Showing posts with label Landscape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Landscape. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

We Have Landscaping!!!

After waiting countless weeks for landscaping companies to give us reasonable quotes, receiving hate mail from our neighbors, watching our backyard become a real life ant farm and a place our dogs avoided... our front yard and backyard are finally landscaped!!!

I have never been more excited in my adult life! We were so lucky to have chosen a great landscaping company called Colorado Stoneworks. They did everything they promised and more. Plus their prices were very reasonable.

I didn't get good before pictures. But imagine tumble weeds, ants, trash, dog poo, and weeds. It was actually pretty bad.


 In Progress Photos

Here is a really bad picture of a portion of our backyard after the workers started clearing the space.

This is our front yard after the space was cleared. They used some of the dirt to build up mounds. 


After Pictures of the Backyard

 Looking out from the porch. Two trees reduce to one.

 iPhone panaramic view of entire backyard.

 We opted for fake grass in the backyard. So far we actually love it! It took Augusta a bit to get used to it, but now both dogs lay, play and poop on it. FYI, it has a filtration system similar to real grass that allows it to drain urine and rain so it doesn't soak or sit on top.

 We reduced the trees by the brick fence to one. In all we had 4 large oak trees. It felt like they were overtaking the yard. 

We kept it simple and dog friendly with rock, mulch, fake grass and a path made of small pebbles that hardened after they watered it. 


 After Pictures of the Front Yard

 Rock, mulch and large rocks.

 In the Spring, Colorado Stoneworks will be back to plant shrubs, bushes and plants to add some texture and color to the front. 

 Parking Strip

My sister's fiance poured the concrete on the side of the house. This will allow Preston to comfortably park Black Betty. 



I am soo excited for the Spring to get here so we can sit out on the back porch and really enjoy the backyard.

I am interested to see how we like the bright green fake grass in the winter. I am hoping it will be refreshing to look at. The best part about our backyard is our dogs spend so much more time outside basking in the sun and playing. They love the mulch and fake grass. Sometimes the mulch gets scattered, but for the most part it's pretty easy to keep in one place. From time to time we sweep off the grass. And this time we are picking up dog poo every day. I am assuming next spring and every spring we will need to add in some mulch to freshen it up a bit, but at least it's cheap. We didn't get any plants in the back. I am really excited to use large planters with overflowing plants and flowers to add in some color. For us, we really wanted to make sure we kept the back easy to take care of and very dog friendly. 

The front yard is going to look amazing once they plant the shrubs. We are getting a lot of different types of plants that are different colors and textures. It's going to look great!

Our landscaping is pretty impressive don't you think?! lol


Monday, July 16, 2012

What's Cookin' {Braised Beef Short Ribs}

Yesterday I attempted to make Braised Beef Short Ribs from Esquire's cookbook Eat Like a Man. Preston loves ribs. I wanted learn how to make ribs to please him {and to cut back our Chile's bill}. In our deep freeze I found a package of Lawson Angus short ribs. Baby Back Rips... Short Ribs, final conclusion must be similar and equally delicious.

Actually I don't like ribs. I don't know how to negotiate around the bone. I only eat boneless chicken for this reason as well. But I do like BBQ sauce. Instead of surfing the web for a short rib BBQ recipe I decided to go the old fashion route and find a recipe in one of my cookbooks. Ribs, Eat Like a Man, Esquire, dish for Preston = best place to start.

After I spent about 2 hours trying to track down the ingredients {and looking for the perfect flowers for the front yard}

{Love the Colors}
{Purple}

{Favorite, Pink!}

{Uproar Rose Zinnia}
I got down and dirty. I had never braised meat. It was super easy. Actually the entire cooking process was easy. The ingrediants were a little weird especially since the recipe was in a man's cookbook.

{Braising Meat}

{Braised Meat}

{Cooking the Vegetables}

{Picture from the cookbook}

{My Picture}
As you can tell, my picture is very different looking than Esquire's. Cooking time was bout 3 hours in all. The house smelled great and Preston came home after winning a pool tournament ready to chow down.

The dish was an epic fail. The meat fell off the bone, literally, like it was supposed to but the sauce was odd and out of place. I knew the cut of the meat was fatty, but it was extremely chewy. Too chewy. Preston was grateful for the attempt of a home cooked meal, but we ended up dumping out the sauce and saving the bones and meat for the dogs. 

Next time I am going to try cooking short ribs in a crock pot with Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce. My BFF tells me it's amazing.

The recipe was so bad, I'm not even going to share it with you.