Small Victories

With my long list of failed experiments posted, its time for some small victories. Example A: our new porch furniture!

We’d been talking about buying new porch furniture since early spring. Last spring we screened in our patio/porch which turned it into a wonderful, bug (and chicken) free space to relax in. It was a lot of work but well worth it (especially since my parents spent a long weekend with us helping with the hardest parts!). Now that our porch is screened in and we are spending so much time out there we realized that the old, mismatched, hand-me-down furniture we’d accumulated over the last decade just weren’t cutting it anymore. Plus we had a couple of guests literally fall through the bottoms of our chairs. That is embarrassing for everyone. In part due to our inability to decide on colors and style and (mostly) due to our sticker shock at the price of nice patio furniture we kept “talking” about getting new furniture but didn’t actually get around to doing it until mid summer and guess what? Patio furniture starts going on sale around mid summer! Apparently that is when stores likes Lowes, Home Depot and Sam’s Club start switching their seasonal items over to fall and start trying to get rid of their summer items. We ended up finding a beautiful set of good quality furniture for more than 50% off from Sam’s. Woohoo for   saving money!! It was still expensive but we felt much more justified in our purchase when we were able to save so much. Hopefully by going with a high quality (and previously very expensive) set we will get many more years of use out of it than if we’d gone with one of the “budget” sets we were also considering.

Of course, my thrifty gene couldn’t be satisfied with the thought of all new furniture- even if it was on sale- so I had to add in some re-finished bits as well. My parents also replaced their old patio set this summer and while their loveseat and chairs were beyond saving thanks to having been used as a teething toy by their labradoodle, they had a couple of side tables that just needed a new coat of paint. I also found some old metal folding tv trays at a junk shop. Everything got a fresh coat of black spray paint et Voila! now we have plenty of side tables to set drinks and plates on to go along with all our new seating!

I’m even attempting to keep some potted plants alive on the porch but we won’t call that a victory just yet– I’ve never managed to keep a potted plant alive for longer than a couple of weeks so I’m crossing my fingers….but not holding my breath!