Deck Party Success!

I got my final building permit approval the day before my deck party/cookout. I finally have space to host a lot of people. I wanted to celebrate the many people who have helped me with house projects, those who have been supportive of the process, those who lend me tools, my birthday, and the milestone of building a deck. We had lots of food, including tons of cookies! I may have been on a baking frenzy. I had some self-rising flour I needed to use (or it wouldn't be self rising any longer) so I made some sugar cookies and it just spiraled from there... milk chocolate chip, toffee & milk chocolate chip, zucchini with craisins & coconut & chocolate chip. At least 60 people came throughout the day and all (adults, kids, and dogs) seemed to be having a good time! This cutie even got to use scrap wood as building blocks.

My shade tree... a little less shady

I had planned to do a blog post devoted to the big tree in my backyard because the shade it provided while building the deck was crucial {+1}! Those same shady leaves weighed down the branch that fell on my deck on Saturday before last{-1}. But the limbs prevented the big branch from doing any damage to the deck {+1}. My mom and I had to spend that Sunday morning after early church cutting the branch apart {-1}. I got to use a chainsaw {+1}. [And +1 to Whitney for letting me borrow her electric chainsaw!]

Still in the positives! It could have been a lot worse.

Deck Done!

The deck is completely built and passed inspection!

Everything else to be done to the deck is protective or cosmetic (no fears... I'll blog about that too).

Mother Nature initiates my deck

I planned to add the finishing touches to my deck tomorrow since the weather is supposed to be in the low 80s and sunny. A storm blew through while I was gone today and decided to initiate my deck to living under a big tree. I guess I'll be spending most of tomorrow taking care of this branch instead. My neighbors were kind enough to send me pictures of the branch before I returned in the evening so I wasn't shocked when getting home.

On the bright side, this was the branch that was mostly over my house, so my gutters won't get as clogged this fall.