Extreme Backyard Renovation!

Our backyard is amazing! It's unrecognizable and now you can actually enjoy spending time outside! It now is truly an outdoor living space.

Flash back a day and a half ago. The yard consisted of weeds and dirt, the ground was covered with hundreds of rotted peaches, trees were literally growing into each other, the trees were so thick and low hung that to walk around the backyard you had to duck, there was clutter everywhere, and it basically just looked like a tornado had blown through it! Blake and I used to never go outside in the backyard because it honestly was just disgusting and not to mention anytime it would rain it was a complete and utter mud pit!

Now onto present day and time, our backyard is now....simply beautiful!

How did we do it do you ask? Step one is I have an amazing mom and dad who volunteered to help us through the whole process. They brought over all the tools we needed, spent countless hours in the 90 degree heat with us doing manual labor, and of course, brought the "know-how". Not to mention how much money they helped us save. Who knows how many thousands of dollars it would have cost to hire people to till all that soil, lay all the grass, cut down the trees, and heavily trim the remaining trees. So there you go, definitely a huge thanks to my mom and dad whom I love very much.

Here's a little play-by-play of how everything went down. Blake and I rented a high horsepower tiller from a tool rental store. My parents came over Friday night to help us get a start on the work so it wouldn't all be left for Saturday. On Friday, Blake spent most the night tilling all the grass and soil, going over the whole backyard 5 or 6 times to really get the soil prepared. Dad went at the trees with a chainsaw. And I mean went at them. There were times when Blake and I would just stop and watch because it was pretty cool to see large trees get chopped up and fall down so quickly. Dad's a pro at this and definitely efficient. Mom and I spent most the night dragging all the tree debris to the alleyway and stacking it into piles.

Saturday morning we got a 6:45 start and got to cracking on finishing tilling the soil and doing a few other jobs. The grass arrived around 8:15, thank God. They don't guarantee a time and said what time you get the grass depends on how the route is for that day. So I guess we were lucky. We spent the next 7 or 8 hours laying all the grass out. Talk about manual labor. Blake kept saying that he "didn't know it would be this much work." Haahaha.

What was pretty depressing was to really be trucking along good laying down squares and to look over and see that you've done about 1/30th of the yard. But we were able to finish it without dying of exhaustion from the heat and labor! The whole time we kept going back and forth on whether we would have enough squares since it's really hard to estimate how much you would need, and believe it or not, we got it almost perfect! We were only about 3 grass squares short, which is unbelievable if you think about it. Kudos to me and Blake for using our prior knowledge of high school math to calculate the square footage in our backyard correctly! 1,960.5 square feet!

Mom and I then went to Lowe's and got 15 bags of mulch to lay out around the trees as well as an area of heavy shrubs in the corner that the dogs love but that turns into mud when it rains. Problem solved! We also got a bunch of large rocks to go in 2 sections of the patio that was previously just dirt which also turned into a mud pit when it rained. Problem solved again! And we also got some really pretty flowers for the patio.

All-in-all, I would say that Blake and I are EXTREMELY happy with the results. Everything turned out so wonderful and we can't say "thank you" enough to my parents for all the help they gave us. We are really going to enjoy spending time out there. We are so proud of our backyard now and are going to make this one of our new hobbies-working in the yard! It will be fun to see what we'll do out there. Blake wants to get a grill so we can have our friends and family over for cookouts, so look for an invitation in the near future! We also think it would be cool to get a fountain with flowing water for the whole peaceful effect. But all in time! For now, we are just as happy as can be! Blake had the nice idea of having a picnic in the backyard tomorrow to celebrate, so that we will!

Check out my Facebook here for the full album of before pictures, as well as action shots.

And here for our "After" album.

Bargain shopping...complete with pictures!

This may be random but I seem to get a lot of compliments from people about the clothes I wear, and it usually ends with people asking where I shop. So I thought it would be fun to let the secret out to our blogger followers too. So, here goes. I get most my clothes from....
ROSS

Can you believe it? My friends always poke fun at me because I'm always buying the latest COACH bags and such, but I'll be honest...when it comes to clothes, I am a real penny pincher! I usually don't spend over $15 on shirts and $20 on pants. Are the clothes made of the absolute highest quality? Who knows, or cares! I just buy whatever I think looks cute at the time. So as I just got back from a recent shopping trip, I thought it would be fun to post a few pictures of things I got along with how much it cost me compared to what it would cost at a department store....Now, of course, they could be making up any random price to compare it to, but it's still exciting if it's true. But I do know it's cheaper than department stores because I don't think I've ever gone to Macy's and gotten a $10 shirt.

