School’s out for summer and that means sleeping in and spending long days escaping the sweltering southern heat on our front porch. Thanks to Cost Plus World Market for helping create a sanctuary for my little ones by sponsoring this post!
Want to see just about the sweetest scene ever and also how my children look exactly alike?
This is pretty much my daily view right now. Come spring and summer you can find us on the front porch. I like to call it “outdoor living.” In fact, the covered front porch balcony is sort of what sold me on this house. My grandmother likes to call it a “veranda” because she is very southern like that and I have on occasion enjoyed a mint julep out there so I guess my roots are strong.
Most days I keep the windows open, because I grew up with an attic fan instead of air conditioning and so I like to keep the house at a temperature that my husband refers to as “stifling hot.” I am a joy and delight to live with.
But it also works in my favor to keep the windows open because this porch sits just off my office space, so I can see and chat with Scarlette while she sits outside at her table and paints. This setup works well for me because supervision. Plus she gets fresh air and I can just hose the whole thing down when she is done because paint + kindergartners with poor fine motor skills is real messy, y’all.
(This is also where I make her do Play-Doh. Because that stuff gets everywhere.)
(Also, I think the hardest part of motherhood is trying not to visibly cringe when your child happily mixes all of the colors together, amen? I mean, why would you do that? Why?!)
Lately little brother has been all about mimicking his big sister and I am so enamored with watching them interact.
(I mean, just look at that sweet little bald Charlie Brown baby of mine.)
I’ve been wanting to update the space a bit to make it a little more baby friendly. Ridley just turned one and is almost walking. I like to have him sit outside with us to play blocks or cars but I don’t want him crawling around on the wood because I have this thing about splinters. Mainly that they make me feel squeamish. But he won’t stay on the tiny rug that I have out there because you can’t keep a good man down. Or something.
So I was on the hunt for a new rug when I had the chance to work with Cost Plus World Market to shop their Outdoor Sale this weekend. I don’t know about you but I am somewhat obsessed with Cost Plus World Market. I would like to decorate my entire house like the inside of that store, please and thank you. I may or may not have added sixteen things to my birthday list today.
The deal with the outdoor sale is that a ton of the outdoor stuff is, wait for it…on sale and when you shop in store an associate will give you a coupon for an extra 20% off on top of that! (Plus an extra 10% off food, so I may or may not have indulged myself in some Goo-Goo clusters and Cheerwine. You can take the girl out of the south but you can’t take the south out of the girl.)
(Also, you apparently can’t take the girl out of the south because despite a long jaunt to the west coast in college, I am still here.)
I filmed a video while I was in the store because I wanted some opinions on the different types of outdoor rugs and ended up browsing through the outdoor sale so you can see some of the fun things featured in it here:
In the end I didn’t even get a rug, because I wanted to come home and measure the porch. It’s super narrow so I wasn’t sure if I needed a 4×6 or a 6×9. The great news is that the additional 20% off coupon they gave me is good through 5/29 so they handed it back to me after I bought a few fun things for the porch so that I can use it again. That is my kind of sale.
I decided to go really beachy with the front porch because we have teal and white rocking chairs out there and also because I saw this setup in the store and basically wanted the whole thing so I came home with a gorgeous driftwood and glass windchime, this striped outdoor pillow, and this cute ring toss game that Scarlette convinced me to get. She succeeded in convincing me mostly because ring toss is an outdoor sport that I can actually win. I might be a little bit competitive is what I’m saying. (My woven lantern is from World Market a few years ago, it mostly holds a flameless candle but I like to put
(My woven lantern is from World Market a few years ago, it mostly holds a flameless candle but I like to put lavender in it when I’m sitting out there to read. I’m very hippie like that. But here is a similar one.)
You can find your closest Cost Plus World Market here if you want to start your summer season off with a little outdoors update! To shop the sale, just ask an associate for the outdoor sale coupon and they will happily hand it to you. (I mean, I can’t guarantee they will be happy. I’m just assuming because walking in that store makes me happy.) You can preview some of the fun items in the outdoor guide here!
Now that it looks super cute on my front porch, the only thing left to do is take every single thing off of it and pressure wash the whole thing. Clearly I do things in a logical order.
