outdoor living Archives - Summer Adams

Back Patio & Yard Summer Tour

Summer — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 10:30:58 +0000

We are experiencing a heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest and next week is officially Summertime! So this is the perfect time to welcome all of you readers to my first summer tour of the season, the “Season Simplicity Summer Series”, hosted by my friend Krista from The Happy Housie. A special warm welcome to those of you here for the first time today! I hope you sign up at the top of the page for my emails so that you don’t miss out on all the fun. I have some really exciting events and things up my sleeve for all of you so make sure to stick around! But first….let’s go straight to my back patio and yard for a little summer tour!

This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy and here for my privacy & cookies policy. All opinions are my own.
Items from the post will be linked in the “Shop The Post” section at the end!

Last year was our first summer in our new home that we built here after moving from Texas here to Vancouver, Washington. Back in Texas, we were already familiar with the people we needed to contact when in need of any immediate services, like the much needed AC repairs from JAK Services (https://jakservices.com/fort-worth-air-conditioning-repair-service/) or others in our neighborhood. Whether we were preparing the home for the summer heat wave or getting it cozied up for the winter, we knew whom to approach. In Vancouver, everything was new to us and it was slightly overwhelming at first, to be honest. Nevertheless, we were able to design everything from scratch and really make it our own, I was so happy about this. The community is lovely here so we all helped each other over winter, and a couple of neighbors came round to help me out as well. Quite a few houses around here have some flags up which makes me feel all proud to be living here! They looked a bit like the residential flagpoles at Flagpoles Etc that I’ve seen before. I was wondering if we should do it too, it gives off a vibe of patriotism, so many people are proud to be American after all! Anyway, that’s by the by! We had so much more to sort as well. Making our house look incredible, and our garden too, because this was super important to me. Our few flowers and shrubs were newly planted and small and not much had been done. Now that we’ve been through a winter with them, we’ve been able to see what’s survived and what hasn’t. Most everything did.

I’m not a fan of annuals. I usually only have 2 of them and keep it pretty low maintenance with those, other than the annuals in my hanging basket. I plant perennials and like to find things that will bloom spring to fall and keep color all summer long. I also like to add other plants that will bloom at different times.

I have 1 type of rose that blooms in March and April and then that’s it. I also have my yellow lilies, daffodils and tulips, hyacinth Then my peonies in May and June. These are my peony bushes (now empty) that just all bloomed and finished and then I have 2 rose bushes on the end.

I picked the last of my peonies (left arrangement) last week and they all look beautiful inside my home! Imagine those empty peony bushes on the previous outdoor picture filled with peony blooms. It was gorgeous! I’m so sad I didn’t get it photographed but I was so ill with health problems and just didn’t catch it. Next year for sure!

All my roses and hydrangeas are next through the summer. I just LOVE roses so I have some on each end of my yard and some in the middle.

Our backyard is not very deep, it’s shallow. But the sides are large. I won’t be showing you those today as I had hoped because we didn’t get them done in May, due to some health problems I’ve had. I’m bummed! We have had some fun things mapped out but hopefully we’ll get them done by the end of the summer. I’ll let you know.

That being said….with the space from our back door to the fence being more shallow, I really wanted a lot of greenery and to not just look out back and see “Fence!” every time I looked out the back windows. My solution was to buy a lot of beautiful honeysuckle plants, white flowered chocolate vine plants, clematis (planted one last year and it came back after I thought it wouldn’t) and then I just planted a couple of climbing rose bushes. I think it’ll be just beautiful. It already is.

Tip: The great thing about the honeysuckle and white flowering chocolate vines is that they are evergreen! That will be the most aesthetically-pleasing. Plus, they smell sooooo good and the honeysuckle attract the humming birds so it’s just wonderful!

I love a variety of color in my garden but I also love aroma! Dianthus are very aromatic and have such various delicious smells. Some smell like raspberries dipped in chocolate to me….some like vanilla and cherries…they are just yummy smelling and so easy to care for.

I love roses! I have quite the rose garden but I’m embarrassed to post these as I haven’t even had a moment to trim these all back yet before taking pics. Like I said, I’ve been suffering from some health issues that are new and taking getting used to.

My mom is here for a bit helping and she and I are tackling that next. It’s crazy how they’ve all toppled over in just the last couple of weeks! They are growing soooo fast! How cute is that cement tufted-style garden stool?!! I found it at HomeGoods and knew it would be just darling in my rose garden.

