A Patio for a Party..

First off on this beautiful Monday morning, for my daily readers I want to apologize for the ridiculous number of changes on my layout and design. It's been a real headache (literally, staring at all the different styles gave me a legit headache) trying to get any background/template to work and to get the design to where I like it/where it looked right. I finally figured it out and am happy with the new design...For any others out there who are having trouble, try reverting to the old blogger interface....they must still be getting the kinks out of the new one. Now onto the fun stuff...well for me anyways :)
So a couple weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Marcie...a teacher, wife, and hip mother of four (yes four..ranging from 7-18 too...strong woman)...Marcie wanted some help in her patio, she basically had nothing but a black table and matching chairs out there, but wanted a "sprucing up" before her oldest son's graduation party in just a couple of weeks. Here's an excerpt from one of her e-mails...
"We love eclectic style, modern but traditional, classic but fresh, hip without being too trendy, and comfortable"
Yes, I would call that eclectic...while most are probably a little confused by her description of their style, I totally get it....in fact I probably understand better than most. I would call my style eclectic and a little trendy generally, but I have a serious respect for all types of design. I can look at something country or shabby chic, two styles I would never use to describe myself, and still be like "I would love this in my house"...Basically, I love it all. So she definitely came to the right place. In the end we decided based on her inspiration pictures, her style was definitely more modern and fresh, but less traditional than she thought. Her backyard is huge and basically has two separate spaces on her patio. We decided to create both a dining area and a living area. This is the basic idea:

Marcie already had that dining table, it's simple and black, but large enough to fit six people. Neither of us loved the matching chairs (she just didn't like them, I didn't like that they matched :)), so I reverted back to Leesa's office, when I fell in love with the silver metal tub chairs, and luckily she loved them too, but we went with the white this time, and found them on overstock so we got them for an even better price, along with the outdoor black and white chevron rug. We found the lanterns, sofa, and those amazing garden stools all at Zgallerie (that's right people I have a serious Zgallerie problem). That awesome metal planter and two white chairs were all CB2 finds, and I actually went to look at the chairs (they are much better in person, trust me). These pillows are not the exact ones we are going to use (she's going to make them herself with a great fabric we found with these same colors), but they are almost identical. I am obsessed with these trunk side tables, but the prices on them are truly ridiculous ($150?!...Really west elm?!...do you know it's part of a tree?...do you?) so I found a DIY version and sent it to her and her hubby (I was a little nervous about that FYI), and they were super excited to give it a try. In the end, we only had to come up with one option for this space (as great as that is, it almost made me sad, I was having fun working via the interweb with this fun couple). I can't wait to see pictures of the final space..
I've also made a few random changes around our own abode...pictures coming soon...