dining before and after

my husband and i bought our first home a year ago january, and this summer is the first that we've had a chance to really do anything at all to the backyard.  we really wanted to make it a little oasis in the city, somewhere that we could linger over late summertime dinners or spend a saturday afternoon in the hammock with the paper.

i wanted to have a really great table out there, for said dinners (we live in a house full of great cooks, so the kitchen and the table really are the heart of our home), but i was also on a budget, so i ended up revamping a table that was a curbside score (toronto is an amazing city for this), along with some chairs that the previous owners of our house had left behind.

here is the before shot.  my supervisor is clearly not impressed.

a few coats of paint, some great fabric and an umbrella, and voila:

i used nani iro oilcloth that i got at the workroom for the seats.  i adore this fabric. karyn just got a bunch more of the line in cotton gauze - her photos always make me want to rush in and fabric horde.

 our backyard is even more magical right now, since the mock orange is blooming.  the entire tree is covered in white blossoms that smell amazing.

 and when the wind blows, the petals fall and it feels like it's snowing.  snowing beautiful, fragrant petals.  it's lovely.