At the end of the lawn where the stone path starts, we are going to be putting a little trellis over it with climbing roses. It’ll be so cute. This leads to our DIY stone bench. I purchased the stone at a supplier here locally and added cement ($3) in between. The stone cost about $90. It leads to our little fairy garden and sits next to my first apple tree. I’ll be planting a row of fruit trees. Can’t wait! I have petunias around the bottom of my tree for fun.

My kids helped me create this small fairy garden in the corner, behind my rose garden. I know they’re too old for it, but we really did it for my nieces and nephews that come to visit and the smaller children who come over to play. It’s a fun little area. I bought everything at Michael’s last year on sale at the end of the summer so the prices were awesome.

One of my favorite additions this year has been to our patio…our retractable awning. It’s manual but it was just a few hundred dollars and it is quick and easy to roll in and out. We paid a local company to come out and install it for a few hundred dollars because we wanted it done really well. I suggest doing that unless your husband is super handy. Mine is great at closing business deals and sports but he will tell you that he’d feel more confident hiring someone for this task and I’d agree that’s best when the wind whips this thing around. You want it really anchored and sturdy!

I like keeping to wreath hangers in between my windows during the summer entertaining months so that I can switch out my wreaths with tablescapes.

Bringing your bar cart outside for summer entertaining is a MUST!

Lemons are so fresh and summery so I thought this was the best way to kick of the summer, with an easy lemon floral centerpiece. I added a cup inside the vase for the flowers to sit in. I added the thin slices of lemons in between and that was it. These were very inexpensive flowers from the grocery store, $10 total. And $2 for the lemons.

We could sit out here every night for dinner and watch the sunset and look at the view of the Wetlands and those gorgeous trees! Love it out here!!!

My other favorite addition this summer to our backyard has been our new grey umbrella with white fringe. (Everything is linked below.) It’s fun to take out our dining set for more of a “garden party” feel with the umbrella and set it up on the grass. It’s the cutest umbrella and I’d been wanting it for a while. We’ll be using it in another spot that we are designing that we hope to have finished.

I like to have towels ready for water balloons fights and water fun in the backyard at all times!

I’ll finally be getting around to the tutorial on the putting green I made for my hubby on the side of the house as a surprise gift so stay tuned! (Beckham was trying it out. He approved.)

Click on the arrows to scroll right and left. Click on picture to shop item!

Nearly 40 bloggers are sharing their summer home tours this week! Sharing with me today are…

Thursday

Kim Power Style // Maison de Pax // Jenna Kate at Home // Two Twenty One // Just a Girl and Her Blog

Summer Adams // tatertots and jello // The Tattered Pew // Aratari at Home // Crisp Collective

And sharing the rest of the week…

I’m so glad you could stop by today! I would love it if you could subscribe at the top of the page in order to receive my weekly emails of all my latest blog posts and see everything I’m working on! You can also follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to see what I’m up to in creating a home and lifestyle of inspiration!

xoxo,

Want to shop my Instagram posts? Click on any square below!

The post Back Patio & Yard Summer Tour appeared first on Summer Adams.

Tips For Entertaining Outdoors This Summer

Summer — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 01:16:22 +0000

One of my favorite things to do during the summer is to invite friends and family over and entertain outdoors. I usually do that when I’m at my parents’ home in California because, as we’ve been moving frequently over the past several years with my husband’s company, we haven’t taken the time to invest in our own outdoor furniture. We have all these plans for creating an outdoor oasis for our new home that we’re currently building on “Tall Trees Lane”, our nickname for our build. As I look through several friends’ blogs, I thought you’d want to see the inspiration I’m pinning as well so I’m sharing tips for entertaining outdoors this summer in today’s blog post. Hopefully, some of these ideas will be perfect for your next summer event with your friends and family. When entertaining outdoors in the summer though, you do have to be cautious of the weather. If it becomes too hot, it could be dangerous for people to be outside for that long. Too much sun exposure could result in heat-related issues, so make sure that people can have access to your home, especially if you have an air conditioner in there. Normally, air conditioning units are a must for summer to keep the house cool. If your unit isn’t working as well as it once did, it might be worth visiting https://mrquikhomeservices.com/indianapolis/hvac/ac-repair/ to see if they could repair it for you. Hopefully, that will help you to keep everyone safe throughout the summer. The sun can be lovely, but also dangerous at times, so be cautious.

Turn your porch into a cozy oasis!

