Wedding Celebration and Backyard DIY Projects

 We have been busy here in the Lamperski household since getting back from our wedding/honeymoon, a little over a month ago.  It was pretty hard for me to get back into the swing of things once we arrived back home.  Normally I don't have too hard of a time returning from vacataion, but this time I did.  I think it was just sort of setting in that it was all over, the long 15 months of being engaged and the wedding had already come and gone.  It was wonderful, but I did miss being in Negril, missed our wedding and missed being around everyone that was there with us. 

Some of our good friends here in Charlotte organized and threw a wedding celebration party for us when we returned.  They put a lot of planning into the event and it was nice to get together with so many friends that weren't able to come with us to Jamaica, but wanted to celebrate with us upon our arrival back to Charlotte.  We are very grateful to have such good friends in our lives!  Here are some pictures of the fun we had!

sending us off on our cab ride back home

Since we have gotten back the weather has turned to summer, and we have been doing a lot of work to our backyard.  When we moved in to the house there was not too much going on in our backyard.  There were a couple old putt putt greens back there, and a ton of leaves!  With all the trees, the yard keeps us busy picking up sticks that fall and raking up leaves.  We took apart the putt putts, as we had no use for them, and planted flowers and bushes.  We decided to make a path to our backyard where we dug out and built a fire pit area. 

We were going to wait on making a path, but one day while we were back there working we just decided to start making one with some firewood logs we had.  We dug out path lines with a shovel and began laying the logs as a frame.  Then we raked up the path and laid down some pavers.  We then filled in the rest of the path with pea pebbles.  It looked so good, we decided to fill in the area around the fire pit with the pea pebbles as well.  We also used two tree stumps for seats, and made a large bench for another seating area.  We had an old table top we used and Chris built legs for it to make the bench.  I sewed together a cushion for the top, as well as painted the table green.  It is very comfy!

We LOVE how the path and fire pit area turned out.  We hung globe lights from the trees around the area and added some paper lanters and it looks like a beach party back there!  We bring out wireless speakers to add music and it is the perfect setting out there!

We also picked up a nice big 11' umbrella for our patio, which gives us nice shade from the sun and allows us to sit out back when it is raining, which is has been doing a lot of lately!

We love our backyard now, it is so peaceful and fun, we hope to do some entertaining this summer!