Landscaping Pictures

Here are a few updated pictures of our backyard landscaping. We've been adding little by little each weekend. We have some landscape lighting to add and then we will be done!!

The two big post are for a hammock that we can't leave up because Cajun will tear it to pieces and eat it.

Back yard paradise

You might remember in June of last year we started a HUGE project in our backyard. Well that project is now about 90% complete. Last June we put in a paver patio. You can see pictures of that process here. Then in July we did the landscaping around the patio except in one small area. You can see pictures of that here. We planned on putting a pond and waterfall in dirt hole/mound. Well almost a year later we have completed the pond/waterfall. It actually wasn't has hard as we thought. The paver patio was MUCH MUCH harder. But poor Tommy had to do most of the work himself because a pregnant woman isn't much help. So we started out with this on Friday...

A not very attractive mound in our yard with a huge hole at the bottom.

And then Saturday morning we woke up and got to work putting in the pond liner and laying the rocks inside the pond. By about 12:00 (including a trip to the stone yard to get more rocks) we had this...

We finished placing the stones and pebbles and added water to make sure the pump and all the piping were not leaking.

Ahhh, it worked, it actually flowed!!!

So beautiful!
I was exhausted from carrying small rocks and squatting to pick up rocks so I went take a one hour nap at about 1:30. When I woke up Tommy had mulched around everything and finished up all the little details. He is so great!

This is so relaxing to come home to. I can definitely see us sitting on back patio listening to the waterfall while Abigail runs around the yard and plays with Cajun. I'm so glad we finished this project. I still need to do some landscaping around it and put lighting in the landscaping but all that can be done gradually.

It was worth waiting almost a year for this...

My side of the family is coming over on Friday for a crawfish boil and I can wait to utilize the patio and show everyone Tommy's hard work. Everything looks great!

Christmas Decor

Here is some pictures of some our christmas decor.

The tree

Front door

Ornaments on transom

The entry way

above kitchen cabinets

above another kitchen cabinet

Top of the tree

mantle (with a pink polka-dot stocking for baby girl!)

Merry Christmas to all,

Stop and smell the roses

We finally got around to completing the flower beds around our new patio. Well we did complete all the beds. We still need to purchase everything for the pond and complete that corner. But everything else is complete. And it looks amazing. Everything around the hammock looks so tropical and peaceful. Tommy and I laid on the hammock yesterday afternoon and it was awesome. We both kept saying how great everything looked and how if felt good because we did it ourselves. There's just something in Do-It-Yourself work that makes it turn out even better. Below are a few pics. I don't have a picture with the hammock hanging. We have to take it down because our "lovely" dog does not think it belongs there and will try to rip it to shreads if we leave him alone with it.

And our pond is still left to be done. We like to call it "Phase 3" coming soon.

Other than that not too much has been going on around the Heidbrink household. My mother in law, sister in law and I went to Foley Alabama a few weekends ago to shop at the outlet mall. I didn't find any great deals. We also went to Fairhope, AL which was a pretty cool small town with little speciality downtown shops. It was a very pretty place. And finally we went to Biloxi and spent our left over money at the Hard Rock Casino. I need to catch up the blog on all of our summer activities.

Stay cool,

New patio

Tommy and I both woke up Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with sore backs. Why? you ask...well I had this bright idea to lay a paver patio in out back yard. Yeah, bright idea Stacey. Never, ever put your self (or your spouse) through this. We started out a with a nice grassy area

Then we tore it to pieces with huge machines

Whats that tall mountain in the back??? Well it's a soon to be pond with a waterfall.

We then packed the sand down, and packed it again, and then packed it once more

All the while, our dog was sleeping.

And then we leveled everything with more sand.

And that was only Friday. But thanks to our neighbor and one of Tommy's friends, Fontenot we were able to complete quite a bit in only one day. However, we still have over 3000 pavers to lay down.

The next morning I woke up early and started laying pavers while Tommy worked on the border.

And thanks to Fontenot, Tommy's dad, Nick P, and Dontrell we "thought" we were halfway complete by noon.

We didn't make much progress after lunch. I think we were all tired and hurting. We worked until about 4:00 and then called it a day. Tommy and I woke up Sunday morning and went to church. Our backs and thighs were hurting throughout the entire mass. After mass we rushed home to finish laying the bricks. My Uncle Matt even showed up to help. Much to our surprise as we got close to the end we started to realize that we may not enough of the rectangle pavers. Great, just great. We were left with about a 6' by 9' section and we had no rectangle pavers. We could have finish by noon on Sunday. So we did everything we could and called it a day until Monday morning since the stone place where we got the pavers was closed until 8:00 Monday morning. So at 7:30 we were sitting in the parking lot and trying to look through the fence at their inventory to see if we could see any rectangle pavers in the same color. Luckily they had some. We rushed home to finish so we could return the rental equipment by 1:00 and came home and passed out. I would never do this again but I do have to say that I am very happy with the result. We will definately get alot of use out of this space. Thanks to everyone that helped out! We owe them a BBQ or crawfish boil so we can party on the patio.

But I may need to get more patio furniture before then because I have alot more room to fill in.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

I can see clearly now...

the dust is gone!

I’ve felt very under the weather today so I stayed home from work. I worked from home until about 1:00 and then I got this burst of energy (I think it was all the antibiotics I was taking). Every time I get sick I can’t sit still. This is good but also bad because I don’t lie down and rest. So anyway, I decided to waste away the time scrubbing my kitchen front top to bottom. And then I had to take pictures to prove it. Maybe the clean smell will help me feel better. With the couples shower next weekend I can’t afford to be sick this weekend. I have lots to do and only 1 weekend to do it in.

And in other news…I’m switching positions at work! Woo hoo. I’ve been trying to do this for over 6 months now and I think its finally going to happen next week. My boss sent me an email today saying I could start the transition. The new position should be very interested, a lot more hands on, and probably a lot busier. I can’t wait!