Welcome to my friend Kelley Nan’s porch makeover. Her pops of blue are so soothing and summery. She created the sweetest relaxing date here for her darling husband. Hop on over to her post and see the view of this porch at night when all the twinkling lights are on. You can read all about how Kelley transformed this space and see what she served for their special night at home. How adorable is she?! So many of us have porches that we are not utilizing but Kelley will inspire you to work on yours so that it’s a fun space to lounge and entertain at this Summer and not just wasted space or a place to store things. Kelley did such a lovely job!

Create an outdoor drink station for your guests!

Next, we visit my friend Rebekah from A Blissful Nest. Rebekah is so fun to be around so I just know she is a really fun hostess. Anytime you are entertaining outdoors, your guests will want to know where to find a cold beverage. While many of us have brought out a cooler with ice and drinks for our guests, this outdoor drink station that Rebekah made is so much cuter! Your guests will just love it!

Provide fun for everyone outdoors!

Unfortunately, I live in a part of California that experiences drought very often so we can’t have grass in our backyard. Instead, we used artificial grass but if you’re in an area where you can water and maintain your grass better than I can, you should definitely go to someone like Green Valley Turf Co. to give your grass a new lease of life.

There’s nothing like a great backyard makeover and my friend Marta McCue recently finished hers down in Florida. Not only did Marta include a table for eating and a sitting area to lounge in, she also created fun for her friends and family by adding an outdoor movie screen. It’s so easy to do and after the sun goes down, you can project movies from DVD’s, cable, etc. Read more here to see how Martha did that. It’s funny how kids would rather grab all their friends and watch a movie outdoors in the summer.

Outdoor Entertaining For Two

Often, we think of throwing BBQ’s and outdoor parties for friends and family or even saving it for a special occasion. However, my dear friend Tamara from Citrine Living knows that the most important kind of outdoor meals are the ones for just you and your other half. Sometimes you just don’t feel like getting dressed up and going out to an expensive restaurant or fighting city traffic. Why not create a special and romantic space in your very own backyard? With your favorite beverage and appetizers to your most-loved dishes and desserts, a night at home in the backyard might just be the best time ever spent together! Isn’t this set-up that Tamara created just dreamy?! Anyone can do it. Read more about it in her blog post and grab some inspiration to surprise your significant other this Summer! I just love this.

Host an unforgettable pool party!

There’s nothing better than inviting your friends over for a pool party in the summer. Whether it’s for a birthday or graduation or just because it’s Summertime…a pool party is always a good idea! I used to throw one at the end of the school year to celebrate. Rebekah from A Blissful Nest shared her outdoor drink station above, and now check out this party! I can hardly believe it! Wait until you see all the details! Her decor, her printables, her food and drink served….it’s the perfect pool party bash that I know you’ll want to recreate. Read here for every detail and more pictures. It’s so hot while I’m writing this blog post that I want nothing more than to jump into that blue pool!

Serve something absolutely delicious!

My mouth is already watering just looking at this Raspberry Gourmet S’More Recipe that Kendra from Simply Darrling shared. Making s’mores are a must-do every summer but we’ve enjoyed trying new s’more recipes each year. I love chocolate and fruit together. But adding the marshmallow and graham cracker makes it a little bit of Heaven in your mouth! Yummy! How cute would these be to make?! I bet your guests will love them!

And how about this drink to wash them down…..

I had to share Rebekah’s summer drink recipe that is totally delicious! This Cucumber Berry Spritzer is so absolutely refreshing and since it’s non-alcoholic, it is perfect for all ages! I sure do love berries in anything during the spring and summer!

Al Fresco dining on the porch!

I love eating outdoors! I’ve shared in many posts that I love to set a nice table for my family each week and that includes when we are eating out on the patio as well. My friend Rhoda from Southern Hospitality shows how to do this perfectly. Ditch the paper plates and cups and bring out some of your fun colored dishes and serve ware! I like what Rhoda said, “Having a porch with a table is one of those small pleasures in life for me…”. Isn’t that how we should treat those spaces?! Create a change of scenery and do something nice for your friends and family by setting a beautiful table like Rhoda’s and serve them your favorite summer salads and dishes! Read more about Rhoda’s gorgeous outdoor table here and make plans to do the same!

Try something new by making your outdoor entertaining unforgettable with all of these fun tips that I’ve shared from my friends today. Make sure to pin all of these fabulous ideas to Pinterest and follow along with their blogs as well! You’ll find inspiration for days! Thanks to each one of my friends for allowing me to share today!

I would love it if you subscribed at the top of the page in order to receive my weekly emails of all my latest blog posts and hear about your next month’s calendar & freebies, as well as sales or new items in My Online Shoppe. You can also follow me on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to see what I’m up to in creating a home and lifestyle of inspiration!