PaperlessPOST

I'm in the mids of planning a Birthday party for my daughter who's turning 4 at the end of the month. I've always been using Evite to send out electronic invitations but this time I used PaperlessPOST and they have the cutest designs plus managing of the invitations is very easy. Here's the one I chose for my munchkin.

Quarry chronicles continued

Last weekend we kept on rocking. We moved some pavers that were used as a border and created a small patio. This year I'm using the deck mostly as play space for kids so I don't want to put the table there. With the backyard so big it's nice to have multiple entertaining spots. This project was fairly simple, we just laid some paving sand as a base and then laid out the pavers. It's not perfect but it's also not forever and for a $100 investment looks great to me!

I love the discoloration of the pavers. These are basic cement pavers and I saw them in Home Depot this weekend and they are quite unattractive when new but the patina makes them really pretty.
The work is not done yet we still need to move the stones from one area to another and plant some grass.

Rocky Road

I'm in the process of rearranging our backyard. It took me over a year to realize that I needed to simplify it. It is going to be awhile before we are able to have it professionaly redone the way we want it to be, so for now I am looking for temporary solution which will make it more user friendly with a lot of hard work and a little investing. The least expensive way is to reuse all the stones that are already there. I have a hard time believing it can be attractive, so here's some inspirational pictures to help me decide which direction I want to go.

 via

 via

 via

 via

 via

Beautiful, right? The last picture applies most to my design as it's basically rock on rock on rock. I will be mixing many types of stone too. The work is set to begin tomorrow, it's going to be a busy weekend!

Rain, rain go away!

Living on the river has been lovely. But my little town is known to get flooded quite often so when it rains I'm always a little bit concerned, especially when it rains a lot.
Water levels in the river were very low last couple of months. On Tuesday evening it was maybe 20 inches deep. Then it started to rain and it didn't stop the whole day and this is what happened.


This is Wednesday morning...

 ...and in the afternoon.

 

And this is now

 

Thankfully, it finally stopped raining. We are ok, our sump pumps worked hard all night but except for some seepage in the basement no other damage was done. I hope our neighbors accross the river can say the same.

Btw, it's time to start shopping for a generator. If we lost power and sump pumps didn't pump our water heater and fernus would be under water.

P.S. Sorry for the poor quality of pictures. They were taken with the phone through the window.