(Phone pics follow. I'm getting so lazy that I only take out our big camera for special occasions. Tsk, tsk. Everything looks really bright blue and orange in the pics but the colors are more toned down in real life.)
So our concrete kept peeling and peeling and was getting really bad. The concrete work has already been redone once so we were thinking about our other options. We settled on the cheapest, quickest, and easiest. A rug.
(Grow little tree. Grow! My second tree perished earlier this year.)
It's amazing how just putting a silly rug in a space makes it feel so much bigger and better! I wanted our porch to feel more like an outdoor sitting/gathering room rather than just an entrance/exit point. We did pay for that square footage, after all so why waste it? Our family (and the entire neighborhood) go in and out so many thousands of times a day and I wanted the space to be welcoming and comfortable. We always hang out here sitting and chatting and watching the kids play.
I shopped for what seemed like forever for a 5-foot bench in my price range and style. The metal ones seemed flimsy so I decided on wood. Many of those are flimsy, too. But I finally found this bench on Amazon. It's still lightweight but it's stronger because there are many small wood slats running width-wise instead of a few long strips running length-wise. It was exactly what I wanted except they had discontinued the gray color, which is the one I fell in love with. I found a different black wood bench that I liked but it was a more traditional style and I was worried that I'd have too much matchy-matchy black on my porch. After a few more weeks of humming and hawing Rob finally convinced me to just order the dang thing in this color instead. When it arrived I didn't like the color and felt like it was too orange and too warm for the rest of my decor but decided to live with it. I kinda like it now.
I like to make my own pillow covers. The plan is to make two new covers for each holiday or season. These are for Thanksgiving.
These sticks are not my favorite. I bought this as some of my very first home decor 9 years ago. I desperately needed something tall or on the wall in this corner but haven't really liked anything I've come across. So I took this out of my living room (finally giving me an excuse to go buy a large floor lamp) and stuck the sticks here. They're old and raggedy. Let's just call them a place holder.
Caroline was so sweet to peel of the "g" from my sign on the door. Now, depending on my mood du jour, it is read in a southern accent or urban slang.
It gets so cold and windy up here that I'm considering of getting an outdoor heater to put out here.
Thanks for taking a tour of my porch.
