Blogger Parade Of Homes: Outside

Here's my house. Since I missed the week that we did entrances, I threw in the front of the house, too. I should have taken some pics earlier in the summer when I had more color. Most of my flowers have died. I'm down to one hanging basket. There used to be more and one big beautiful petunia right there on that pillar. But they got stolen. Yep... that's what I said. It's great living in the city. Hey, who's that up there on the porch?

Why.... it's Griffey! He just came from the groomer where he had a bath and a haircut. No I don't normally dress him in bandanas. The groomer did that.
Here's where I sit and swing. Love love love my swing. It was a requirement when I was house hunting. I wouldn't even look at a house if it didn't have a big ole' front porch with a swing.
Here's the before photo of the house when I bought it. Before new windows and siding. Can you believe the difference? I sometimes still can't believe it's the same house.
Now for my big summer project of '03. This is my beautiful deck where there used to be nothing. I designed this myself. It was built by a friend. I wanted to be able to sit on the deck and look out into the yard, not at the railing, so I left it open with the big steps. They're also great for extra seating when I have parties. This is the view when you're standing by the firepit looking back at the house.

Before photo. Sorry it's blurry. It's a digital pic of an old photo. This is after the windows/siding project but before the deck was built.
The start of the deck project and also before the retaining wall was built as you can see over there on the side under my big shade tree.
And this is the view from the deck now. Well, actually for the purpose of photographing it, it's from the upstairs window. It was the only way to get all of it in a pic. I designed the whole thing. There used to be a concrete pad where the firepit is and that was it. I had the wall built and dug out the concrete pad for an extra seating area. I had always wanted a firepit and a fountain. The fountain is awesome to listen to when sitting outside. Unfortunately, I don't use the firepit as often as I'd like to. Oh and that's my garage.
Before photos of how the backyard looked before the big landscaping project and before the garage got new paint to match the house. We had just started busting up the concrete pad when I thought to run and grab my camera. No... my friend is not trying to avoid a photo. He's just hard at work digging the hole to set the posts in. Guess where all that concrete ended up? The landscaping company was going to charge me $600 to bust it up and haul it away. So being the thrifty gal that I am, we decided to bust it up ourselves and toss it under the deck. Seemed like a good idea at the time. It was pure torture. I learned how it feels to work on one of those prison chain gangs busting up and hauling rock. I regreted that decision with every heavy chunk of concrete I had to haul 20 feet across the yard and toss under the floorboards which were already being set in place. But after a couple of days of hell we were done and it was worth the torture to save that money.
I love my impatiens. This is my driveway. It runs alongside my house to the garage at the back of the property. So there you have it. My outside. Go check out the rest of the tour at Shannon's.