Don’t denigrate, deny the importance of, your back porch to winter-time-blues, especially in our mild Southern State winters. Instead, enrich your hospitality vibes by expanding your welcoming “come on over” options.
If you go by magazine layouts and covers as your inspiration for backporch living spaces, they are more outlandishly stylish and over the top than ever. They include TVs, built-in fireplaces, and outdoor kitchen areas. But are they truly hospitable? Most of us cannot afford such lavish living. Nevertheless, we can enjoy the same ammenities but in an approachable, and more personal way than a glossy magazine photo shoot rendition! The following ideas might inspire you.
1. Get rid of your frozen, dead plants and bring in those that are redeemable for next year.
2. Exchange your bright summer printed upholstery with what you already have, like one of those bedspreads you have stashed way back in your linen closet.
3. Pull out all of your grandmother’s quilts and afghans, especially those dotted with moth-eaten holes. Highlight in warm, saturated tones with covers across swings, couches, rockers, and chairs. Toss extra pillows around for winter-time snuggling.
4. Clear a welcoming path to your back door to make a “come-check-me-out” entrance for your backporch living area.
5. Instead of a built in fireplace, purchase an inexpensive chimanea as a fire pit that can be reused and recycled in the spring as a flower pot.
6. Use your outdoor portable gas grill and some random chairs and table as an outdoor kitchen.
7. Add outdoor string lights to covered patios or gazebos for ambiance.
8. Instead of TV noise, listen to good conversation or the beauty of solitary silence when cozying up with a good book.
Fancy is not required! Cozy, welcoming, and approachable are essential!
How will you gussy-up your back porch this winter?
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.