Spring Decorating? Anyone? Anyone?

Sometimes Ryan and I learn a lot about each other while podcasting. I fear this week, Ryan learned more about me than he planned to! {Side note: rendering your husband speechless while recording an audio adventure is not a great idea. Ha!} Hope you enjoy...we sure had fun laughing!

Listen here.

Okay, I don't know what it was like in your neighborhood this weekend, but spring descended upon Indiana with much gusto, which quite frankly, just makes it that much harder to admit we're still in January, and we'll still see more snow before winter waves goodbye.

I mean, it was absolutely STUNNING here. Sunshine, blue skies, perfectly fluffy clouds, warmth, perfect weather for walking a visiting Phoebe - it was just perfection all the way around. I wanted to put away my coats and boots, uncover the grill, and head to Lowe's to buy all the flowers.

And that, my friends, is what sent me straight to Pinterest to begin plotting what I should do with our patio spaces in 2017. (What...is this not a common hobby among people???)

Here's the thing.

Last year, when we moved in, we spent alllllllllllll our time and energy on pretty much every nook and cranny of our house. INSIDE, I mean. You read the posts. We painted and redid flooring and knocked out that one wall and did the stone feature and finished off the garage. The patio spaces? Well, we stuck the furniture we already owned out there and called it a year.

It was fine. It worked.

But I know deep in my soul that our two patio spaces are something special and we did not even begin to do them justice with the attention we gave them last year.

With the inside of the house done, I have the time to pay attention to the outside. What I lack are finances. We really don't have much {read: any} money to invest in big, fun things for our outside spaces. This doesn't scare me, though, because we regularly make a little creativity go a long way. We're not afraid to DIY, but I don't know what to DIY.

Any of you out there particularly visionary in the land of patios and porches?

Here's what I have to work with. Tell me what you think!

Our front porch is a lovely little nook that last year we filled with our square wrought iron table and two wrought iron chairs. As temperatures permitted, we would sit out there to eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner and watch the happenings of the neighborhood. I like our patio because the railing offers a decent amount of privacy, but it doesn't block the view. It's handy to have the little table out there, because it's easily accessible to our kitchen, making it a logical place to eat.

Having said that, I'm not sure I want to put the table back out there this year. I kind of dream of a little seating area where I could hang out to read or we could just lounge in the evening with a cup of coffee. I dream of cuteness, complete with rugs and maybe even an outdoor-appropriate lamp.

The space is 12 feet long and 6 1/2 feet wide, and has one open side, one wall, one railing that comes up 3 1/2 feet, and one wall of windows that I do not want to block in any way. I cherish my natural light!

Ideas? Something fun and cozy and pretty all at once? AND practical? AND cost-effective?

Our back porch is equally lovely and somewhat of a blank slate in my mind. It's a long rectangle, 30 feet long and 12 feet wide in all, but it's divided into two parts. There's a cement slab that we covered with rubber tile last summer and that part is also surrounded by a lovely privacy fence. (The previous owners had a large table for eating right in this part.)  The other section is a wooden deck surrounded by a wooden fence that is high enough for child/animal safety but see-through enough to not feel closed in. Part of this section also has a pergola (ahhhh our pirogi!) over it.

Last summer we did pretty much NOTHING with this porch. We put our beloved hammock for two under the pergola, stuck a little round table next to it, and called that end done. We put Ryan's grill on the cement slab end, put our old white wooden door (which I painted in part with chalkboard paint) next to it, and that was the extent of our decorating!

So we have the 18x12 deck and the 12x12 slab, and other than knowing I want to keep the hammock and grill back there somewhere, I don't know what to do! Do I make a dining area? An outdoor kitchen that we build around the grill? A living space? AAAHHH!!!

(Side note that may be important: we do have a fire pit, but it's in the backyard, just behind this patio. It needs to stay back there.)

So tell me, Pinterest-lovers, spring-dreamers, decorators-extraordinaire! What should we do? What should we make? WHEN CAN WE START?????