Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed the long Memorial Day weekend. My brother and I spent all three days power washing and painting my front porch. It was a ton of work. Everything got a fresh coat of paint. Painting the rafters, porch pillars, railings, and all those spindles took forever but it was well worth the effort. Just look at this sparkly clean porch.

Does this say welcome to my house, or what?

I really love my freshly painted purple front door (deep amethyst by Glidden) and chairs (grape by Rust-oleum).

And this colorful custom-made tulip bouquet by TwoInspireYou at Etsy.com  is perfection.

The porch is coming together very nicely but I’m STILL waiting for the pink and white chevron rugs from Dash and Albert to arrive. Come on slow pokes, at this rate summer will be over before you know it. When companies advertise new outdoor rugs they should be ready for delivery by spring, not the fall and winter season.

In addition to the rugs, I still need to add some live plants and flowers, but that’s a job for next weekend. This solitary plant was all I had available for my photo shoot.

These gorgeous ruffled and micro-fiber pillows are indoor pillows, but I couldn’t resist the scrumptious colors and textures, and my covered porch should shield them from the elements for the most part. Sometimes you have to be creative and flexible to get the look you want. The colorful flower pots were a gift from my mom several years ago. She bought them at the local dollar store. What a find!

And the best part of all my hard work? Enjoying a home-made iced mocha (get the recipe here), a snack, and a good read on my comfy and colorful new porch–and meeting all the neighbors who stopped by to introduce themselves and take a peek while I worked. I hope I’ve inspired them to make the most of their outdoor spaces and banish beige wherever it’s lurking. Be gone, you drab non-color!