Outdoor Patio

For some reason concrete seems to be hard for me to work with.  I tried making natural colored concrete stepping stones once and well, lets just say they don't look natural or like a stepping stone.  Then if you are barefoot on this path of concrete stepping stones your feet will wind up a bloody mess.

I needed a patio for my sons new grill he made me.  Our ranch is on a hill and the cabin sits about halfway up.  So anytime I need to have a seat or work outside with anything we use bricks to level it out.  My son had invited a friend to come with us out to the ranch and while they were out finding deer skulls and spying on our neighbors I thought to try another attempt at working with concrete.

Now from these photos you are thinking "wow that looks pretty neat for just a couple of hours of work."  The thing is it was supposed to be just concrete and I am still batting .000 with concrete.  Lucky I had these bricks laying around and my son and his friend did this nice brick design.

Looking at how cool this looks makes me want to try my luck and make a retaining wall and a path using more of these bricks and the feared concrete. 

We are hoping that the dirt will fill in the cracks and this will look like an old something or another while we have the grill put away.  I think the lesson here is to try something small and build up your confidence and then conquer that ability and move up.  Then when you try a big project you have the confidence to do it right.  Then maybe when things go wrong ask your friends to help or in this matter your son and his buddy.