Stay-cation part I: enjoying home (and re-claiming my patio)

For this long weekend we had originally planned to go camping but then my hubby suggested staying home and enjoying home. It made sense to me, we have a nice home with a great yard and a neighborhood pool we can use all we want, I was all over that! One thing I was inspired to do after reading one of my new favorite blogs, Whatever, was re-claim my back patio. BK (before kids) I kept it cleaned, lots of pots of plants, always ready to have the neighbors over for an impromptu dinner. Now, we rarely have anyone over, there are very few pots of plants, and it’s always covered in kid stuff. One problem is that I never say no when someone offers to unload their old toys and stuff. So this weekend I did some yard work and cleaned up the back patio setting it up so the kids have their toy area and we can still use the table and eat outside once again.
So here’s the final result. I didn’t think to take a before photo because I just went on a rampage cleaning and couldn’t stop.

So far we’ve ate out here 4 times, which was one of my goals. You’ll notice the weiner dog in the photo. That’s Minnie who we’ve had for 13 years and is always in a picture in some part or another!
We also enjoyed bubbles on the patio.

We swam at the big pool but we did enjoy our little pool as well!