The Front Yard Reveal

I know it's been a while since I've written a blog post on this side of my site. Let's just say that a lot has happened since then. I turned 25, graduated from college, and just signed my first offer letter to my full-time job. So yeah, there's a lot that just happened.

But enough talking about me here, let's talk about the front yard. Since February this year, I've been keeping you guys in the loop about every single update that happened in our front yard. After the highs and the lows of what happened, I can finally officially say, welcome to our newly renovated front yard!

There were a lot of pros and cons that came along that way when working on this project. From capturing and creating what we wanted for the next decade or so to dealing with the elements that came along the way. My mom and I managed to push through this whole project from February 2023 till May to get this done right when I just graduated. Honestly, I can only say how proud I am of this area!

Here are a few highlights that I wanted to point out here, let's first talk about the major change that we did. The pavement!

When working on the pavement, my mom and I immediately knew 100% that the old concrete on the floor needed to be removed. We saw how dated and old it was. The driveway and our front door walkway needed some love, and we were going to do that.

When it came to deciding what kind of pavement we needed to use for the driveway, the color scheme was important. It was necessary to ask ourselves what existing colors help create flow throughout the house. When looking at the current state of our home, we had a red color roof, grey painted house, and red brick.

As my mom and I kept looking at the preexisting brick that was around my house, my mom and I thought about how the brick was kind of an eye-sore when figuring out if it would look nice with the pavement.

We then decided too that we were going to remove the brick and have a new tile to continue that flow. It was a decision that needed to happen because look how AMAZING that new tiling is with our new pavement, the color of the house, and the roof!

Side note: as much as I wanted to show you how beautiful our new house number sign is, we had to cover it due to privacy concerns.

Next highlight that I wanted to show you is our three new tree additions to our front yard!

For my Instagram followers that have been following me around on my stories, I'm very sure you are aware of the three new additions. Of course it's the Japanese Maple trees that my mom bought. My mom has always wanted to replant Japanese Maple trees throughout our front yard.

The reason for that is due to the fact that we use to have 3 different Japanese Maple trees that existed but all died a long time ago. Yeah, we don't really talk about that.... But I will say that due to my mom's courage to save and finally break the bank. I am soo glad to say that it finally is a dream come true for her.

When placing these trees, we had to make sure that where a placed it was where we knew it was beneficial for all three trees. As Japanese Maple trees to tolerate direct sun for a long period, we needed to make sure the spots that we place were the right location for it to survive.

One small detail that I love about these new spots for the JMT, is the mini Pagaodas that came with it, long with a meditation frog statue! It's just the small details that make the whole thing feel complete.

Since we are now talking about plants, I wanted to talk about the newly planted area near the sidewalk of our home. In the past, that area was a lot smaller, but at the same time, nothing was growing there. Therefore, in order to bring the place to life, we decided to grow some Lantanas, Yellow Yarrows, and Ice plants. Since this spot get a lot of light, we needed to make sure that what we were growing can tolerate that condition.

Another small detail that I personally believe makes a huge difference it the fact that I bought these solar lights the shine directly on the two trees that you see above. As you can see in the image above, I was able to add two lights that helped brighten up the JMT and one on my lime tree at night. It honestly brings the space to life at night, and doesn't feel neglected in the dark.

Since we are talking about the garden near the sidewalk, lets talk about the retaining wall shall we? The retaining wall was something that we needed to fix for some time. Orignally, we had red brick that was a divider from our front yard to the sidewalk. But over time, it started to lean towards the sidewalk where it started to become a little bit of a hazard for people walking by. Therefore to fix the issue, my mom put some money down to redo the retaining wall and give it a BIG upgrade.

A thought that my mom and I considered was making it a place where people could sit, if they wanted to. Since our street is very popular for people walking in the morning, my mom had the height of the retaining wall be at the right place were if people wanted to sit down a take a breather, they can do so at our retaining wall. Just a little small nice gesture for those who need to relax you know?

As I wrap up this small tour of our rennovated front yard, I wanted to point out our plants that we grew in our pathway to the front door. Before when this house was just being remodeled, we had lavenders and white rocks that were in the front. When remodeling, I really wanted to keep the lavenders, because they were soo beautiful, plus they smelled nice. Luckily, our contractors were amazing and they helped us move it futher back to create more walkway space. To also add on, some changes that we made with our walkway plants was changing out the rocks to be more of a river rock. I personally thought by having river rocks instead, it ties all the colors together. A final touch that my mom came up with last minute was purchasing roses for this area. Since we orignally had to cut down our rose bushes that were against the fence, my mom decided to buy small rose trees that now stand between our lavenders. Nice final touch right?

That pretty much wraps up our front yard tour. Thank you so much for being patient with me in creating this blog post. From finally having a full time job to still mentally transition being back up in the bay now, it a lot that is going on at the moment.

I am so glad to share with you the process that my mom and I had to overcome for the past few months since February 2023 on my Instagram story. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly reccommend seeing on my Instagram Story highlights. Well, that's pretty much it for me, I'm gonna go back to finishing up some work stuff now, and I'll talk to you all later!