5 Ways to Bring Color to Your Patio

5 Ways to Bring Color to Your Patio

Written by Jane Blanchard  

A patio can serve as a focal point for a backyard and act as an outdoor gathering place. While surrounding buildings and trees can provide visual interest, a patio often gets overlooked in the decorating department since most people see it as a functional place to grill out or relax outdoors. Whether it's a large area with table and chairs or a small area with standing room only, here are five ways to spruce up a patio and bring color into the area.

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Hello Beautiful!

Hello Beautiful!

Well hello everyone! I've been a busy little bee lately. I've been wrapping up projects and then, of course, moving on to new ones. I finally finished up the dining room (I will have pics up in a couple of days) but then I moved on to the master bathroom. Yes, the master bath. I know you are probably asking "didn't you just reveal the master bath a few months ago?" I did, but I hadn't quite finished it up. I still wanted to add crown and needed to touch up a few pieces of door trim. I knocked it out in a weekend and am just finishing up a few things here and there. In the midst of all of this I was contacted by Hometalk and asked to curate a board of foyer remodels because they loved my foyer project. Color me flattered! So of course I got to work picking out my favorite remodels from their crazy big database. And guess what happened? After looking at all of the beautiful foyers, I realized I need to update mine a bit. Yep, I will be freshening up the foyer in the next couple of weeks. Luckily I've got some amazing inspiration to help me along. 

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Keeping Your Paintbrush "Fresh" (aka the Paintbrush Burrito)

Keeping Your Paintbrush "Fresh" (aka the Paintbrush Burrito)

I love to paint. I mean, it's cheap, it's easy and it makes a huge impact. What I don't like are 1. Tacky brushes 2. Dried out brushes. If you've ever had to paint a project where there was a good amount of time between coats, you know what I'm talking about. Luckily, thanks to a DIY Channel tip, neither of these are a problem any longer! Step 1: Lay the brush in the middle of a plastic bag.

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The cabinet painting tool you have to have!

The cabinet painting tool you have to have!

Well hello everyone! I bet you all thought I'd quit the blogging game. Not so! I've been busy launching the business and working on a TON of projects. One of those is finishing my cabinets - you know the cabinets that were oak, then black, then black and white and now.... white. Yep, went the traditional route. After my travels overseas and seeing really, really old kitchens I've noticed one thing - white never goes out of style. I'm trying to keep it classic but with fun accessories. But more on that later. While painting kitchen cabinets, you will find yourself sanding - a lot.

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Decorating and kids - life lessons

Decorating and kids - life lessons

For most of my youth I heard "this is why I can't have nice things" more times than I care to recall. After my brother was born, we pretty much heard it daily. Apparently kids + nice things = destroyed. After years of hearing this it settled into the recesses of my brain. When I began decorating after the birth of my first child, the saying came to the forefront of my mind. I decided to invest in cheap "throw-away" accessories, dinnerware, flatware, glasses, drapes - you name it. I lived at Targe

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Fixing Splintered Wood

Fixing Splintered Wood

Working with wood is awesome! You can create so many great things. As much as I love creating beautiful things with wood there is one thing that always seems to happen - splintering.

Splintered wood is most often caused by using the wrong blade for the wood being cut and usually only happens on one side. More times than not you can make sure it's on the side that won't be seen. But sometimes you just can't get around using the splintered side (or if you are like me, you aren't paying attention and end up using the wrong side -oops). Usually when I do that I try to prime and paint it hoping it will cover the damage. That rarely works and it pretty much ends up looking like this:

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Consignment pays!

Consignment pays!

Admit it - you read that heading and thought "well duh. That's what consignment is - paying you for stuff you sell." Yes, but that isn't where this post is going. No, this post is about the sweet deal I scored this weekend by shopping at a consignment store. Have you ever had a piece of furniture that you lusted over? The kind that makes you go to a website more often than you should hoping to catch it on sale? For me it was the Printer's Writing Desk from Pottery Barn.

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$1 Photo Wall Template

$1 Photo Wall Template

After putting up the board and batten in the entryway (you can check that out here or here), I knew I needed to rehang the photos along the stairs. I've seen those nifty little photo wall template kits that can help you design a layout and gives you the frames.  I love the idea, but I already have the frames and I'm too impatient to wait for a kit to be mailed to me. So I grabbed a cup of coffee (to get the creative juices flowing) and had an a ha! moment. I ran down to the laundry room, went through a few boxes of "scraps" from projects and came up with this:

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Do You Nadeau? Well You Should!

Do You Nadeau? Well You Should!

About a year ago I began obsessing over dining room tables. When we moved into our home I indulged my husband's love of IKEA and modern by decorating our dining room with modern furniture. I opted for a metal table with a frosted glass top and while nice it was very hard to keep clean with two kids (one of which was just discovering finger foods).

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