The thing that I've noticed about ROSS (and TJ Maxx for that matter) is I will either go and end up buying at least 10 items or I'll go and find nothing. It's pretty hit or miss. Also, you do have to do a little bit of digging around to find stuff that you like. Another tip is to go to one that's located in the NICE parts of town. I've been to some that weren't and there was merchandise thrown on the ground and it all seemed pretty trashy. My favorite ROSS is the one by Stonebriar mall, they always seem to have a bunch of good stuff. Same thing for the TJ Maxx there.

So, onto the pictures, complete with the "before" and "after" prices that make me so excited!

This top normally costs $32, but I snagged it for $10!



















Here it is in a little better light:
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My next purchase was a skirt to match. I picked this up for $7 as opposed to $35!!



















And speaking of skirts, I was needing a brown one for work and got this for $10 as opposed to $40!



















And I know I shouldn't, but I buy in duplicates a lot when I find something I like. I also have this type of shirt in black. This set me back only $12 as opposed to $32!!

















Here's something I can wear for work. The top only cost $8 opposed to $28!



















And the full outfit:


























This shirt was $10 compared to $30














I also needed a new black skirt for work, and of course, I found one at ROSS. $20 normally $50:



















A mere $10 opposed to $30



















And finally, possible the best find....$7 white capris!



















So, I hope you will start saving money by shopping at ROSS and TJ Maxx. I know a lot of people are turned off by the fact that they are a "discount" store, as I was...until I actually went there for the first time and was pretty impressed with the prices.

Until next time!

-Tracy-

Update

In groundbreaking news, we hit up Sonic tonight for the free root beer float promotion that they had going on. I've never really done the whole "get free stuff at this certain time thing"and now I know why. It was like a hungry shark feeding frenzy. The Sonic person would come out with a tray of 50 floats and people would immediately mob her and they would be gone in 2 seconds. It was actually pretty entertaining to watch. But I don't think I'll ever be doing one of those things again.Blake and I were able to each get one and it was actually pretty good.

I did feel a little bit guilty, since I'm still going hardcore on my healthy eating thing. I've lost 27 pounds so far since I started in February by only eating whole wheats, fruits, vegetables, lean chicken, and other healthy stuff, and running at least an hour everyday on the treadmill. Blake has also lost 10 pounds, but without exercising. What I'm cooking is what's doing it for him lol. Overall, I'm definitely happy with the results. It's definitely needed for me since I have the WORST sweet tooth ever. I love any types of sweets and would eat them all the time if I could. It must be genetic since granny is a huge sweets lover and, well, dad is the manager for Blue Bell, so he's gotta like ice cream!!

In our home improvement news, we are going to have to wait a couple of months to replace our kitchen floors. I really want to get a high grade porcelain tile, but Ginger (our Empire representative who we've used before for other projects) came out to give us an estimate, and it turns out it would cost around $4,000! We don't want to spend all our savings each month on home improvment things, so we are going to wait a few months to get this done.

This also made me realize I should shop around and do some price comparisons. I'm bad about seeing something that I like and rushing into buying it without seeing if it's the best price. I know a lot of what you are paying with Empire is the shop at home convience as well as the next day installation. So look for updates in this area, I'm going to check out a few other places to see what I can find.

Another thing I've done is I've gotten a notebook together and tabbed it off into sections by rooms that I want to work on. For each room I've written what I want to do as well as printed off pictures I find on the internet as inspiration as well as in real life. One room I want to model our master bath off of is Blake's dad and Tamara's lakehouse bathroom, it's SO CUTE!

This is about the color I want to get for our kitchen floors:









And for the fun of it here are a few other ideas I have in store for our house eventually...


I want to put a vessel sink in the guest bathroom downstairs because I think they're really cute and modern:














The upstairs bathroom is going to have a black and white theme with pops of red. This is one of the bathrooms where I got my inspiration:

















As you can see, clearly home improvement and decorating is one of my main interests. My next career choice would definitely be an interior decorator.

So in other news, we just finished Season 8 of 24. Yet another great season in our opinion. We are huge 24 fans and think it's just a really well-made and exciting show. Can't wait for the next season to get here. Here's an interesting trivia fact: apparently Kiefer Sutherland and Sarah Jessica Parker are best friends. Who would have thought?

And now for a few dog pics...

This is what happens 2 minutes after I throw the pillows on the ground to make the bed:

















120 pounds of laziness:

















And Blake has a STRICT "No dogs on the bed" policy. His reasoning being that if we bought such an expensive Tempur-Pedic bed, we better keep it nice. But I guess he isn't that mad if he's taking pictures of us during our nap time.






















Until next time!!