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10.20.2013

Day Sixteen: Porch Love

What would a post about our living room be without a follow up post about our porch?  This little porch was a gift when we bought here, 6 years ago.  Not being on the ground floor with an exterior door was a hard transition but this little screened in place?  It was a charming consolation.  I showed you in a previous post how it's transformed over the years.  It used to be so darling!  Lots of potted plants, places to sit, a table to sip coffee...but now, it's a lot like the rest of our house.  A hybrid space with a little bit of the old and a lot of the kids' stuff mixed in.  And that's ok! 
I wouldn't trade the chance for more plants if it meant no little ones living here.
So what makes this porch sing in my heart?  
All the light it lets in.  
I've always loved natural light streaming in and during the Spring and Fall, I love to leave the doors open so a breeze can blow through.  I seriously enjoy gazing outside every morning and right now, watching the neighborhood kids walk to school.  When the weather is warm enough, I love to drink my coffee out here and read.  Sometimes when the kids are making me crazy, I love to shut the door and escape out here too!  Or I close it on them when they are out there :) 
Think of it as my very tiny, fenced in yard.  
It's screened in from top to bottom so we don't have to worry about bugs, however we did have some pesky and persistent bees this Fall that managed to get in here and they have been an incredible pain!  I've been sad for my kids because they really got robbed of playtime out here in September.  The bees in Minnesota have been something else lately and they've been swarming our whole building.  So many nice days I had to keep them in here because we had several flying around and I just couldn't stay out here constantly on bee patrol.  Believe me, the second one was spotted by my little people, the entire building knew it!  We are not raising brave, insect-loving kids so far! 
Now that there is a real chill in the air, the bees have disappeared and I finally got myself out there last week to clean it up before we have our first snow.  I got rid of lots of dying plants, although I couldn't pull the trigger yet on a few that were still holding on.  
I do love standing in our living room and looking out to see so much green space!  We have beautiful trees and a big hill to look at and the tree that stands right in front of our porch has grown so much over the years, it gives us some nice shade now and even a little privacy.  
The cozy coupes and the hoop live out here now :) I saw a seriously cute pin on pinterest with little christmas trees and wreaths strapped to these cozy coupes as if they were real cars and I just might have to do that at Christmas!  I always feel bad that the neighbors have to look at kids toys, but maybe a little holiday cheer will aid to the charm! Ha! 
Again, this $5 Craig's List slide has brought more joy to our kids than I ever would have guessed!  Does it look cute on my porch? No, no it doesn't.  
Does it thrill my kiddos??  Yes, yes it does! 

And so it stays.  I will likely have our pumpkins out here soon and I always love a wreath in the winter.  It's a simple little pleasure and I'm glad we have it.  Our kids have learned to have conversations with the neighbors out here and this is a great spot to wait for Daddy to get home from work! 

I'm glad I got this cleaned up and ready for the first snow fall on a warm day last week.  Pretty soon I'll look out here and the trees will be bare and the ground will be white.  That's always a beautiful sight too but it won't be long before we hope for the return of some color.  For now we are just enjoying it as much as we can and keeping the blinds open to soak up the sun!  This will be a chilly week so we may not have many more play days out here, but we'll take what we can get.  

We all love our little porch! 
This is post #16.  Halfway there...

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