DIY Backyard Spring Garden Makeover #LoveGrowsHere

I love freshening up my yard for spring time. We moved into our house about 3 year ago and I have struggled with the yard. This spring we broke down and paid a landscaping company to come in and get rid of all our desert landscaping in our front yard.  I’m sorry, but I am a grass girl, and I hate Cactus! 🙂  They leveled the yard, got rid of all the terrible cactus, rocks and trees, and brought in dirt so we could plant grass!  We also got a cement sidewalk in place of our flagstone and did curbing around the area! It looks amazing and I am so excited to let the kids run around on the grass next week! {Post coming later} While they were busy with the front yard, I decided to fix up our backyard.  It’s not a huge backyard, beside the fact that there is a mountain back there. When we moved into the house, the deck needed to be re-strained, the lawn was terrible and there were weeds and ugly rocks all over.  We have worked to make the lawn nice, but that’s about it. So this week I decided to do my own DIY Backyard Spring Garden Makeover! I love a little challenge and wanted it to be done before mother’s day.  I had this vision of eating outside surrounded by our gorgeous backyard garden area! It happened yesterday and I was a happy mama!

How I did my DIY Backyard Spring Garden Makeover

Spending time outside in good weather, enjoying the fresh air and listening to my kids play is one of my favorite things.  We have loved our backyard the last three years, but I have always wished it was a little nicer.  The first thing I for my DIY Backyard Spring Garden Makeover was get the table and chairs off the deck. Then I went to work sanding!  I used a electric hand sander for almost all of it.  It actually went faster then I thought it would. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish to sand the whole thing.  Then I cleaned up all the weeds, mowed the lawn and turned the dirt in our sand/dirt box!  The kids love playing in it, and I hate sand, so the dirt is just perfect for that little edge of our garden!

After that edge around the deck was all clean dup with no weeds, we brought in flowers.  I remember as a child planting flowers in our flower garden beds every spring for family night! Last year I tried planting flowers from seed and that didn’t go well. This year I decided to buy them.  I only spent about $14 on flowers.  Flowers are cheap and worth the money to me! I also bought some Brown Mulch for only $2.50 and spread it in-between the flowers to make it look even cleaner.  Who knew mulch was so cheap….obviously I didn’t or I would have put it down a long time ago! It was so fun to plant with my kids and work together to make something look beautiful! They were SO excited about the flower garden! We planted Petunia, Alyssum, Marigolds, and Snapdragon! 

The next thing I did was paint all of my chairs. These chairs are half metal/half plastic.  I used Rust-Oleum American Accents Ultra Cover 2x Semi Gloss White Spray Paint because it works on both metal, plastic, wood and wicker!  It’s pretty awesome!  I did 4 chairs and the edge of the glass table top.  I am super excited about my chairs and I think they look great!

Next, I decided to spray paint my grill.  I didn’t even know it was something I could do, but I tried it and it worked! I did do one thing wrong though :(.  When it comes to spray painting a grill you have to use High Heat Spray Paint. I didn’t, so I will be doing it again soon! Oh well. It was super easy and I love it now!

You can see I painted over the directions. I took a picture of them and will print them out, laminate them and put them on the grill.  It looks so nice now and not as junky! I’m excited to have a backyard party soon!

Next, I begged my husband to stain the deck. We had two days of dry weather before heavy rains came for two days. He got it done right in time, staying up until midnight finishing it!  He is a trooper! And doesn’t it look fantastic?Last I added a few finishing touches! I got some new chair cushions from Walmart for only $25 a piece.  I love the blue! It’s such a great contrast from the red wood stain on the deck!  I also made a little visiting area over by the swing set. I put our older chairs in a little semi circle with our kid chairs and kid table.  We have a little fire pit we will put over there for when we roast hot dogs and marshmallows!  

I also got some adorable finishing touches from Personal Creations! I love my little “Our Flower Garden” Garden Fairy Stake! Isn’t’ she adorable?  I also got the Family Rocks Doormat and plan to have the kids all write their name in permanent marker on it.  My husband nailed this sweet “Mom’s Garden Is Filled With love” Garden Sign out by the flower garden, and last but not least is this lovely Azaela Bonsai from ProPlants! I love that I have a Bonsai plant out there! Now just to keep it alive is the real issue here!I am loving this new space and could spend the majority of my summer out here.  We get the afternoon shade in the backyard which is perfect! I also love that it didn’t cost very much.  It was under $300 and I love every square inch of it!

Are you working on any fun DYI spaces right now?  I would love for you to share with me what you are doing to create something beautiful at your house!

This post was not compensated nor was I asked to link to Personal Creations, but they did offer me some free product to help beautify my area and help create my own #LoveGrowsHere space!