Autumn Dinner Party

Amanda from Amanda Louise and I did it again; a dinner party!  I'm so thankful to have her as a friend.  We both love to throw dinner parties and even decided to continue this year with one for each season! 

This go around, we added a kids table equipped with  sparklers, fun straws, 

and markers to draw on the table top.

I mailed myself some decorative gourds from my parent's orchard when

 I was home this fall and we had a bit of an adventure getting those cattails! 

Ryan of course helped out again by cutting our slab of wood for the center piece

 and making creative cinder block heaters to keep us warm on the deck.

It was a fun night but we learned some lessons from this one that we won't repeat next time.  We decided to make a day of it and started cooking in the afternoon and figured we would slowly pull it all together in plenty of time to snap photos while the sun is still out and casually wait for our guests to arrive.  Well, we ended up frantically trying to cook everything, especially Amanda's pumpkin pie, and just felt this time crunch we weren't expecting.  We did pull it all together but with better planning (making the food the night before, or in the morning) we can enjoy the fun part much more (all the decorating and DIY's)!!

Head over to Amanda Louise to see more photos of the night

 and to find out how much we spent on the night!

Stay tuned for our winter dinner party in February!

See our Summer dinner party on the patio here.

See our DIY deck furniture here.

Check out our inspiration for the night here.

xo

Erin

Patio and DIY Grill

We have this tradition of sorts of when I go away or am not home for a night +, Ryan builds something.  He says he does it when I'm gone because I can't tell him no.  So a couple years ago, I flew to WI for a week and came back to this amazing patio in our backyard.  He built the fire pit on the patio when I was in Boston for one night.  I sure am a lucky gal.

Our grill is a big part of our patio.  This version seen here is Ryan's fourth design.  It's all just part of his process.  He made this grill built in all out of pallets.  He included ample counter space (something the earlier versions didn't have) and space for our bonfire wood.  He also created a wooded plank for the footing in front of the grill.  It all really does fit nicely on our patio.

See a dinner party on our patio here. 

See all of our deck pallet furniture here.

A transformation of our deck benches here.

I'm enjoying the last days of summer, on our patio of course!

Are you?

xo

Erin

We Threw A Dinner Party

I've always wanted to throw an outdoor dinner party so Amanda from Amanda Louise and I got together and made that dream happen!  We really tried to use everything we already owned for this event to make it budget friendly.  Ryan and I used our table from inside and drug it out to the patio and for the seating we used our wicker patio furniture.  Amanda did invest in these two strands of outdoor bulb lights.  I loved them so much I think we will have to invest in some outdoor lighting strands.

Ryan had this genius idea of filling our cinder blocks with ice to chill our wine and other beverages. 

I picked up these floral/botany plates from a thrift store along with some glass candler holders; flipped the candle holders over and glued them to the bottom center of the plates.  We used them to hold food, flowers and candles.

Ryan made us some place-card holders by cutting a slit into some scrap wood.

It was more fun than I imagined it would be!

I will be posting all the Allergy-Free recipes of the night here at Visibly Moved over the next couple weeks:

Allergy-Free Lemon Meringue Pie S'mores

Passion Fruit Lemonade Iced Tea

and

Amanda will be posting the vegetarian recipes over at Amanda Louise.

Check out our inspiration board of the night here

and more of our yard here.

If any of you have thrown a dinner party and blogged about it, I would love for you to put the link in the comments below so I can check it out!

xo

Erin

 

***UPDATE:  Check out our Autumn Dinner Party!***

DIY: Pallet Deck Furniture

 Here are some more ways on how to jazz up your deck with pallet wood just like I promised!

My husband acquired a few free pallets and went to work.

Above he put his pallet wall below our deck stairs.

A chess board was next and then below, a planter bench.

 One more bench below!

Presto! Our deck is so much more fun with all our new pallet furniture!

See our DIY Pallet Grill here.

Check out our bright benches here.

See our Autumn dinner party on the deck.

View a dinner party on our patio here.

See more of our yard.

xo 

Erin

DIY: Brighten Up A Bench

Our house came with the bench above and we later bought a bench on sale.  I soon found myself with two very weathered benches that were never used.  In an effort to jazz up our deck I took on the project of redoing our benches.  We live in the middle of the forest with a brown deck so I knew I needed a pop of color on these guys.  I had my handy husband take them apart for me, sanded them a bit and used primer spray paint. After priming the wood of the benches I put a couple coats of this nice bright color on with outdoor spray paint and put them back together.

I couldn't be happier with the results.  These benches have instantly livened up our deck and created an area where Ryan and I play outdoor chess and relax.

More ways to jazz up your deck with pallet wood here!

xo

Erin