A New Backyard Play Area

Today I tackled our backyard yuck. We made this "garden" area a couple of years ago, but never got around to growing anything in it except a few weeds. I wanted to give the little misters a play area so we can enjoy our backyard this summer.

BEFORE:

My in laws gave me a few tree stumps this weekend when I asked for some. I thought the boys would have fun jumping off them, climbing on them and even building bridges between with some of my scrap wood.

AFTER:

I got a couple bags of river rock pebbles because my boys absolutely LOVE rocks.  The red wood chips were already there, but the white wood chips we laid down for even more natural textures. AND then the main attraction... SAND. I went for the more expensive (about fifty cents more) white sand for the new sand box. The box is an old rubber maid container (one of those long flat under the bed ones). I wanted something with a lid, but don't like the big "kids" sand boxes- Plus it was FREE. I decided to bury it a little to keep it stationary. All the bricks and bigger rocks I found around our yard.

TEXTURES:

I spent about $22 on the whole project. I hope to get a few more stumps because they also make a pretty nice stool while building sand castles. And now we're so ready to dig in and play!!

{linking up to Thirty handmade days}