Home Depot Patio Style Challenge

You guys…I am so excited to announce that I’ll be participating in this year’s Home Depot Patio Style Challenge!

I absolutely love The Home Depot’s Apron Blog.  It’s always filled with such creativity and inspiration and their style challenges are my favorite!

Last year, I was so inspired by all of the amazing patios that the bloggers came up with.  It introduced me to some new ladies that I absolutely love now like Kristin from The Hunted Interior.

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And Brittany from Brittany Makes.

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How inspiring and awesome are their spaces?

And I loved my good friend Whitney’s deck.

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All of the bloggers last year did an amazing job and I’m so excited to learn from them and create my own.

I’m working now on our plan and I’m gathering inspiration images and sources.  You know I’ll share lots of inspiration and sneak peeks along the way!

But for starters and for any newbies around here, let’s remember where we started.

When we moved into our house one year ago (almost to the day), the backyard looked like this:

Dirt.  Nasty stairs.  No charm.  Ugh.

But I had a dream.  Our master addition was coming straight off of where the stairs are in the picture above.  So, that left us this lovely little side yard to the right.  We really wanted to do a covered patio, but that just wasn’t in the cards for this house…too expensive for now.

So, we went with the cheapest option, but an option I’ve grown to majorly love: chipped granite.

The picture above was taken on my birthday last year.  Chris had been working on the patio some, but I came home and the chiminea was in place and lights were overhead.  It was starting to become the magical, cozy outdoor area I had dreamed of.

We had very little money for decorative things and furniture at this point, so we had a very tiny budget for outfitting this patio so we could enjoy it.

Chris had made the picnic table and I surrounded it with thrift store chairs.

My budget for each was $5 or less.

For the sitting area, I painted an old wicker settee that a friend was getting rid of and used two plastic Adirondack chairs.

I really loved how it turned out, but we knew some of these things were temporary and we’d love to replace them with some legit outdoor furniture…when the budget allowed.  They haven’t held up great, but the goal was just making it usable as cheaply and quickly as possible.

In comes Home Depot Patio Style Challenge.  Wahoo!

Some of the things from our current patio will be staying, but lots will be changed and added.

For starters, we’ll be adding mulch and lots of plants to the area between the patio and the fence.  And of course, there are some really exciting DIY’s ahead!

The vision is just beginning to take shape in my head and I cannot wait to start sharing my ideas with you!

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And just a quick reminder, if you haven’t voted for Apartment Therapy’s Homies Awards, head on over!

There are some amazing blogs there 🙂