Tag: outside

Life

My dog is adorable

Jessica Smith

I can’t help myself sometimes… I just need to share pictures of my dog. He is adorable and I pretty much adore him. He’s our test baby and we spoil him like crazy. This weekend we took him to the river to swim. As you’ll see from the photos, he had a truly wonderful time.

Rem and B

Cheesin’ it.

s

“S” for “Smith”

… except I didn’t carve it. I would feel like I’m hurting the poor tree.

Smiling b

Handsome hubby!

smiling rem

Happy, happy, happy dog.

smiling b2

“Stop taking pictures of me!”

stripe trail

The trail to Doggy Beach. Red Stripe Trail fo lyfe.

Swimmer Dog

Swimmer dog 🙂

Swimmer dog1

Wet dog.

swimmer dog3

Content dog.

swimmer dog4

Check out that form!

swimmer rem

Get the stick, get the stick, get the stick!!!!

He sure is a pretty dog.

Garden, Uncategorized

My dad, my landscaping hero

Jessica Smith

My dad is my hero. Not because of the sweet things he does for me and Brian, but because he’s an all-around wonderful person.

This weekend when Brian and I went to the beach with our friends, my dad also became my landscaping hero (as if he wasn’t already).

I knew he wanted to reapply black top to our driveway, so while we were away he came over and transformed our driveway.

This photo does not do our driveway justice. It is looking fly! Also, notice the rocks alongside of the driveway!? They are finished, too. Only took a few months and us paying someone to finish it. Oh well.

New Driveway

That would have been awesome in itself, but he didn’t stop there. He also removed our old well poll from the front yard, which I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it is.

Old well

But wait, there is more! He planted begonias in our landscaping and put out American flags around our house!

American Flags

Bogonias

Isn’t he just awesome!? It was so nice to come home and be proud of the way my house looks, and my dad has been instrumental in making our house look great.

While I’m talking about the outside of my house, here are some pretty pictures of plants around the yard:

Black Eyed Susan
 Purple Cone Flower

Speedwell butterfly

Speedwell

And here are my dead stumps!

Dead stump

Dead stump2

Tonight we are tackling the lamp post. I’d bought a new post altogether (even though I told dad I should just spray paint the old one), but I’m going to return it. I spray painted the old one with black paint to make it look just like new. OK, it doesn’t really look like new up close, but who really examines a lamp post closely?

Lamp post prep

Here’s a shot of my house as a whole.

House exterior

A HUGE thank you to my dad for all of the help and positive encouragement he’s given us to tackle the landscaping at our first home. It’s been a ton of work, but I am really proud of how far we’ve come.

Home Improvement

New lattice

Jessica Smith

Today I am tired. Seriously tired. My weekend was packed with an oyster night, painting of built-ins and replacement of old lattice.

If that doesn’t sound tiring to you, well then I am envious. But add 6+ hours of being outside in what seemed like 100% humidity… I guess it is no surprised I could fall asleep pretty much anywhere tonight. Anyway, the important thing is that I can cross another nagging project off of my list! Our lattice.

I of course have no before picture of this project, but picture nasty, rotten wooden lattice hiding our garbage cans. Except it didn’t hide our cans… it came about 6-8″ shy of covering our recycling bin.

Did I mention it was rotten? So rotten that the lattice simply peeled away and the posts came out of the ground with a few good kicks.

Once the lattice was out of the ground and out of the way, my dad and I got to digging new post holes. Our plan was to dig 18″ holes and cement the new posts into the ground for a more sturdier garbage hider.

Post digging

Here’s where I add that my bossy dad did most of the work for this project. I assisted and pointed out when he was building things wrong 🙂 He is awesome.

After we dug two holes up front, we built a frame out of pressure-treated 2″x4″s and attached the lattice — I opted for the plastic version instead of the wooden lattice. We plopped it into the holes and made it level before adding dry cement.

lattice edge

Then we started working on the other side. Same thing… dig hole, build frame, attach lattice. When everything was level, we added water to our cement to permanently affix the lattice in the ground. We then started tackling the brick pavers — we smoothed the ground out beneath the already-existing pavers before adding patio sand. We threw some tarp down and placed the stones back in the garbage area. Nice and flat! Woo!

At that point, the cement was dry, so we put all of the dirt back on top of the cement and around the base of the enclosure.

Tah-da!

LatticeBuh-bye ugly lattice, hello nicely hidden garbage cans

IMG_3860

And in case you were wondering how bad the old lattice really was… here it is waiting to be taken to the dump next to our new stuff. Gross!

Lattice Old V New… Go Ravens!