Memorial Day Tablescape

I can't believe Memorial Day weekend is THIS weekend. I just doesn't seem like we are that close to summer. My kids only have 3 weeks of school left!! I am not ready, I need to mentally prepare for the dramatic change of schedule summer brings. Their is always an adjustment period.

This tablescape was really easy and thrown together in just a few minutes. I used only what I had on hand.

I filled the buckets and Ball jars with sand and added some rope for a little texture.

I love putting flags in flower pots this time of year as well as around the 4th of July. I think I picked these up from the Dollar Tree last year. The lanterns were a birthday present and are from Target this year. The fabric is left over from last year and I believe it was from Joanns. The buckets are from the Target dollar spot. They came with colorful ribbon but I took it off.

I just folded the fabric until I got the size I wanted.

I love being able to decorate outdoors again, especially with red, white and blue!

We will be having a pretty low key Memorial Day weekend with landscaping projects and family in town. Do you have any plans?


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Backyard BBQ

Well the first day of school has come and gone and the kids did great! They like their teachers and have found old friends. Now I just need to figure out a good organization system for all the paperwork. I am thinking a binder system. Do any of you have a system that works to keep all the school papers together? The paper just kills me. It gets piled on the counter to be dealt with later and that seems so inefficient.

Well our backyard BBQ was so much fun. It was a great time to visit with neighbors and just hang out. It started out pretty hot but cooled off nicely. The bees were also a problem. I was worried about mosquitos and got all sorts of sprays and candles but it was the bees that caused the most trouble. No more August BBQ's, I think we will have to do June next time. They loved the food and drinks but fortunately no one was stung.

We have some Adirondack chairs in the front of the house that we brought back for more seating.

The drink cart came in handy for bug spray and glow sticks for later as well as a place for people to set their drinks.

The table was fun to decorate with pop bottles and lots of citronella candles.

The smaller white balls were lights and added a great ambiance once the sun went down.

I loved the flowers! I really had my heart set on sunflowers and they were not easy to find. Next year I need to try to grow them in my garden. The white flower is a spider mum and the pink one is stock.

I attached Christmas lights to dowel rods with ribbon in the gardens. It looked really great at night and helped keep people from stepping off the patio into the dirt as well. Next year will be so nice when we can add plants and mulch. I need to find a more permanent solution for lighting but this worked great for the party. I think we would use our patio more at night if we had better lighting. I will have to plan over the winter.

Everything worked out really well. I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. Did you do any entertaining? How do you light your patio? I have a couple of ideas, we may have to test them out next summer.

Backyard Games

We had so much fun at our neighborhood BBQ, it was a great way to hang out before school starts and things get really crazy. We just don't seem to see our neighbors as much when school starts and the weather starts to cool off.  I will share some pictures from the party soon. We had such a nice low key weekend, I think I am more nervous about the kids going to school than they are, I can't believe they start tomorrow. This time of year always brings back memories of getting ready for school, I can't believe it is that time already.

I wanted to share a few games I put together for the backyard to help entertain the kids at the BBQ. I got these ideas from the Family Fun magazine. I remember seeing them and thinking how fun they looked but never did them. This party was a perfect excuse to pull out the duct tape and noodles. I went to the dollar store to collect the noodles. And I have to remember if I need noodles for Labor Day weekend I need to get them in July because they were all out. It was only by luck that someone had just returned a bunch the day I went into my 3rd Dollar Tree.

First up were the hurdle jumps or soccer arches depending on how you want to use them. I went to my local True Value hardware store and picked up 3 foot, 1/2 inch dowel rods.

They were not straight as you can see, but it didn't matter. I marked off 12 inches and used a small hand saw to cut them. One end is going in the ground and the other is covered by a pool noodle, so it doesn't have to be pretty.

I pounded the rod into the ground with a mallet and then after my four year pounded a few more times just to make sure it was secure she added the noodles to the dowel rods.

We spread them around and the kids really had fun playing with them. It was such a fast and easy little project. Once I found more noodles I decided to make one more game. I didn't take pictures of how I put it together, but it was very easy also.

One tip that really helped make the circles hold better was to cut toilet paper rolls and roll them up to fit in the holes as a connector before taping them.  We then pounded 3 foot dowel rods into the ground and slid the noodles over top. We had extra noodles so the kids could throw them through the circles. They also threw footballs through them and it held up great to 16 kids playing with them.

I know some of you have already started school but our first day is tomorrow and I am pretty sad about it. I will miss them so much, it always takes a while to get used to them not being around during the day.   I do look forward to organizing the house though. It seems to slowly get out of order all summer and now I need to clean it up. Maybe I can get rid of some toys since they won't be around to stop me, ha ha ha.

I hope it is sunny tomorrow so it won't look funny that I am wearing my sunglasses all day.
Hope you had a great Labor Day Weekend! And if your kiddos are starting school I wish them and you luck!

Back Yard Party Planning

All of the sudden it feels like summer is almost over. I don't like the feeling even though I LOVE fall. I am trying to remind myself we still have over 3 weeks left. We are planning an end of summer BBQ for some friends in the neighborhood and I think that is what is really reminding me how close we are to school starting.  I LOVE entertaining and I am really enjoying planning for this party. It has been a fun challenge finding decorations on the cheap but still have all the feel I am going for. I have been searching the web getting some ideas.

