Reversible indoor/outdoor pillows

The freshly refinished patio furniture looks great!  But the solid blue cushions needed a little jazzing up.

I was complaining to my Mom about the dearth of cute outdoor pillows, and how the ones that are out there are pricey, and she suggested that she make them for me as a gift.

My specifications were three pillows, 16" square, and fun.  The rest was up to her!

She really hit the mark on this one!  She made us two sets of pillow cases.  We're going for a blue/green color scheme on the deck, so the main pillows are those colors.  She couldn't decide between fabrics, so she got both and made the pillows reversible.

So they can all match with either fabric, or be mixed.  What fun!

On top of that, she's well aware that Tommy's favorite holiday is 4th of July.  She made an extra set just for him in red white and blue that he can put out around Independence Day.  These are reversible too!

She used sunbrella fabrics, which stand up well to the elements and resist fading.  I used special outdoor pillow forms (half off at Joanns) to stuff them.  Even though her pillows measure exactly 16" square, they looked best with 18" pillow inserts.  The 16" ones were really puny, so keep than in mind when you're shopping.

Tommy was weirded out about having pillows that get rained on.  We got almost 1/2" the other day, but by that afternoon, they were already dry.  I would imagine they're also washable if need be.  You don't have to use outdoor pillow inserts - regular polyester-filled ones are OK too.

But wait, there's more!

After going on and on about how much we liked these, and after she saw our freshly painted blue porch swing, she made us two more!

These are also two sided, with a colorful chevron on one side and a flip flops print on the other.

A super big thanks to my awesome Mom!!!

Bonnie Projects

Lighting the Deck

We adore spending time on our deck.  Every time we have dinner outside, we remark how our ambiance beats any restaurant in town.  We watch the ducks in the pond, chat with our neighbors walking by, and listen to the birds.  Until it gets dark, and you can't see a darn thing.

We have one flood light for the deck, but it's blinding and unflattering.  We needed some better light!

I had bought cafe lights for the deck at our wedding reception.  I'm not sure why, but they never got used and came home still in the packaging.  I'm a use-what-you-got kind of gal, so we tried to come up with a way to put them to use.

We don't have any trees nearby we could hang the lights from, and nothing we could string them up with so make them shine from overhead.

Instead, we improvised, and stapled them directly to the handrail of the deck.  They're tucked underneath, so they don't get in the way of setting things on top, and they're enough under the edge to prevent stuff from bumping into them and breaking them.

Better yet, since they're hidden by the railing, nobody can complain that we have lights strung on our house year-round.

They create an awesome soft glow at night, and allow us to enjoy even more hours on the the deck!

I've heard these cafe lights can be really fragile.  We broke a few putting them up, so you do need to be pretty careful not to bang them into stuff.  That said, we haven't broken a single one since we installed them.  We had one strand leftover from the project, so we're saving it to harvest lightbulbs from, should any break in the future.

I think the lights were about $20 a strand originally, and we used three strands (plus another for extra bulbs), so doing this project would cost about $80.  Since we already had the lights, I see it more as $0, and another instance of reusing stuff from our wedding.  Regardless, an outdoor light fixture runs you $30 - $300, depending on how pretty you want it to be, so I think we came in OK.

It took Tommy a little over an hour to staple them all up.

We're glad to have tackled this project!  It's like the icing on the cake for our deck experience!

Bonnie Projects

Painted porch swing

I went for it!  Painted the porch swing!

We've really been enjoying the porch swing since we hung it last weekend.  But it was a little on the boring side.  It also needed a coat of paint or stain to protect it from the elements.

I initially decided on yellow, but the helpful folks at Sherwin Williams warned me that yellow pigments degrade in sunlight.  My second choice was turquoise, which apparently lasts longer, so I went with that!

They also warned me that even though exterior paints hold up well outdoors, they don't always hold up well to the wear and tear you'd get from sitting on it.  They suggested using a floor paint instead - since it holds up to being walked on, it should also hold up to being sat on.  I ended up using Sherwin Williams Porch and Floor Enamel in Slick Blue.

I started by giving the swing a good sanding, and used the leaf blower to get all the dust off.

I applied two coats of paint, being sure to cover every last crevice for the best durability.  That's it!  I love painting stuff because you get a lot of bang for your buck, and it's pretty hard to do wrong!

All in all, this project cost about $20 for the paint and about four total hours of time.  100% worth it!

The swing is so much more fun now and really jazzes up the bottom deck.  There's still more tweaking needed to get the deck prettied up, but this is a great start!

If you've been thinking about a painting project, this is the weekend to get started!  Sherwin Williams is offering 40% off paints and stains, and 30% off painting supplies.  The sale is April 19 - 22.

Bonnie Projects