Let there be Light

This weekend we finally finished installing our backyard malibu lighting, with the addition of  LED lanterns lining the lake. What was meant to be a simple installation turned into, of course, multiple yard projects.

So here's how it went. We purchased this kit (which contained 6 lanterns and two spotlights), to add to our two existing kits that we have throughout the backyard (for a total of 12 malibu lights, 6 spotlights, and 6 lanterns).

Here's the malibu lights we installed a couple months back:

The previous owner already had lanterns, but they looked about 20 years old and weren't working. Here's a side by side of old vs new (old in green):

The installation was easy, but we couldn't help but notice all the trash and muck building up in our corner of the lake:

So we got some trash bags, shovels and pool nets and did our best to scrape it all out. Which helped a little, but all the dirt kept floating back to our corner.

See those raggedy fences on the left side? We're not sure if those are ours or the neighbors, but we did not see the point in them (other than serving as trash magnets), so we decided they had to go.

The first fence was halfway hanging on anyway, so Brad was able to easily pull it out.

The second, however, was going to take a little more work. After a failed lasso attempt, Brad decided to jump in there (shoes and all) to rip the sucker out. Here's the picture play-by-play:

While he was in there, he finished trash duty and cleaned up the neighbor's share too. What a gentleman.

He brought a few souvenirs back on land... gross.

But it was all worth it for this nice unobstructed, trash free lake view...



 After all the dirty work was done, the lake junk magically dispersed and we had finally had sparkly clean water to match our sparkly new lanterns!

Then it was time for some pruning. Our giant palm tree had left us this little yard present:

This dirt patch will be fixed soon, I promise!

As Brad disposed of that, I started collecting stray sticks, which had fallen from this lovely tree:

Recognize this pic? It's my new header!

I have a borderline obsession for sticks, and I couldn't bear to see them trashed, so I decided to swap out the white sticks on the mantle for more of an au-naturale look. Since it was such a nice warm day outside, it seemed more fitting than all the stark winter white up there.

The following day, I was hearing strange noises from above while I was in the office painting. I walked outside to find this roof creature:

He was completing the long overdue task of cleaning out our gutters. We've had some heavy rains the past month and the leaves were overflowing. One less thing for us to worry about!

After laboring on the hot roof for over an hour, Brad decided he'd be the first to break-in the pool (no one's been in it since we've moved here). We decided to finally remove the net and clean it out (we had put it on last month after heavy winds and rains were blowing piles of leaves into the pool). By the time everything was spotless and ready to go, he had cooled down enough to realize that 50-some degree water wasn't such a great idea after all. But it wasn't for nothing... our backyard is finally presentable again:

Ahh yes... much better.

Last night I snapped a few pics of our lights and I'm loving the results!

While I didn't get everything done that I had planned, I'd say we had a productive weekend. I was also able to do some touch up painting and help get Brad's "Man Cave" a little closer to camera ready. More on that next post!