Patio Updates

Have I told you all how unspring it has been around here (like that word I just created?).  Seriously, it sleeted/snowed Sunday. I am officially pissed off at the weather now!  Technically, Colton's birthday party could have/should have been this past weekend with his actual birthday falling on Tuesday.  Thank goodness we had too much other stuff going on and had decided to wait a couple of weeks for a less busy weekend because this weather would certainly not have been ideal for the backyard party we are planning!
Speaking of Colton's backyard birthday party, there will be about 20 friends of his plus their parents hanging out in our backyard to celebrate.  Needless to say, this upcoming event has me looking around the backyard and patio for areas that need improvement.  Despite having just redone this area a year ago or so (in anticipation of Colton's second birthday party!), I actually founds lots of problem areas.  Luckily, most of them were pretty easy fixes.
Like this mobile.  You can't really tell in the before picture, but the mobile was a teal/green/blue creation I had purchased from CB2 a few years back.  I liked the colors, but it really didn't match the patio's decor (I had originally bought it for the living room, but then couldn't figure out where to hang it there).  So I spray painted it yellow, and now it fits.

BEFORE

AFTER

Then there was this failed project.  Last year, I printed out letters to spell out our last name and glued them to a painted piece of wood.  Honestly, I don't think I picked out the letters very well and never really liked it.  Then, over the past year, the letters kept randomly falling off the wood.  Time to come up with Plan B.  I used some pipe clamps to attach some mason jars to it instead.  I filled the mason jars with seashells and a votive candle and think it's a much better solution (at least for now!).

BEFORE: you can see the doomed project in the center

AFTER

                                         

And maybe my most exciting update (at least for this post) are to the canvases that you can see on either side of the wood plan in the above picture.  Last year, I hoped to wrap them in fabric, but I couldn't find a fabric that worked with my color scheme.  So I painted them instead.  I am definitely an amateur painter at best, and they pretty much confirmed that.  This year, I happened to stumble across this fabric that totally fits the color scheme (and that I'm pretty much obsessed with now and wants to use pretty much everywhere in our house).

Improvements, right?  But guess what?!?  Those were only the smallish updates.  I have some others up my sleeve that I'm currently working on.  Hopefully, I'll be back to share them with you some time next week so stay tuned!