it needs to be mowed. This was before we got a lawnmower.

The driveway and newly grassed on either side, done for free! If you look closely, on the right of the driveway, you can see Brian on the John Deere.

A view from one side. The little tree planted, (left) will eventually hide the post.

A view from the other side. The front gardens are all perennials, so they'll only get bigger and better every year. I'll plant colorful annuals to fill it in til then.