my 30th birthday &
a huge project reveal!

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so behind the scenes in the mclain household, for the past year and a half, there has been a mighty huge undertaking happening. like – so huge that all other house projects have pretty much been on hold and every spare penny has been invested in this huge space that we really needed. it was supposed to be finished by my birthday last year.

but alas, time refused to stand still while we were trying our darndest to get this behemoth thing finished.

you see, our backyard when we moved in was pretty much useless. there was a small cement patio right off the door. other than that there was no outdoor space that was usable. it is all shaded, which is lovely in the summer heat, but that means we have no grass either. on top of that, right off the foundation of our house the land slopes directly down at about a 60 degree angle. so even if we had grass, we would have rolled down the hill had we decided to sit in it. 😉

after some major brain work by the hubs and some serious manual labor from him and some of our bestestest friends, we feverishly worked to complete probably the biggest and most expensive project to date. we actually spent the last two weeks before my birthday party putting the finishing touches on it and getting it ready for the party. and when i say “last two weeks before my birthday party” i mean we were finalizing things like rope lights and cushions about two hours before the guests started showing up.

that is how we roll.

anyways – without further ado – here are some pictures of my birthday party and the new deck in our backyard!!

this is what the deck looks like if you are standing in the back of our yard at the bottom of the hill. you can see underneath it the severity of the slanted ground and how totally useless it was!

this is what you see as soon as you walk out of our back door. the deck starts where the small concrete pad ends and wraps around the back of the house. that is chris’ mom modeling the new couch for you. that couch was gifted to us by some very awesome friends. he built it for their deck and it is almost like it was made to fit there!

this is standing next to the couch and looking at the entire back of the deck. it is glorious how shaded everything is back here – this was taken at about 2 in the afternoon.

if you walk around the back of the house and look towards the corner of the deck this is what you’d see. that is chris’ grammie enjoying the breeze from the new fan we have securely fastened on the rail behind the couch. also – notice rebel’s butt in the corner. 😉

speaking of… obligatory pictures of the cutest dog in the world. 🙂

we scored these orange and black chairs at target on sale for $19/each. we have four of them and eventually that little table between them will be painted to match what we proudly call our oklahoma state chairs. 🙂 you can also see the margarita green table i was working on about a month ago.

thanks to uncle sam and his generous tax refund this year, we were able to invest in a new table and chairs for the deck. we spend a day shopping and comparing prices before we settled on this set from walmart. and we LOVE it. it was pretty easy to assemble and the cushions are super cozy. 🙂

one of my favorite parts of the deck is this huge chalkboard that i made from the pallet that our building came on! people had so much fun (eh – probably a little too much as the night went on) writing happy birthday notes to me on it. it was definitely worth what little bit of work went in to it!

and now on to the birthday party pictures! 🙂 we started with pizza lunch for everyone who came over to start celebrating early.

my dad, my father-in-law and chris’ grammie facing us and thomas and jared with their backs to us

my brother using the worlds best pizza seasoning!

chris – who thinks he is sneaking another piece of pizza!

poor sadie was stuck in her crate while we ate. but don’t feel too sorry for her – i’m sure she had plenty to eat throughout the night.

um really does this picture even need a caption? i want to squeeze him. there. i said it.

oh that wasn’t enough skwishy? how about this too?

sadie sadie, pretty lady – i told you she wasn’t entirely neglected. she got lots of lovin from grandma. 😉

partyin it up with thomas – i. love. this. picture.

the sister-in-law did up these pretty little candles before the party started. i love the way they turned out!

my awesome brother grilled up 30 hamburgers and brats from the butcher shop in longview. the BEST buns i tell you. anyways – our friend ryan decided a paper plate just wouldn’t cut it and made his way through the line with one of my new platters!

that there fella in the back is my cousin terry lee. he is a licensed journeyman and for my birthday he put in two new electrical outlets – one for my computer desk and one for the rope lights on the porch.

and then commenced lots of dancing… (also see the rope lights)

lots of candlelight singing…

a little beagle begging…

and lots of beagle loving. 😉

this pretty moth joined us for quite some time. he really liked the candlelight.

i probably definitely had a couple of beers.

and the next morning i got to look at this which totally rounded out my birthday weekend.

it was an absolute blast and i couldn’t have had a better celebration to take me from my twenties to my thirties. 🙂