here is stitch keeping me company. i dont think he likes the heat too much.

well this picture shows our retaining wall project about two weeks in. unfortunately before shots of the yard are all lost somewhere in the digital world. anyways this is another project that we saved a ton of money on. all the dirt was dug and moved by hand since we were not able to bring any kind of heavy equipment to the back yard.
the yard slopes up away from the patio. by leveling out the area directly in front of the patio we were able to add a lot more space for chairs and tables for those big family get-togethers. all the old sod sat on the patio for a few weeks while the dirt was used to backfill behind the retaining wall. to this date we are still throwing away sod in our yard waste bin a little at a time.
tadda! well here is the finished product with the new sod and a new set of solar lights. it took at whole month of moving digging, moving dirt, and setting up the wall blocks but in the end all that hard work was worth it. we now have the extra space we wanted and something nice to look at out our kitchen window. the curved steps were a last minute idea but i think the outcome is beautiful and definitely adds character