A Backyard and Porch for Every Day of the Year

Summer is undoubtedly ‘the’ time for parities, sure you have your end of year holiday parties but they’re all meant to be had indoors and summer is a time when you don’t need an excuse to go out and enjoy your backyard. It’s time like that when you’re grateful for any and all gardening work that you did in spring. So while the landscaping that you did will work wonders for the outdoor parties you plan on having this summer, you might want to consider doing the following for to make the partying even more fun!

A theme
It may be outdoors but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a neat design and theme to it. You can decorate your porch to match your garden. You know what flowers are going to be blooming so find fun some cushions for your lawn chairs that match or try painting your wood or wicker chairs a fund color like bright green.

Something fun
If you’ve got some cash to spare and are in the mood of really giving your backyard a fun factor, add an archway or a trellis to it. It makes the perfect entrance for the party guests. You can plant a vine or climbing ivy (these plants grow fast), and before you know it, you’ve got a beautiful archway. If you already have (and most people do) it would be a good idea to repaint it. If you’ve got ivy climbing up the archway already, give it a nice trim. If it’s been there for a few years, cut it off and let it grow all over again. It keeps the arch from being damaged and prolongs the life.

The old red, white and blue
One thing that I always love seeing on a porch is the American flag. With the 4th of July coming up in a few months and Memorial Day around the corner, it’s that perfect thing to have on your front porch.

Homemade lights
You probably have a lot of wine bottles lying around from those winter parties, and even if you don’t you can find them easy at local stores or recycling centers. You can have the bottom cut out and wire small florescent lights through it or cover a bottle completely in paper and then peel it off some places to give it a fun look.

Stepping stones
The good thing about stepping stones is that they never go out of style and you can make them in any shape or color you want, if you have kids, this can be a fun summer project. Stepping stones don’t necessarily need to be used to mark the way to the back yard or the front door, you can make them in smaller sizes to outline flower beds. If you’re making them at home, add marbles (whole or broken)in fun colors that match the color you’ve painted your porch.
Summer parties take a lot of planning and even more decorating because even if they begin indoors, they’ll end up outside and you need to provide a relaxing environment to your friends.

Arranging Furniture…Rearranging Furniture

Where to put the Sofa? Rearranging the rearranged furniture

I spend countless hours going through magazines, catalogs and exploring sites just looking at chic sofa sets and cushions and stunning furniture layouts. There was a time when I thought that the look that came from these arrangements could only be achieved with that kind of furniture and that it’s pretty useless looking at interior design catalogs since I’m never really going to be able to afford a living room revamp as it is. upholstering doesn’t appeal to me because I can’t do it myself and the economy being what it is, I can’t dish out cash to have someone do it for me. so what I’ll normally do, when I’m not even up for changing the cushions and throws is rearrange the furniture.

A good way to start out with furniture rearrangement (from what I’ve learnt) is to always define your must haves, for example if your living room leads to the backyard, you can’t have anything blocking the way. You might want to avoid carpeting the area and just do with a simple rug in order to avoid having to clean dirt off later.

Someone once suggested that I should inventory all the furniture in a room before rearranging it, Just so I don’t forget to pick out the place for something but I find making a nice illustrated layout for it to be better. It’s what HGTV suggests. I prefer it because it gives me an entire picture of where I’m going to put what instead of just giving me the number of furniture items that I have.

Then there’s the whole question of just how many ways can I rearrange the same sofa and coffee table? Furniture galleries have always been my aid when it comes down to it. Interior warrior has some fantastic furniture and a really great gallery. Even if I don’t follow the layout as it is, I can usually pull something good off.

Take these two furniture layouts from Interior Warrior. While the two sofa sets are almost the same, they’re arranged different and look amazing either way.