Perfect Easter Weekend

We are having the most incredible Easter weekend. We are just loving this beautiful weather and our three day weekend together. Yesterday morning we got up and went to get some donuts to take to the park. One of our new favorite things to do is to take Hank to the awesome park down the road from our house. He is getting really big and really fun. So we take him out on pretty days and throw the ball until he has no energy left! Anyway, after spending the morning reading in bed (another favorite), we went and picked up some donuts and headed to the park. We put the tailgate of my car down and sat on the back, having breakfast while Hank ran himself silly. Then we ran a million errands together before Dave went to work for a bit. As soon as he got home, we headed out to have a fun dinner with some of our friends.

This morning we woke up ready to work!!! We had so much fun tearing the yard apart (and starting to put it back together). Since moving in to the new house in late November, we have done so much, both inside and out!!! And I have to say, we are really stinking proud of ourselves. The house was built in the early 80's so we bought it knowing that we would be putting a bit of work into getting it the way we wanted it, and we are loving working on it all together. We have painted almost all of the rooms now except for the master bed and bath. We still have some projects we want to do. We are going to put hardwood floors in the dining room and maybe the kitchen eventually. And we want to paint and update a bunch of our wood cabinets. But those are things that are going to have to wait for a little while.

So we have decided to focus on the outside for the time being. We started by ripping off the bright peach shutters and tearing out most of the trees/shrubs in the front. Luckily, our wonderful neighbor Pat is an incredible gardener, and she has been able to help us with some ideas. She also has been incredibly generous to let us borrow any and all of the tools that we need to get the job done. Dave also has a buddy that owns a landscaping company. So he came out last week and gave us some ideas of how to accomplish what we want to get done. It will take us quite some time to finish what we started today, but we are so excited about seeing the end result. Anyway, I thought I would post a few of our before and after pics from today.

So after a long day in the yard, we are exhausted, and excited about tomorrow. Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays (that and Christmas)!!! We will be going to church and then spending the day relaxing, before heading to my mom and dad's for Easter dinner. We hope that each and every one of you has a blessed Easter, celebrating that Jesus has risen and given us life!!!

I wish I had taken before pictures, but anyone that has seen the backyard will be able to tell how much it has been changed and cleaned up.  Around to the left behind all of those bushes is a beautiful yard with lots of trees and grass.  All of that will pretty much stay the same.  But this front part will be where we do most of our work.  We already ripped out several bushes in the dirt looking areas today, and along the back.  We will be pulling up all of the bushes on the left side of the picture and ripping up the red brick in the middle.  We will be adding sod to that whole area.  We want lots of room for our babies to play in!

 

 

BEFORE - This is the color the gameroom was when we moved in.  I had already taken down the mint green blinds.  You can't see it, but it really was two colors...horrible!

 

AFTER - We picked this fun blue and painted the door, beams, and any trim a dark brown.

 

 

BEFORE - We wanted to open it all up and make it more inviting.

 

AFTER today's work- still so much to do, but we are getting there. You can't see them in this picture, but I even planted a bunch of flowers to get some pretty color.  We are also moving two more rose bushes from the back yard into the front.