Deck dreaming

It's been a while since we've talked about mi casa.  (It's been a while since I've done much around here.)  How am I doing on my 2012 home goals?  Well, let's just say that so far, the list is in the crapper.  (Actually, that's what I thought, but I just actually looked at the list and I'm not doing so bad.  More on that in the coming weeks.)

In typical fashion, instead of completing projects that are within reach, I am, instead, dreaming up new ones.  Big ones.  The kind that require power tools and the help of my reluctant husband.

Here's the deal.

Our house in Boulder had a great deck with a big sliding door (as you might expect in such an outdoorsy place), and we ate many a meal out there (despite the bees.)

Even in NYC, where outdoor space is the holy grail, we were lucky enough to have a sort of little enchanted garden in our Brooklyn backyard.

Doesn't that look lovely?

But here in Minneapolis, we just don't got the set up.  Yet.

Here's the house from the back.

With a narrow little deck, not really big enough for a full-scale table set-up, and a sloped and tiny lawn.

I think this question has been percolating for going on 2 years, and as we enjoy an unseasonably warm and early spring, I realize that my summer happiness is predicated on having a place to eat out of doors.  (Apart from Sea Salt, the fabulous seafood eatery which is walking distance from our house but which also becomes an expensive habit.  And which, incidentally, opens for the season tomorrow night!)

I'm good under pressure, did you know that?  And so a solution has come to me when I need it the most.  A built-in corner bench seat, round table or pair of small squares.  Our little family of four can sit snugly on the benches, and if we have company, well, bring out the ghost chairs.  They're just gathering dust in the basement, after all.

Something like this.

Source: bhg.com via Heather on Pinterest

Or, okay, realistically something more like this. (Plus table)

Source: bhg.com via Heather on Pinterest

The design decisions may come down to budget (small) and skill level (meager). This might be one of those things where it is really ALL about the function, and then dressing it up with good outdoor pillows and a cute tablecloth.

What about you: do you have good outdoor living solutions? I'd love to hear about it.

Sit your butt down and enjoy this weather

Top row, left to right: 1, 2, 3 

Bottom row, left to right: 1, 2, 3

Normally, there's no way I would be thinking about outdoor seating in March in Minnesota.  Last year at this time we were buried under several feet of snow and hadn't seen the grass in about 5 months.

But that was then.

This weekend, we ate meals outside.  We walked to the Falls and collected supplies to build a fairy house.  We aired out our own house and padded barefoot on wood floors.  We enjoyed the breezes, and the playgrounds, and the ice cream dessert my 5 year old orchestrated for Saint Patrick's day.  (As an aside I would like to mention that my mother, married to a true Irish lad, dressed the table with an Irish flag tablecloth.)

Right about now, the sales cycle that puts outdoor furniture on the floor in February and Christmas decorations out right after Halloween doesn't seem so out of whack.

Perhaps it is the weather that's broken.

I will just shut my mouth and enjoy.

Oh, and if you enter and win the Kirkland's giveaway for free money, this guy could be yours.

Sometimes You've Gotta Just Snap it Up!

I've been decorating.

You would know more about this if I could finish my decorating posts and get 'em posted already, but hey, if I had enough brain space to post about decorating, that might mean that the decorating frenzy had died down, and then where would I be?

There's this thing that happens when I move into a new space, particularly a bigger space, where I want so desperately to be in and settled that I spend every waking minute online or at furniture and antique stores until my head spins around and Dave wonders what happened to his wife. Okay, I made that part up: Dave knows perfectly well that this is his wife, he just wishes the head-spinning would stop. At the same time, I love the process and know that the best rooms sit for a while, grow over time, and reveal themselves slowly. So it goes: get 'er done fast, let it grow slow. Oh, the tension.

But sometimes these things magically come together. Take our deck. (I know: the deck? I'm decorating the deck? don't I have bigger fish to fry? Well, sure thing, but I want to be outside before the tundra descends, and while I'm out there I'd like some place to sit.) Years ago, I stumbled upon some African Hoop Chairs in the kids department of ABC Home, and i fell in love. I was smitten. I can't remember now if this was before I had kids, or if I simply couldn't afford them at $150 a chair, but no matter.



Aren't they the cutest?

I saw them show up later in the kids' room in the Domino spread of Mark Ruffalo's Hollywood home, which I would totally show you here if I had a scanner and if I knew whether or not it was legal to do so (I'm a rule-follower, what can I say?) Well all of a sudden, these things have had a little resurgence. At the Denver Biennial art exhibition this summer, I saw these awesome specimens in the outdoor lounge, and remembered that love at first sight.


After much ado, I found them for sale in every imaginable color, on a website that now eludes me, at the unaffordable price of $500 a pop. Then, what joy! there they were on page 22 of the June/July issue of Lonny, hailing from CB2 for a mere $150 each! Okay, still too much money, but no matter: when I followed the link, the item was sold out or discontinued. Probably both. My search went on, turning up similar rubber ones (at stores in LA that don't ship)


and cool metal versions online, like this one, but still out of the price range.


Well, lo and behold. Late one night I ran off to Pier 1 in search of a Chinese-red console table for the dining room and stumbled upon two "crazy chairs," as the name might indicate, not so sophisticated as the ones I had been lusting after but fun nonetheless, and on clearance for $39 each. Now, some might think that is STILL a hefty price for a chair that will sit outside your house, but at less than 1/10th the price of the ones I really wanted, and barely twice the price of those plastic adirondack chairs from Home Depot, I say, sold.

Resin Planter

This weekend I made a side trip to Home Depot when I was at Staples having copies made of our organization's strategic plan. Clio had picked out a potted flower at the grocery store the week before, and it was sitting on the dining room table, slowly shriveling in its plastic, temporary home. We had a pot from the aloe that drove with us all the way to Boulder from New York, only to be left on the deck all winter in some kind of sick botanical experiment about succulents and the high desert climes. (The climes won.) But we did not have dirt. We also do not have fresh herbs, something we had become very used to in Brooklyn, where we had a little container garden outside our kitchen door, and rosemary and sage plants that had survived many a New York winter (take that, aloe.) So I picked up dirt and threw in Rosemary, Sage, and Thyme (just short Parley for a trip to Scarborough Fair), and realized I would need a pot for this bounty.

Enter these resin pots in the most amazing hues: marigold, teal, raspberry, some of my favorites. It was hard to choose between the larger, ridged tubs (very modern!) and the softer-edged bowls. In the end, I went for scale and got the slightly smaller bowl, in this fabulous yellow.


Clio and Eleri helped repot the flowers and the herbs, though Eleri, surprisingly, was a little squeamish about the dirt (that and the wind, of which we have had plenty this past week). Now they love to water this tiny little "garden," and I love to look at the combination of color and textures (yellow resin! turquoise terra cotta! purple petals!) in this corner of the deck.

Plus: bonus! The ever photo-shy Clio thought it was just dandy to pose (and demonstrate her dance moves) with the new pots.