Gather Little by Little

As I’m sure you might have noticed, life here in “Gibble” land has been real busy for the past few weeks. Frankly for he past few months. I love being busy, as I’m not one to enjoy sitting still much, but a little less busy might be a good thing right now!

Let me just share a few updates on things I’ve been doing/working on. I know many of you enjoy hearing updates on the more personal aspects of my life. I can’t for the life of me figure out why though! Anyway, here you go:

Creek side patio

I started working on the patio by our creek again yesterday. The picture above is the original I took, but I’ll post some new pictures once I’ve made a little more progress. I did make a little progress.

I found some weed block left over by the previous homeowners, and purchased some sand and a little mortar from local Lowe’s.  I spread the weed block down, then spread the sand over it to about a 1 1/2″ depth. I also started gathering some additional stones for the floor. My plan for today was to finished getting the stones laid in and then begin working on the back retaining wall using some rocks and mortar. But it would seem God felt we needed some rain more, which is probably very true. Maybe tomorrow!

In between the rocks we’ll plant some strong ground cover to give it a real natural look. I’m also using some of the logs I cut up from a tree that fell during a storm to make a nice rustic bench for the patio. It will look much like this one when I’m through. Cost? Less than $50.00 (mostly the sand).

Rock walkway

I wasn’t the only one busy, my wife was too. I have been placing large stones on the walkway leading up to our back deck (the main entrance to our home). My wife decided to finally finish it up. She dug out the area, seated the rocks down in some soft dirt, and filled in the gaps with some Irish moss.

I was a little concerned that the rain might wash it out, so I grabbed some scrap 4x4s that were up under the deck and we made a nice border to go around it. It’s obviously not done yet, but hopefully we’ll get it finished up this week. We have to finish filling the dirt in on the sides, add some more moss and clean off the  soil.

Our plan is to put a raised flower bed to the right of this picture (taken from our deck) and another bed to the left that will have a dry creek bed effect to it. The path up to our vegetable garden is just to the left of this picture. We plan to build a small bridge from the deck over to the path going up to the vegetable garden. The bridge would go over the dry creek bed. That’s the plan anyway. Cost? $0.00.

Empty Cabin Media

Two fairly large Empty Cabin Media efforts have been keeping me busy when I’m not working outside. One is a really slick looking site for a beautiful hotel in Barbados. We’re hoping that site will go live very soon. Once it does I’ll share it with you. The site uses the Thesis theme for WordPress and is a really awesome example of what can be accomplished with it.

I’ve also done some smaller site work for people using Thesis recently as well:

• Maria Calanchini.com – Maria is an internet marketer. She contacted me and I did the logo and layout work for her site.
• Your Money Relationship – I helped Adam out a bit with some Thesis spacing and layout issues.
• Dogfood Advisor – I haven’t done much custom work on Mike’s site yet, as he focused on content, but I have been doing a great deal of blog coaching with him. I think his site is going to be a big hit once he formally rolls it out. He has some great content out there.

I have a few more I’ve worked on as well, but my client’s are ready to roll them out just yet.

I also started a new service this month. Are you interested in blogging but just want to write? I’ll take care of the technical details for you. This includes customizing your site, hosting, WordPress installation and management, backups, upgrades, etc. All you have to do is write. I’m doing this for two clients already.  If you’re interested, drop me a line and let me know.

Carnivals

I was included in a few carnivals this week:

• Carnival of Money Stories: May Two-Four Edition hosted at PT Money
  
• 178th Festival of Frugality hosted at Living Almost Large
• Carnival of Debt Reduction

The Gathering

Here are my favorite reads of the week from my blogroll this week:

• 5 Things I LOVE about Personal Finance @ Do You Dave Ramsey
• Why Today is Quite Possibly the Best Time Ever for First Time Homebuyers @ Moolanomy
• Extravagant Giving @ Christian PF
• Credit CARD Act of 2009 – Good or Bad? @ Cash Money Life
• The CD Ladder: A Different Way to Save @ PT Money
• I Don’t Want A Gift, But Thank You. @ My Two Dollars
• What Would You Do If You Were Fired? @ Free Money Finance