Tag Archives: outdoors

Thanksgiving and our wine arrived!!!

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Today, was thanksgiving here in the US. We are very thankful for our family. Sean and I are camping in a tent, in the backyard tonight, to have some quality time together. It is a little cold out here but not too bad under the sleeping bag and duvet. We will see how it is early in the morning.

Talking about family, I am very proud of my brother who is the assistant winemaker at Moana Park Vineyards, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. He has been kind enough to send over a case of wine which arrived yesterday. I am so excited, the last lot we got was amazing, and I am sure this will be too.

Here are the reserves that we got; Merlot Cabernet, Syrah, Chardonney, Viognier (and yes those stickers are awards and medals on the bottles 🙂 ):

Here are an assortment of wine for the rest of the case (Viognier, Merlot Malbec, Syrah and Chardonney):

Now to enjoy it!!!

Backyard Garden Design 3: Weekend Progress

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As mentioned in the previous post, this weekend’s goal was to start and hopefully get the backyard garden done based on the design shown here.

Thank you to our weekend worker bee helpers – Dieter, Justin, Rob, Brian, and Chris…we wouldn’t be as far along as this without your help. Here is the progress so far.

  1. Draw, measure and line up the design
  2. Dig the lines out to put the sand.
  3. Move the sand and level out to put the wood blanks
  4. End of Day 1 – corners built
  5. Building up the walls (End of Day 2 of the weekend)
      
  6. All brackets hammered in to hold the wall, french drains in (weed fabric, pipes and gravel).
  7. Dirt being leveled out to full in the level/first tier.
      

Not too far away now, next steps:

  • Need more dirt to fill in the levels – probably another truck load
  • Need to find the concrete slab steps
  • Need to order and lay sod

Quick Update: Weekend Projects

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We arrived back from vacation with an action packed weekend planned.

Firstly, I am ecstatic about my first sale on Etsy. I finished making a custom order for chair bags (for 11 in. wide kids chairs).
  

The first picture is the actual color swatch which shows the true color, the second picture is the finished bag but the photo was taken in the evening light.

The other big project this weekend is the backyard – we are having a “working bee”, where friends come over and help us out with manual labor in exchange for food and drinks. The two walled levels are being put into the backyard as designed in the previous post. This weekend we should have the following update done to that post (cross fingers 🙂 ):

Additional steps over the next few weekends:

  • Order and get the wood (DONE)
  • Order and get the sand, gravel and dirt (DONE – except for the gravel)
  • Lay out the step walls  (DONE)
  • Put in french drains behind each step  (DONE)
  • Fill in with soil  (DONE)
  • Order and install concrete step tops
  • Order and get sod
  • Add the additional vegetable garden  (DONE)
  • Place the boarders for the vegetable garden path
  • Fill with stones

I will post photo’s on Monday on the progress of our back yard :-).

My projects, over the weekend is to try to make progress on the:

  1. Four Season’s Quilt
  2. Place mats
  3. New Monster Designs