Easter Weekend

Yup, I haven't posted in over a month.  I blame it on a few things.  1) We haven't done anything exciting lately.  2) We have had several people visiting.  3) I've been lazy.  4) It's my blog I can do whatever I want with it.

Moving right along...

Easter weekend proved to be a very productive weekend.  Josh came to visit the week leading up to it and Matt's parents came the weekend of.  Two big projects were accomplished: mulching and chainsaw massacre-ing the backyard and redoing the laundry room.  This post will cover the backyard.  The laundry room isn't completely done yet so that'll come later.  I wish I had more before/after shots, but sometimes I just want to get the project done I don't take the time to document the horrible-ness that we're starting with.  Such is life... here is what I have in terms of before and afters.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Basically the moral of those pictures is this:  overgrown and under mulched.  The house was left 2 years untouched before we bought it so we are playing catch up.  So we needed to cut things WAY back and/or get rid of them completely and mulch in the back to make it look more landscaped.  Done and done.  The after pictures are so much better than the before pictures (thank goodness!)  The mulching actually didn't take as long as I expected - less than a day - and it makes such a big impact.  Cutting everything back really helps, too.  Not only does it look better, but it's better for the plants, too.  Plus, look at those tulips.  They're huge and in full bloom right now.

Oh, and this is what I found when I came inside from taking these pictures: