Mulch Never Looked So Good

One of the bigger finishing touches to the yard is most definitely the landscaping, and I was excited to create some planting spaces!

A few weeks ago, I found this at Michaels on clearance which I used for the mulch:

I hadn't yet figured out how to create these spaces, so this on-clearance container of mulchy-dirt-looking stuff seemed it would do the trick!

I had a number of thoughts about how to create this space, but I didn't really work that hard to sort them out. I sort of mushed them all together and created something that would address everything I wanted. Why compromise on the fake house?! The thoughts:

1. I don't want it to just be flat. Dimension in some way is needed.
2. I don't want to be locked in to having to create a border for it. That's not to say I won't do it, but that is to say I don't want the immediate requirement. So, it needs to look finished without it.
3. (And, probably most important, hahaha) I need to be able to create and use yard stakes for decorating.

With those thoughts in mind, I found lying around our house a piece of super-basic (non-water absorbing) floral styrofoam, and I just started hacking into it with a serrated knife to create bedding strips:

I had no idea how much I would be able to create with the piece I had on hand, but I figured it was a good place to start. I didn't cut the surfaces evenly to help create some dimension.

From here, the process wasn't as smooth as I thought it was going to be, so I didn't stop to take pictures. First, I took my pieces and fit them around what I considered the most important places to have them as I knew I didn't have enough to go down the sides of the house. In some cases, I had to cut very, little, odd pieces to fit holes. What you see in the picture below are some such pieces as well as others that are cut-aways from fitting the big pieces around the perimeter:

After laying it all out, the messy part began! Piece by piece, I schmeared glue all over the top and front side of each piece. From there, I covered the glue in the brown stuff as best I could before dropping a few dots of glue on the bottom of the piece to put where it belongs next to the house. 'Sounds reasonably simple, right? Hmm ...

The tricky part was getting the mulch to stick without it sticking back on my fingers. That it is such a light product (think fluffy) made it difficult to get down *in* the glue. After doing the left side pieces, I finally got wise. I got the glue on a piece where it needed to go, glued it to the ground, and then I took large pinches of the mulch to pile on to the glue. This allowed me to really cover it and press it down into the glue without glue seeping through and sticking to my fingers. In other words, the more mulch, the merrier. This particular adjustment to my process made this whole project way easier!

After it dried for a little while (less than an hour for those counting), I used the vacuum hose to very carefully lift away the majority of the stray mulch to see where things were at. Interestingly, most of the front pieces had a gap needing filling. Why? I really don't know. But, I knew running a bead of glue and throwing more mulch on it overnight would fix most of the issue:

This morning, I used the vacuum about an inch from all of the surface of the mulch to get rid of excess and reapply as needed. There were just a few places that needed some TLC both from where it meets the grass as well as on top. Those are now all tidied up as much as is needed for yard work!

And, here you can even see a few yard stakes I made!

I'll get into the details of the decorations scattered about next, but, for right now, let's just revel in the beauty of the mulch!