I love the idea of mason jars with sand and candles, maybe even citronella candles. It would be cheap since I have everything already.

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I love decorating with bottles, I have been collecting wine bottles and soda bottles. It has been hard to find the blue and frosted bottles though. 

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I like the mason jars with burlap and a little ribbon. It would be an easy way to add some color.

I love the sunflowers, it is so casual for a summer barbeque.

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I love lanterns and lights. I am still working on how to hang these.

Love this idea! We will need the bug spray later in the evening for sure.

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Love this outdoor bar!

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Do you have any summer parties planned? Any favorite decorations or themes? I hope you are enjoying your summer!

Back Yard Progress

Someday I hope to be able to title a post "The Back Yard is Finished!!!" Maybe someday.
But we have made A LOT of progress and I am so pleased with it. It is pretty much all we have done for the last week and a half. We have learned how to put up a retaining wall, which is a skill I hope to  never need again.

Here are some before pictures for added effect (yucky dead grass and all):

And after lots of sweat and hard work here is the retaining wall we put in:

We accidently had a few extra blocks so we just continued around with the blocks. We put in some stepping stones so we could access the patio from the side. I know the kids will go that way so it is better to give them a place rather than have them walk through the garden. I just love the stepping stones they turned out better than I thought. I added some Wooly Thyme between the stepping stones which are meant to be walked on and are very soft. They will get little pink flowers in the summer, can't to see that next summer.

So are backyard is slowly but surely making progress. I meet with a landscaper tomorrow to discuss planting but those will probably have to wait until fall or next spring to plant.

Our quick summer patio project had turned into a MUCH larger project but we are so pleased with the results so I guess it is worth the wait.  I can't wait to enjoy it a little more.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer I can't believe it is already August!

My First Mood Board

I love mood boards and I was excited when I learned about Olioboard so I could do it for free.
Our patio is a work in progress this year and I though this would be a fun way to plan the patio since I won't be able to finish/buy everything this year.

As I mentioned before we expanded our patio last month so we now have space to eat and relax in separate areas. Some of the items on the board we already have like the table, chairs, both umbrellas and poufs. The rest will have to come next year, but at least I have a plan.

It took me a while to finish this one but once I got the hang of it it was pretty easy. I need to find another room to do a mood board on now. I might be addicted. We have been working on a retaining wall around the patio so it is fun to work on some pretty stuff instead.


Have you done a mood board? Did you follow it in the end?

Patio Progress

We have a decent size patio but it is not large enough for lounging and dinning so we decided to enlarge it. Just like all big projects we do I get super excited and can't wait for them to get done. And then when they are not done as perfectly as I had envisioned or I see new projects that crops up because of the first one I get a little discouraged and overwhelmed.

Our new patio we just had poured is the perfect example.

Here is our back yard before:

It looks very crowded in this picture. The round black table is our old table that I have been using for painting and staining projects. I might spray paint it and use it for entertaining since we won't be able to buy patio furniture this year. 

Here is some progress, if you want to call it that.

Here is after the cement is poured. We went with a colored concrete with a trowel finish since we were adding on to our existing patio we knew we could not match it, so we went totally different. The problem is they ran out of concrete and had to order more, but by the time the concrete arrived it had already dried enough that they could not blend it in.

So one corner looks like this:


Now they are going to fix it by putting a coating over the whole thing.  So I am assured it will look great when they are all done. But we have to wait 2 more weeks before they can even start that process.  So the party I was considering for the 4th is now off the table, bummer.

Here is an after picture of when the cement is dry. We love the shape and the extra space it provides, I can't wait to use it. The corner is also a little messed up so we will have to camouflage that with landscaping, hopefully.

So I just have to change gears and focus on repairs instead of fun things like landscaping and patio planning. Well I can still do some patio planning and dreaming. Maybe I can do my first mood board with my patio. Patience is something I need to work on anyway, I guess this is just more practice.

Do you ever have a project you are so excited about you forget all the finish work that needs to be done?

The Little Things

Well summer is in full swing around here.  Which means no alarms and sleeping in and no rushing around in the mornings, I love it.  It also means it is really hard to get projects done when we are at the pool or gymnastics or baseball or the playground. It is wonderful and I love it because during the school year I don't get my kids enough, but it can make blogging a little challenging.

So I have a feeling I will be a little hit or miss this summer. Next week we are headed to Colorado and I have never been there in the summer. I can't wait to show the kids all the new sights, should be fun.

One thing I have gotten done is stained the kids picnic table. And I also realized I am accumulating a lot of pieces that needed to be stained and restained and they are all on the same schedule. So I have one year off and then the next year I have 52 things that need to be stained. I might need to work in some low maintenance items pretty soon.

So here is the before, I can't believe it has only been two years since I stained this last. It looks terrible.

I scrubbed it with soapy water and a brush and I can't believe how much more old stain came off.


And here is the after, so much nicer?

The stain is the same in both pictures it had just really faded and worn off.


Now onto the playset, which is big and I am not looking forward to sanding and staining that. I might enlist the help of the kids. I have never let them help me paint before, but it is outside and they could be helpful, right? Have any of you had your kids help paint? How did it go?

Hope you are having a wonderful lazy summer.