Hey everyone. How ya doing? I’m gonna be honest and say I’ve been struggling a lot. My mental health is not doing well. I take anti-depressants, and I’ve been trying to be more active (my friend Jess influenced me into buying a cheap exercise bike on Amazon and I kinda love it). I could do a lot better, but you know what? I find that my mental health does so much better if I’m getting enough sunshine / outdoors time. It’s been hard with COVID-19 really limiting what we can do, and I’m starting to feel the effects of additional indoors times, and feeling unmotivated and just BLEH. Am I alone?

Also? If you didn’t know, we live in Phoenix and it’s been like 115 degrees every day for awhile! But I still make myself be outside because I know it will make a world of difference.

I knew going into quarantine back in March that the whole staying-at-home-forever thing was going to have its challenges, being that there are 5 of us in a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom home. We tested the limits of our house (and our addition was pushed back because of COVID too which is fine, we’ve lived in our house now for almost 3 years, and thrived in it) and then a couple of months into quarantine we had all kind of had enough. SO! We did what anyone with a crappy trash / dirt patch under a tree in their backyard would do. We set out to create an outdoor living room!

One thing I love about our house is the size of our back yard! It’s pretty big. The downside? It’s a trash pile of despair. You might think I’m being modest or something but let me tell you about this yard - when we were finishing up with the renovation about 2.5 years ago, we kind of rushed it at the end since our lease at our rental was up and we were eager to get in. The construction guys never finished cleaning up all of the debris around our house. So on the side of our house, there were these piles of old bricks, blocks, broken tiles, and then 2 1/2 years of dirt and weeds accumulated over it and overgrown. In the back yard are weeds that have grown as high as the house, boxes of tile and bags of hardened mortar and grout mixtures and just an absolute jungle. We can’t even go back there. There’s also a chopped down dead tree back there and probably like a million black widow spiders. We have just left it for now because we are going to be starting on our addition soon, and it feels pointless to spend time clearing it and making it nice if it’s just going to be all dug up in a couple months. (This is so embarrassing. But when we had a landscaper come look at the back yard like a month ago…. he found a flattened area and a bunch of beer bottles and was like “I’m pretty sure you have a homeless person living back here.” So no… I’m not exaggerating.)

Anyway, back to the side yard with the construction crap. There is an EXCELLENT shade tree back there (an ash tree), and a couple months ago I was outside just wishing for a shady place we could relax. Can we have just ONE nice spot in our yard, at least? I wondered. I zeroed in underneath that tree to all of the weeds and piles of old bricks and I determined in my heart right at that moment that I would transform that area before it got hot, (which was like, the following week) and that YES we CAN just have ONE nice spot in our dang yard to enjoy the outdoor shade whenever the house starts feeling too small and we just need some fresh air.

Here’s a couple of outdoor spaces I used for LOOSE inspiration - I wanted to be inspired by the feeling of these spaces and not so much the exact details, does that make sense? I knew the overall feeling I wanted to achieve.

Source | Design by Beth Mullins, Landscape Design by Grows Green

Source | Photo by Antoine Bootz (click the source to see more of this amazing French Riviera flat!)

We got the kids involved and we all spent about a week (about an hour or so a day) weeding the area, clearing the debris, and trying our best to level the dirt. I was so proud of our kids for wanting to get involved - they loved it and Imogen even had a clever idea to use pool noodles to help level the dirt.

I had a large patch of artificial grass leftover from a previous flip project, and make fun of me or whatever, but it is REALLY nice having a guaranteed place that you could lounge comfortably outside even if you haven’t mowed in awhile, or it hasn’t rained in awhile (our grass in the desert can be pretty dry and prickly). We didn’t have it installed properly or anything, since we dream on a real thin budget over here for now, but we did our best and it’s all we needed for our enjoyment. I think I photoshopped it in a few pics, but ya’ll, this is real life, and it looks a little patchy. Don’t judge me. My life isn’t perfect. It’s better than a homeless person sleeping here okay?

As a plant collector, I knew plants wouldn’t be an issue for me to find for that area! One thing that SUPER bugged me though was the ugly gray cinderblock. I had like this MANIC tunnel vision about this space for some reason (coping mechanism? anxiety? depression? all 3?) and I would NOT rest until I found a solution for the space. Friends, I definitely just paid to have ONLY 30 FEET of this wall stuccoed, and not the rest of it. Hahahaha. Please make fun of me, my husband is. When we can afford to do the rest of the fence though, I definitely would want to stucco the whole thing - it turned out so fresh and beautiful, and like a million times better than prison block. A few before and progress shots:

The very first photo is a glimpse of our entire backyard - so like, when I say somebody is probably living back there, now you understand… that somebody is probably living back there. :)

I also was so grateful that Article wanted to team up on this project with me, because we didn’t have any outdoor furniture (as we’ve never had an outdoor area)! I’d already spent a good bit of time searching for sets that were on the more affordable end, and Article’s outdoor collections were my favorite by a landslide. Have you ever looked through the different styles of outdoor sets they have? There’s so many different options for pretty much any budget and they all look fresh and modern!

We chose these Urba Beach Sand Lounge Chairs for a little bit of flexibility with layout! I figured that in the future when our addition is finished, we might be rearranging our outdoor spaces to the backyard, and I didn’t want to commit to anything too big that wouldn’t be usable in the future as well. They’re super comfy and you can have them pushed together to lounge, or spread out for social distance hangs. ;) I think it actually drives Josh crazy but I like to rearrange them and right now I have it to where they make kind of an L-shaped sofa for laying down underneath the trees.

So, any space of ours wouldn’t really feel like US without some color in there somewhere, which is why we decided to mix it up with the styles and include the Corvos Tuscan Yellow Ottoman to tie it all together. I tried to keep things neutral, I really did. But color. Color! I had to. I think sometimes the easiest thing to do is to play it safe, but I kinda love being a color pusher. You CAN have colors in your space without it feeling childish, cluttered, or overwhelming!

Top off the space with some good lighting (lovin’ these Bori lanterns- they’re battery powered, and they make such a lovely romantic light at night) and a couple pillows and blankets and now it’s ready for some cozy sunset lounging. And you guys, I’m so proud of all the work we put into this magic little corner of our otherwise nightmare backyard. It’s been so worth it, and I wonder if we would have even done this if we weren’t home-bound and going crazy? Probably not. I’m now studying every corner of my house to see how I could utilize my ignored or messy spaces (you know, the areas with old stacks and boxes of junk you have needed to go through for like 4 years).

Anyway, however you need to use your home to get through this time, make it work for you in your favor. Take care of yourself. If you need to be outdoors more, treat yourself to a comfy lounger and schedule it in daily, like medicine. Don’t forget to invest in yourself right now! Even if you can’t swing a lounger, make a little picnic spot with a blanket and sunnies and SPF and call it good. We are all in this together. <3 Even this little dude.

A very big thank you to Handcrafted Tile for this beautiful tile as well as all that went into figuring out the tiling situation, and to Paynes Gray for the cozy outdoor decor items. <3 More details on these will be on my IG soon! Be sure and follow @parohome. Or don’t! It’s your life, man.