When life gives you a pile of dirt…….use it.

When life gives you a pile of dirt…….use it.

Our city joined most of America and converted to sewer. Wow! is all I have to say. If you're board to tears some afternoon and want to know how well it went over during the conversion process just Google it.

Our home was not excluded from the hoopla by any means; in fact my husband almost got arrested for allegedly running over some idiot workers laptop. Did I say idiot? That was clearly not the noun to use.  Clever idiot would be more like it.  Clever man runs it over with his own bobcat, panics, and he and his partner in crime devise a plan to blame my husband and son. Cops show up, quite a few I might add, and well…….   maybe some day that story will be my blog.  We were left with a front yard neatly filled in with A/B dirt. That in itself by the way, took an act of congress to achieve.  No more grass.

That story has inspired the reason for this blog.  You see every Easter I hold an Easter hunt for my grandkids. Adults and kids alike, all have a blast, as we can get quite competitive for those plastic eggs holding who knows what?

That time of year came around again, and as I stood out in my front yard full of dirt, I looked at my daughter and asked?,  “ Where should we hide the eggs this year?” of course  saying it with a sarcastic, disgusted at the city, tone in my voice. She simply looks around for about 3 seconds and replies very self assuredly, “right here, and instead of a hunt let’s have a dig!

That’s what we did.  We devised  a plan for a  Pirate Cove Easter Dig. My extremely talented husband devoted a whole day to be my private carpenter, just like the ones on cupcake wars! So.... off to Home Depot he went..... with  grandson in tow!

 

 

We got home and the work started!  With the constant buzzing of the saw, it wasn't

long before all the wood projects were ready to be painted!

 

 

 

 

 

 Next my youngest daughter and I did some

 

photo shopping and created a cool little map mimicking our front yard! We did a lot of illustration so the little ones that couldn't read could understand it......glad we did because my 4 year old Granddaughter really took that map serious!

 

 

 

 

 

We picked up a few cheap plants at Lowe's, grabbed some plastic we 

had in the garage, and hauled some left over rock  from our backyard.

 This created a cool little pond!!!

 

 

 

 

 I found some cool huge aqua plastic oyster shells at Salvation Army for a "little girl touch"!

 

 

My husband built them the most adorable little swinging bridge!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We used my grand daughters trunk for the treasure chest!!

 

 

A friend of mine let me use his anchor!

 

Not sure where the tiki idea fell into place, but what the heck it looked cute!
 

 

The big day came, we made them all wait inside the house before letting them

out the front door, like little grey hounds ready to run the track!!!

 

 

 

Let the hunt begin! With their maps in one hand and their bucket and shovel in the other, out the door they went!

 

 

 

 

 And into the front yard with the sprinklers on! Which by the way quickly got turned

off......  wasn't thinking about the wet maps!!!

 

I made a special kiddie pool for the 2 and under grandbabies, now that I

think about it.... I  probably should

have made it big enough for my kids to crawl in also, that would

have made for good photos!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the kids had a blast!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone ate, and swam, and then.........

Dug through their treasures!!!

 

 I am not going to say it wasn’t work, because it was, but wow was it worth it! 

  2 months later, in 111 degree sun, my yard still looked like an abandoned mulled over  pirate cove, so  out I went one Saturday to turn it back to just… plain dirt.  My private carpenter felt a little sorry for me, and came out of his garage to help…….we couldn’t help but laugh out loud as he was digging up and tossing at  me, ancient looking,  taped up, plastic eggs with change in them. How could these have been missed?

I untaped  those little eggs, and we used the change to run down and get an ice cold diet coke!  I hope this inspires you to do the same one year!! Yes it will take some carpenter skills, but I think in this economy, you might find one cheap…