It's time for a facelift!

Haha, no worries, I'm not going in for plastic surgery, but my yard already has! I love my house, it is a cute little Cape Cod style house (fitting for the girl who grew up on Cape Cod) near Willow Lawn. Everything about it is charming... except for the back yard. Every time I walk into my backyard I am stressed out from the overgrowth of bushes and trees, the weeds, etc. etc. It gets complicated mowing around the outside because of all the bushes. 

Last weekend I spent 4 CJ hours on Saturday weeding my front, and 4 CJ hours on Sunday mulching the front and weeding part of the back. My uncle spent 4 Uncle Terry hours fixing up the area near my A/C unit. The front yard looked pretty good, and the area my uncle worked on looked AMAZING! (see below)

Looks so nice!

My azalea is no longer being suffocated by weeds! Thanks Terry!

So, I purchased this Angie's list deal for 16 hours of man labor! Yup, I got two guys for almost eight hours and they really did a good job working on my back yard. You can see below for the before and after pictures. It is a pretty stark difference! Now I just need to decide what I'm going to do with all this free space!

 Before (walkway to back)

After (walkway to back)

Another after shot of the walkway

The walkway, on its own, is the greatest part. Can you see how far to the left my patio goes? I didn't even know that! If you look at the before photo you can see that most of the patio was covered!

Continuing on into the yard here is before of the left side

Before (left side of yard)

After (left side of my yard)

Does anyone see a difference here?!?! :)

Here is another before of the left side of the yard

After (left side of yard)

WOWSA! Ok let's move onto the other side of the yard? I mean, I thought 16 hours of man labor wouldn't get nearly as much done as what they got done today. 

Before (right side of my yard) 

After (right side of my yard) and yes I fixed the fence already

After (right side of my yard)

Before (right side of yard)

After (right side)

See all the brush in that truck? Yeah that came from my house!

And don't worry, Millie was keeping watch, just to make sure the guys were doing their jobs!

Millie checking out what's going
on in the backyard!

So welcome to my yard facelift! I'm really excited about it!

Why, oh why, do the weekends go by so fast?!?!

Is it Monday already?!?! I just need another day! This weekend was pretty busy for me. Friday night was pretty chill as I hung out with Laura and Bonnie. It was relaxing!

Theeeeennnnn Saturday happened! I had brunch with the Richmond Bible Study ladies at Toast... YUM!

This is called The Chicken and the Egg (DELICIOUS)

While we were at brunch and it was pouring rain out, I decided that I would go home and weed my front yard (well the beds where the bushes are anyway). I heard a rumor that its easier to pull the weeds up when the ground is wet, which is probably true. Four hours later, I had pretty much no weeds, seven 30 gallon bags of trash and was a verrrry dirty girl, so I took a shower before Amanda and Sam came over to hang out.

I didn't think about doing a before picture on both sides, but this
is the before photo on the left side

After weeding... oh hey there is actually a bed there!

This was only halfway through but it made me laugh!

Then I put on a dress and headed out to the engagement party for Lila and Patrick!



Sunday I woke up and my uncle came over at 10:30 with his truck so we could go get some mulch at Lowe's. After getting the mulch, he went to work on my backyard while I mulched that whole area that I weeded on Saturday.

Looks so fancy with mulch in it!

Then I got started on another area of weeds in the backyard.

This was alllllll weeds... and it's only a small area but it was progress!

Here is what my uncle worked on! If you have ever seen this
area of my yard, it was ALSO all weeds! He's so great!

Four hours later, seven 42 gallon bags of trash, lots of tree parts in my backyard, and another VERY dirty girl, I took a shower to get ready to head out to Dr. Browning's retirement celebration. It was really a beautiful service and I will definitely miss him!

Well... this is disturbing...

Another fun-filled weekend of travel!

Last week I heard through the grapevine that my old coworker was going to be in Richmond for the week from Dallas. We tried to get together but O&M had her schedule pretty tied up the whole time she was there. So, instead, I decided that since I would be at the airport anyway on Friday that we could meet for breakfast or lunch. So we did! It was great to see Kelli before I left town for the family wedding fun!

Kelli and me

Then I headed through security to wait for my flight to board. Off to Massachusetts I went! Friday afternoon my brother Rich, his wife Lea and my nephew Charlie arrived at Boston Logan airport shortly after I did. No worries I still had time to take this photo in the airport...

This is a life sized cup of Dunkin Donuts Coffee

So I picked up some coffee for myself and Rich and some water for Charlie and diet Coke for Lea and we were on our way to the hotel and/or the rehearsal.

Fanciest welcome basket I ever got!

Fountain outside rehearsal dinner

Charlie and Kaitlin just having some pizza

Saturday we all got up, went down for some breakfast, and then had a little fun at the pool before getting ready for the wedding.

Picture this... 95 degrees, wedding mass, no air conditioning... it definitely makes for a HOT bunch of people, that's for sure! However, you can't control the weather, and I certainly would never have thought that it would be 95 degrees in Massachusetts on the first weekend of June, so we just kind of suffered through it. 

Handsome Scotty, Elena and me

Cute

Best Ring Master EVER!

My handsome nephews!

We can NEVER get everyone to look at the same camera

Johnson family!

Scotty and me!

He's so grown up!

So, then we had a little time to kill between the wedding and the reception, so we found an ice cream shop to go to... yummy! Poor Charlie wasn't feeling well... he had a little puke session on his tux and ended up like this... poor little guy, he didn't even make it to the reception

Then the rest of us headed off to the reception (which also had A/C problems) and partied!

Steph and Tom

Kelly, me and Ivana

I'm fairly certain she took this photo

Mom and Dad dancing (Side note, at nearly 42 years they were
3rd place in the who's been married the longest competition!)

Jane and Terry dancing

Four of the five - Anne, Jane, Richard and Mom

Hmmm... Terry and Kaitlin

Kaitlin and me

Dancing

Jane and Kaitlin

Kelly, Uncle Richard, and Kaitlin

Jane and Terry

Somehow I never ended up with a photo of the bride and groom! Whoops! So the next day we woke up, (I wasn't feeling so hot from my beverage choices the night before... whoops!) went to Richard and Rita's and then headed back to the airport for our flights. Rich and Lea's gate was right next to mine so we got to hang out until I boarded my flight!

Charlie got a donut!