The first weekend in the new house we were busy tackling some of the smaller projects we had identified on the screened in porch, patio and yard.

First things first, the front porch.  There was a hook for a hanging basket, but we decided we wanted 2 baskets so we unscrewed their hook, measured and screwed in 2 screw hooks into the wooden frame so they were equally spaced out.

The old flowers in our hanging baskets had a rough few weeks, so I went to Lowe’s and decided on 2 vinca flowers and a blue haze trailing flower in each basket.  Then up the baskets went!

Next step was to remove the old piece of plastic that used to be a flag holder from the porch pole.  This took a little effort, but eventually it was down, a new flag holder was screwed in and our American flag was hung!

The rocking chairs went on either side of the window, my American burlap wreath was hung on the front door and the porch had a little bit of us on it! Now to the backyard… We have a screened in porch, deck area, then some beds around the deck and grass elsewhere. There were some random plants (and lots of weeds) in the beds so we took the plants out and did a lot of weeding.

The strangest thing was the previous owners had put some of the plants in pots and buried then into the bed and we had no idea until we dug them up and found they were in pots!

Note: Apparently this is actually a normal thing, aka my mom had heard of it before. When we were at Lowe’s Hunter found some autumn blush coreopsis (mounding perennial with yellow flowers) that were pretty and we also picked up lavender – 6 of each.  We alternated those around the deck, with our pots that used to be by the fire pit at the old house on either side of the stair.

Long term plans for the deck include finally retiring the plastic chairs I’ve had since my first solo apartment and getting a table and chairs so we can eat outside.  We’ve also talked about totally replacing the deck and redoing it with stone (super long term there).  Shorter term projects include cleaning up all the trees in the yard, replacing the fence (it’s dry rotted), possibly sodding the yard to the fence and pine straw beyond the fence to the fairway and edging the beds to create a distinction between them and the lawn. We have our work cut out for us!

Finally, the screened porch. When we moved in, we put our previous patio furniture out there and that was about it.The previous homeowners had some rope lights screwed in around the perimeter of the porch so we took them down and unscrewed all the clamps holding the lights up.  The door was also missing a handle on the inside, so we screwed one of those in too.

We found some great string lights from Target in white (so the wires blend into the walls) and bought more screw hooks from Lowe’s to hang the new lights around the patio.  I also hung our anchor door hanger on the post, put an outdoor tray out on the table with a pot of succulents.

The best part was enjoying the porch with Hunter and Cleo on our first Sunday afternoon there, once all of our projects for the weekend were done.  We listened to music, I worked on my computer and we just relaxed and talked about our list of projects.
Next up for the porch: Finding an outdoor rug and new pillows for the space.  We will also replace the furniture when we find a great deal on something we like to maximize the space out there 🙂