patio transformation

As I've said before, our yard is kind of a sore spot. We love it for the huge trees and shade they provide over half of the year and we love the rather large area we have for Motley and Beau to play. That being said - landscaping is hard and expensive, y'all! 

Anyway, we do our best and recently Mark and I set out on a little project to bring some charm to our yard. I've hated our triangle shaped back patio since the day we moved in but we decided jackhammering it up was more trouble than it was worth. Recently, I had a brilliant idea to bring patio lights outside and within a couple of weeks, our patio was transformed!

Here's what we did:

-gathered a galvanized tub we already had laying around

-cemented an 8' cedar post into a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket

-centered the bucket in the galvanized tub

-added river rocks, soil, and sweet potato vine to the tub

-placed a hook at the top of the cedar post

...and voila! We had the anchor point of our patio lights!

Then, we spaced hooks on the back of our house and strung the lights out to the post. I bought an electric outlet converter thing (technical term) and we plugged that into our outdoor light so we could just plug the patio lights in there (instead of using extension cords or solar lights). 

We picked up some new minty chairs at Home Depot, I recovered our old throw pillows, and I refreshed the pots on the patio and we had ourselves a new backyard! We are LOVING it! 

We spent some time outside as a family while I was taking these pictures and I love the JOY I captured in most of the pictures of Beau. Life is so good with this little one!

Mark brought out the frisbees and we all had a blast watching Motley chase them and listening to Beau's giggles. 

These two are a handful, but they are crazy about each other!

It was such a nice night to be outside.

We continued the shenanigans until it was time for the littlest one to go to bed.

After he was tucked in, we enjoyed some quiet time!

There is a lot that I still want to change about our yard and exterior of our home, but right now I'm happy with this little pocket. I love looking out the window at it every day and enjoying my family in that yard of ours. 

Happy Monday!