Touring Our Home : Back Porch

If you head out the sliding glass doors from our dining room, you step onto our back porch. One of the major selling points of our house for us. Beautiful, vaulted ceiling,  outdoor fan, shades that can be rolled up or down for privacy, a little cobblestone landing at the bottom of the steps... room for a picnic table, some porch furniture, a hammock and our grill... 

We spend a lot of time out here. I have lunch outside with the boys in spring, we do lots of outside dinners through the summer, and we have an overflow seating area just off the dining room when we have a lot of people over. 

 

I would really love an outdoor sofa or love seat and big comfy chairs. But that has not made the priority list the last couple summers. And it will probably wait another summer or two still. In the meantime, these two beautiful vintage velvet chairs (for only $15 for both yard saling) and a long crate turned on its side as an end table worked well this year. :) 

 

We just hung the hammock out here this past summer. I don't know why we waited so long. It has such special meaning to us. I brought it home from a missions trip to Honduras in 2004, the same trip where Shaun and I told each other our secret feelings for each other and the love of a lifetime began. We sat in hammocks like this over a moonlit lagoon many of the nights we were there talking. I bought one at an open air market to bring home with me. It's now one of our boys' favorite spots too. 

We hung galvanized metal sconces with candles in them on both of the back pillars. It looks so pretty at night with the candlelight. 

And this last picture is from quite a while ago, before I had stained the picnic table even. But it gives a little better perspective of the detail of the porch... I love the scalloped wood on the outside and the red metal roof. So many wonderful times have been had out there. 

Since taking these photos I've brought in all the plants and the green velvet chairs have found a home in the basement for the winter. It looks a little empty right now, but some years  we've draped garland and lights around the railings. We will see how much I feel like doing this year ;)

To see the rest of our house tour so far:

Living room here

Dining room here

Kitchen here