Rewarding Weekend of Work

Our family enjoyed a rewarding weekend of work. When we purchased our Arizona home the front of the house was interesting to say the least.We had weeping juniper all over the front yard which had pretty much died and was just a ton of sticks. Throughout the week the kids and I decided to start raking up the sticks and cleaning up the debris that was all over the place; this of course got my hubby all sorts of interested in helping beautify the front of our home!


Paul and I normally wake up pretty early, so we started by painting our front door and the trim.

Then we decided after cleaning up the yard that we should plant some flowers around the trees. Mind you I was super simple and purchased petunias. Funny thing was when I asked the neighbor where I could purchase flowers and what worked well around here she had never heard of petunias. I am so glad that our local Walmart had some. Those I know had to deal with! :)

Of course while I was at Walmart I couldn't settle on just buying flowers so I decided that I would purchase our families very first palm tree. Don't get me wrong we do have a palm in our back yard but it just came with the house and wasn't ours. So I had to get a baby palm to grow with our family in our new home.


It was multiple days of hard work but it is so rewarding each time I go out the front door to see all of the work we did as a family to make the outside of our home as beautiful as the inside of our home. Here is a picture of the front of the house.

So I have to share a funny note about the yard work. We don't have grass here. There really aren't a lot of homes that do have grass I am sure because water is expensive and the heat is horrible in the summer. But our yard is all zero-scaped; therefore entirely rocks of a variety of colors. So in Utah I would go out each week and mow our lawn; here I have to go out each week and use the leaf blower/vacuum combo to blow and vacuum all of the rocks. I thought this was the craziest idea ever and thought for sure those things would suck up all of the rocks. I was wrong! It is brilliant! We purchased The Works all in one combo unit. Nothing to change out just a flip of a switch and it goes from the blower to the vacuum and it mulches also so we were able to use a lot of the debris for mulch around the plants and trees!! Arizona is SOOO different that what I am used to.

Time to wrap this post up for now but I thought I would share the little bit of Halloween decor that I put up yesterday in the front window.