Play yard~

Jen is hosting a "Before & After Party" on her blog: Sanctuary Arts at Home and...Sara over at the Thrifty Decor Chick is also hosting a before & after party as well! I think I've just about gotten my side yard completed... so I'm joining in on the party! Here are the before photos of what the side of my house looked like just about two short months ago. (we live on a corner lot) I have been working very hard on this new addition. I put in a cinder block retaining wall and then added a fence on top of that. That alone took one whole week of 10 hour days to complete.... yes, I laid the cinder block myself... it is easy peasy seriously~I dug up the entire lawn area, tossed out the grass & weeds and leveled out the remaining dirt. Our property is on an elevated lot, it was no easy task. Where the gate is in this photo below (see the circle with the goose on it?) is now an opening into our existing backyard. Bags & bags of morter.... truck loads full of cinder block. I had to tear out a long brick planter, cut down and dig out the root of a huge pine tree.... just to get it to this point....

Anywho, now it is an area that I head to first when I go out into the backyard, I think it turned out caute! Below you can see the play house I found at a yard sale for $50. The dark green shade sail was another yard sale find for $10. The bricks I had piled on the other side of the house just waiting for a project like this! The deck is about two weeks old... the step down into the yard was just completed today~ Here is the view from the opening of where the gate used to be.... I moved the same gate to be used way over there...see it?

I've made the brick walkway go around this crepe myrtle tree... I added the retaining stones around the tree as well. Next year I have plans to add a plywood circle/seat on top of those and add a cushion for a round seating area~ I am using some of the plastic baby gate panels as my deck railing. I am just going to use wire ties and attach them to the gazebo panels. I don't want my grandkids to tumble off even though the deck is not that far off the ground.

Of course I needed to get new patio furniture for this area... I got this 6 piece set that was originally $650 for only $250~ The gazebo was $15 at a yard sale. It has a fabric canopy, that won't fit anymore since we had to enlarge the gazebo to fit our deck. I am going to string wire across the entire top of it and just use the rolled bamboo for the gazebo top. I've moved the fountain I had beside the pool into this new area. (craigslist, $75) It is sitting ontop of the old air conditioner cement slab-- that was an unsightly eyesore-- until now. Now, I love the cement slab! I am eventually going to do a mosaic on the cement. I also moved the arch and filled in the back with chicken wire, it will eventually fill in completely with star jasmine. I still consider this area a "work in progress" There is a lot of things I still would like to do...like dig a large hole to place the small trampoline into, cover some of the dirt area with faux grass.... fill up the fountain with water and actually turn it on. Work, work-work... and I love it! If you have linked to my blog and wish to view more... you can click on this linkie right here.