A New Pergola & a Porch Swing

Happy Friday and Happy October Friends!

This time of year always seems to literally fly by so quickly I barely have time to catch up. In the month of September alone, we celebrated 5 family birthdays, including my own – #anotheryearolder #anotheryearwiser – and this month already 1 birthday under our belts.

Between the party-planning, back to school grind, craft fair preparations, and promoting my shop, we have just been buzzing with busy-ness. My mantra is one-day-at-a-time. Can I get an amen?

I realized something last week as I was buying mums and pumpkins to decorate our new favorite backyard space to hang out…and that is I never got around to actually sharing that new space here on the blog with all of you!

I’m calling this post “A New Pergola & a Porch Swing,” although another good name for it might be “The Pergola that Almost Wasn’t…and the Porch Swing that Never Swung.” That would have been such a depressing title, and probably not a very good blog post either, but in reality, that’s what this project almost amounted to.

At the beginning of the summer we had decided to construct a wooden pergola off the back of our house, and purchased all the materials for the project, ready to go. My husband and my brother were both slated to start working on it for an entire weekend, and guess what it did? It rained and stormed. The whole weekend.

So, do you think that project got very far? The 4 main posts went up and that’s how it sat for most of the summer. Because, as most summers go, we got busy. Life got busy. Vacations were planned. BBQ’s, swimming and having fun were more of a priority than slaving away in the hot summer sun getting this project finished.

But finally, about 3 weeks before the end of summer hit, and I realized the pile of wood that had been sitting on the grass in our backyard for 2 months was starting to gather cobwebs…we decided we probably should get that pergola finished up.

Thankfully my dad and my brother came over one night after work, and helping my husband and I, cranked it into high-construction-gear and finished it. And I’m so glad they did.

It’s beautiful. It gives us so much nice shade from the hot sun that tends to bear down in this area of our yard. And it looks pretty stellar at night with string lights hanging all around it.

The porch swing I had purchased on sale over Memorial Day that had been sitting in our garage for 3 months finally had a home to be hung. Plus, I can’t even begin to tell you how badly I’ve wanted one of these things since like forever. We don’t have the proper front porch for it on our home, but this spot is a perfect fit.

And we finally had our project completed. *insert heavy sigh of relief here*

I’ve come to realize, that this is just how projects sometimes tend to go at this stage in our busy lives right now. It’s definitely not perfect, but we have to be willing to give ourselves a little grace. It’s worth it in the end.

As a matter of fact, I’ve got a few other on-going projects happening like that right now at our house that I’m anxious to share with you, but they haven’t quite gotten to that “shareable point” yet. Hopefully within the next few weeks months they will be!

In the meantime, you can find me hanging out here on this porch swing, enjoying the warmer fall weather while it lasts. You better believe I’ll be utilizing this backyard space as long as mother nature lets me yet this year.

Next year, we hope to incorporate a platform deck underneath it to really bring the whole space together. And some cool planters off the sides. Maybe we’ll just get started now, that way, if we run into delays next summer, it won’t be fall by the time we finish them up!

I am super excited to share with you some other fall decorating I’ve been doing around my house next week on the blog. This is my favorite time of year and I’ve got a few other cute projects planned to feature as well. Stay tuned for that and enjoy your weekend!