Hola my lovelies!
How has the weather been in your neck of the woods? Here in Atlanta, we have had the most BEAUTIFUL weather! Gorgeous blue skies, cool breezes, and 85. Over the weekend, the beautiful weather really inspired me. My patio was in sad, sad shape. So sad, I was too embarrassed to take a full “before” shot! Imagine a little concrete block with a couple of pots spouting foot tall clover, a sad little rosebush that was on its last leg, old plastic bowling pins laying around where ever the kids last dropped them, and a few miscellaneous balls of various sporting types hiding in corners.
The piece de resistance was my 3 piece retro aluminum seating set, pathetically lined in a row, waiting to receive the TLC I promised it late last summer when I picked it up for a steal @ craigslist for $50.
50s aluminum loveseat
The full aluminum porch set - a craigslist steal from last summer @ $50
It was a sad, pitiful sight. The kind you avert your eyes as you pass through to enter the townhouse. The kind you sorta don’t notice when you leave home at 7:30am and get home as the dusk begins around 6:oopm.
The kind that becomes a GLARINGLY obvious eyesore when the weather’s gorgeous and you realize that you’re wasting perfectly liveable outdoor space that you REALLY want to use to soak up the previously mentioned gorgeous sunny day.
Yup. It was that kind of pitiful. And, truth be told, I might have been able to ignore it one more weekend if I hadn’t been doing a little blog maintenance on Saturday. I was clearing up my blog roll when I ran across this great post from Nicole over at Making It Lovely.
Nicole and 4 other bloggers had been invited by BHG.com to participate in the 48 hour challenge. As I understand it, they were given $500 to use materials from Home Depot to revamp their outdoor spaces in 48 hours. Nicole and her husband created this amazing space:
MakingItLovely.com 48 Hour Challenge Project
Beautiful, right? Every part of it… right down to the handpainted faux rug that Nicole did FREEHAND! And the most important part of this (at least to my slacker self) is that Nicole is currently a week overdue with their first baby! Yes, you read that correctly… she did this while ready to burst any minute with newborn baby girl goodness…
So I’m reading all about it (and you should go here and do that too) and I’m glancing out my back window at the pitiful view to my little patio. And I thought… really Shauntelle, there is NO excuse. After all, I’m not even close to bursting out any newborn baby goodness. I couldn’t even complain that the weather was bad.
Of course, I didn’t have anyone offering me $500 for a redo, but heck, the whole reason I started this blog was to encourage people to beautify within whatever budget they have. What I had was $25. So I made myself a little challenge… I’d reuse, recycle, and use whatever ingenuity I could come up with to revamp my little patio with just $25.
I have to say, I’m pretty proud of my results. The project is still in progress with $13 spent so far, but by Sunday evening this is what I’d accomplished (with the help of my youngest son and partner-in-crime):
Painted furniture and new layout
It felt so nice to sit on the patio and see the progress. In fact, everyone in the family enjoyed it so much, we spontaneously ended up having Sunday dinner out on the patio.
Working on this reminded me why design is so important. I can’t tell you how much happier I felt sitting on my attractive patio, and it was obvious to me, as I sat out there enjoying dinner with my family that evening, that my family felt better too. That’s what good design does; provides an environment that encourages you to enjoy your life and the ones you love a little bit more.
My hope is to finish up a few more projects for the patio over the week. I’ll definitely take more (and better) photos and keep you updated as I go.
’til next time!
xoxo – Shauntelle
P.S. I almost FORGOT! Please be sure to go over and vote for Nicole’s space on bhg.com! You can check out the other 4 finished spaces as well, but her’s is by far the MOST gorgeous! 
Plus really, who can beat saying they handpainted a faux rug while a week overdue… you gotta win extra points for that!
