Cabinet for the patio...

Thanks to Shelly's recent purging efforts, I became the proud owner of this fantastic cabinet. And after a few quick sprays of Valspar's Mediterranean spray paint, it fits perfectly on our patio! (I still need to give it a third coat & spray the toe kick, but it's good enough for now). I've been determined to decorate my patio using only what I have on hand, so this was indeed a lucky break for me. I think it's my favorite part of our backyard :)

Tea towel pillows...

I've had these Martha Stewart tea towels for ages. They've been stashed away, waiting for just the right project. I think I found it! I turned them into pillows for the furniture on our patio. I love the way they turned out. I think I'm going to start hoarding tea towels...they make for such fun, fast, and easy projects.

Fun on the patio...

We are loving our new patio cover! (For a reminder of what our patio looked like a few years ago, click here). We've been spending lots of time out here lately. After church today, John worked on the laptop, I read, and Henry played in his playhouse. It was perfect.


This boy and his smoothie. He is obsessed! He walks around with his sippy cup hanging out of his mouth like this all the time. I'd say he drinks about 90% of his calories...



And when he isn't drinking his smoothie? He likes to drink water out of mama's cup...

The hole in our patio...

...Older homes have all sorts of quirks & oddities about them. I think that's why I love them so much. One such quirk our home had was a crawl space in the corner of our patio. Because we needed to have access to this crawl space, we left a hole approximately 31" square and about 24" deep when we had our patio poured. Because we only rarely need access to the crawl space, 99.9% of the time the hole was nothing more than a child-proofing nightmare. Well, I'm happy to report that we finally got around to covering it up. My dad used his welding prowess to build us a frame, and then John cut pieces of redwood to fill it in. We can now, finally, leave Henry on the patio without worry. Huge relief.

mid-construction...

me protecting Henry from the half-covered hole...

ALL DONE!...

Henry saw Grandpa Royce & daddy measuring the hole, so he thought he'd try his hand at it too. He's been pretty interested in the measuring tape lately.

He's the cutest handyman I've ever seen.