Our DIY Home Project: Gravel Driveway/Concrete Pad

I know it has been quite some time since I posted anything - but I have decided that my life is pretty busy! Between serving my family wholeheartedly, serving the Lord at church and other ministries that I love, saving money with extreme couponing, crafting, gardening, and getting my fixer upper house in order, I am pretty swamped. But I thought it would be fun to share with you our latest accomplishment:

My hubby and I were extremely blessed to be able to purchase a foreclosure last December for an amazing price. It had everything that we wanted: a lot of trees, a huge area for a garden, 2 acres of land, a lot of privacy, located near family, not too far from church since we are there 3-4 days a week, and a large enough house that we can grow into with a room for my hubby to work from. We didn't necessarily focus on those cosmetic things that we could fix later. There was a lot (and still is) work to be done inside, but I am just so excited about our MAJOR project that we did this past weekend that is outside of the home. I am so proud of my hubby - I am truly blessed to have a hubby that could essentially build a house from scratch all on his own :)

Project: Install a Concrete Pad and Gravel Driveway

We really needed a new driveway. When we purchased the home, the driveway was soooooo muddy! We are super clean people so we needed to have a solution - ASAP! Not to mention I wanted to start entering the house from the front door and not the laundry room :)

Here is the front of the house before:

After we laid down the gravel driveway, my hubby started digging out the space for the concrete pad and sidewalk. Once he had that completed, he started on the forms with his favorite little helper:

Here is what the completion of the forms looked like just before the concrete was poured:

Here is the final product with the new gravel driveway and poured concrete pad after many hours of hard labor: 

I am SO excited that we can now park our cars on concrete and not bring mud into the house or into the cars! YAY! Praising the Lord for being able to get this HUGE project accomplished!

Now all we need is a basketball hoop to complete the look :)