making it a home

A wise woman once told me, "When you live in Southern California you have to consider your patio (outside space) another room in your house." And with that said, she and her husband gifted Mikey and I with a patio furniture set. Yet, she left the decorating up to us.

Here is the beautiful patio set our friends gave us. It gets bright sunshine in the morning as the sun comes up over that back corner in the morning and makes its way diagonally across the patio. So in the evening, this back corner is lit. I think this is the only area that gets sunlight all day.

This is in front of the table and chairs (I'm standing at the doorway). The window you can catch a slight peek of is our kitchen window. We're hoping to raise the herb garden you see on the ground here, up one day to the window level. Right now I can't see the herbs just looking out of the kitchen, I have to look down~ but if we raise the herbs we could not only see the herbs but open our window and take them to cook with. Convenient!

Mikey and I took some advice and went with it. We knew we wanted to enjoy and develop the beautiful back patio area God had given us, yet, we're both new to this whole "groundskeeping" side of our marriage.
But we had a lot of fun looking at different plants and flowers, asking ourselves, "Is this what we want?" It was actually a lot of fun to be thinking about our back patio area and to finally get some "life" on it.

This is probably my favorite corner... someday we're hoping to get a little table and chair or two there but for now stealing one of the patio chairs that came with the table works just as well. I love sitting here in the morning underneath a tall tree (not pictured) that provides amble amount of shade while letting some sunlight through. It's perfect to sit here and drink coffee!!

Here is our back door, which is actually the door our guests and selves use the most. :)

In the corner, by my little coffee nook is this tree. It's a Japanese Camellia and I love it. We chose one that hadn't bloomed yet but as you can tell, it's about to real soon. The flowers are a gorgeous dark pink and I am so excited to see it bloom I head out every morning to check to see if anything has opened. I'll be sure to keep you posted. :)

You all know the Lime-Lemon, our little unknown!

And this my beautiful friends is the start of a hydrangea...
the blooms start this green color

and eventually start turning colors... green to white-ish

to pale pink!

this is another section of our herb garden. This large leaf is a strawberry leaf. We're experimenting with whether or not we can actually grow strawberries.

Herb Garden side 2... mint, basil, tomato plant and rosemary!

Our hanging basket of loveliness

Please come and enjoy coffee/tea/hot cocoa sometime. Mikey and I fixed this up so we could entertain... so come on over! The patio is open year round here in So Cal!