Summer Home Tour!

Although the calendar does not yet officially say so, I say - it's summer! And what better way to start things off then with a summer home tour - hosted by the ever lovely Gina of the Shabby Creek Cottage. If you are joining me from "Jenn Fabulous" of My Fabulous Life, welcome! I share my home with you today to welcome you. There is no higher compliment a guest can pay me than to say they are comfortable in our home. Yes, I like my home to be pretty, but comfort is most important. Shoes can stay on or off - its your call. Feet can scoot up on the sofa and it is only a 50/50 chance that I will be able to locate a coaster for your drink. But this time of year, we are outside as much as possible and coasters are not even on our minds. Our back deck is perfect in the mornings to drink coffee. Actually, is there any where that isn't good to drink coffee in the morning? And it is also where we have our herb garden made from vintage buckets and a door.But our yard didn't always look like this. After about 12 years of living here, we decided to make use of the yard that we had. You can see where we started from here.   I just picked up these concrete style planters and I am in love with them. Who would ever thought a square block of stone could be so pretty?My favorite place is really the screened porch. We had always wanted to do an attached porch, but it would have meant loosing a whole lot of windows on the house. I knew I didn't want to do that, so I was thrilled when we decided to build a free standing porch. Although it takes away the convenience of being right off the house, it gave us more room to work with and it is perfect for keeping track of the kids in the pool.

(you can find my tutorial for my mason jar solar lights here)

I will admit, the water has to be really warm for me to go in, but when I do, I love it. My husband and kids seem to go in regardless of the temperature.  Most of the time, I am in here. I love this space so much. We spent last weekend getting the space power washed, cleaned and set up after the winter. We gain a whole other room and it is my favorite space. Since I was little, I had dreams of a screened porch and I feel so blessed to have this space.  We eat a lot of meals out here as well. This year, I spray painted our black dining chairs white and I can't believe how much more I like it.  We also took two of our rocking chairs off the front porch where it was just too crowded. I sprayed those white as well and now we have two more seats for friends and family. I am almost always a fan of trying to rework what you already have to use in a new space or as your style changes. You can see in the corner, I have a stack of folding chairs so there is always room for more people around the table.  This year, we also pulled together a relatively simple DIY coffee table. I will be sharing more on that next week.  We always like to have a stack of magazines and games in reach.  Probably one of the most important details our here is a basket full of blankets. When the night air starts to cool off, I don't want that to mean the night has to come to an end. Instead, we wrap up in quilts and stay just a little longer.

(These baskets are from Birch Lane - they come as a set of four. They do not have the square ones right now, but they have the same ones in a round shape . I am imagine these will be moved around and used in a ton of different ways.)

The table we have out here now is vintage. I love the rustic style and it ties in perfectly with our beverage station / bar made from vintage doors. Our plan for this summer, however, is to build a bigger table. Actually, it is has been on our "to-do" list for a few years, but I am really hoping this is the year. The bigger the table, the more people who can gather around it.  We have a space for the kids when they want to get away as well. We originally built this structure as a playhouse. Actually, it really started out as our deck on the other side of the lawn. I guess you could call it the ultimate "upcycle". You can read that whole story here. After it was all said and done, we lucked out that the pool was able to be fit right in and we use it also a pool house.  We had some fun decorating it last year and I am hoping that our girls will continue to use the space.  If you would like to see the inside of our home, you can visit here. And if you like what you see and you would like to subscribe to receive our posts in your email, you can click here. Now the good news is, this is just one stop of 25 homes! The next stop is the lovely Diane of In My Own Style . So please stop by Diane and see her bright home and how she has pulled it together for summer. Here is the full line up: Monday, June 2nd The Shabby Creek Cottage The Nester At The Picket Fence (Vanessa) Thistlewood Farms The Inspired Room Tuesday, June 3rd The Handmade Home My Fabuless Life Finding Home In My Own Style The Hunted Interior Wednesday, June 4th Inspired By Charm Jennifer Rizzo Madigan Made Makely School for Girls Funky Junk Interiors Thursday, June 5th Jones Design Company Beneath My Heart The Pennington Point White Buffalo Styling Co. Southern Hospitality Friday, June 6th At the Picket Fence (Heather) Desert Domicile Tatertots & Jello Home Stories A to Z Live Laugh Rowe And if you would like to start from the beginning, you can visit Gina at The Shabby Creek Cottage. Here are links to some of the items (or similar) that are in this post if you are interested. That concludes our home tour, I so appreciate you stopping by! I hope you stop back soon! Thanks so much for reading and wishing you a great day! Disclosure: I was provided the baskets from Birch Lane, but no other compensation. All opinions are my own. There are affiliate links in this post.