It all started with this crazy-happy placemat I found in Macy’s…I love it, and even better, it was on sale for almost nothing. As my Mom often says about her great bargains…”They were almost giving them away.” My husband and I had repainted our back porch in the traditional white woodwork and gray floor, but I wanted something wild and colorful and inviting as decoration. Sometimes it is hard to come up with the perfect color scheme, but I found all the inspiration I needed in the placemat, and I was off to the decorating races.

I painted a few thrift store tables and chairs a glossy black. They took a lot of time, but I was really pleased with the way they turned out.

I added a few throw pillows and repainted the porch swing a bright, vivid green called, “Tree Frog.” I love the paint and I love the name of the color, and I’m on the lookout for some tree frog additions of some kind…I’ll post when I find them.

I also painted a large acrylic canvas for the back wall.

Plastic Adirondack chairs are bright, resilient, and very easy to keep clean.

 A few more pieces of this and that and the porch is near completion, and yes, it is used daily, usually more than once. Every morning I sit on the swing and have my morning coffee and devotions. I feel God’s presence all around me as the birds sing and the sun shines, or the rain patters, and I rock and read and pray.

My grandsons helped me make this special floral arrangement for the table. A dollar store beach bucket filled with sand from their sandbox, an inexpensive and durable windmill of butterflies, some fabulous “jewels,” and the kid-friendly porch and dining table was ready for our first meal together…pizza for lunch. Happily, the wind was feisty and blowing, the windmill spun and fluttered and happy little voices cried out, “It’s Spinning!!!” God is so good to me!