How I Spent my Holiday Weekend

Disclaimer: Lest any of you reading this get the wrong idea regarding #7 below, I did NOT do this all by myself. I laid out the pavers alone but Nathan did about 98 % of the grunt work, with some help from Benj. Just making sure he gets the credit he absolutely deserves! He also fixed a hole under our fence so that Kona can get out of the yard!

We recently decided to put a patio in our backyard. We can't really sit on our front porch and enjoy it because of all the "crazies" running around out there (but it does provide some pretty good entertainment sometimes). So this was the weekend designated to work on the project. Nathan and I both have off work (starting last Friday) through the end of this week so we thought we'd try to get it all taken care of. I took pictures to document the process. Here's how it went.

Since once again I'm having trouble formatting pictures, I'm going to provide commentary in a list and you'll have to figure out which pics they go with (hint: "Left to right, top to bottom. Group of words makes a sentence. Take Tylenol for any headaches, Midol for any cramps.")

1. On Saturday my in-laws came up and helps us dig out the area for the patio. The first two pics are of that.
2. This morning Nathan and I got up EARLY and headed out to put down the weed control landscaping fabric.
3. We had our delivery of 450 pavers, 25 bags of paver sand, and 75 bags of paver base scheduled for delivery "sometime Monday morning". At 8:05 I got a call from the Lowe's folks asking if they could deliver it now. Why yes, yes you can. This means I don't have to wait around all day for you! Here's what it looked like when it came of the truck.
4. Paver base - about 63 bags worth. That little tool sitting on the base is used to produce...
5. Flat paver base. And there's all the empty bags. :)
6. Here's the next step - the sand, all smooshed down (and in the background you see Nathan and Benj, our awesome friend that helped us).
7. This is what I did while Nathan and Benj went to Lowe's to get Quicrete to put in the cracks. No, I'm not kidding. I laid all except about 10 of those all by myself. I'm already paying for it, but isn't it beautiful?
8. Here's what's left over - not a lot. We have enough to do another little section maybe, and we have to make a spot for the chiminea we're going to get also.
   
9. And finally, the other project we had this weekend - a little container garden. We've got 4 tomato plants, one each of red, yellow and orange bell peppers, one jalapeno peper, two arugula, and one basil. Hopefully they'll produce something.

We are also going to be doing other stuff to the yard (landscaping, etc.) so I will be posting pics of that as we do it also. It's going to be GREAT! :)

Hope you're all enjoying the weekend! And a HUGE thank you to all the veterans - past and present - who do their jobs to keep us safe!!