My love of decorating never leaves from year to year, but it does come in waves! In the past 10 years of living in our home I have lost count of the number of of times I’ve bought new cushions to brighten a room up or changed the colour scheme of our bedding. I usually start with one room and go from room to room which takes a while and then by the time I’m back to the beginning, it’s been a few years and I’m ready to start all over again! But as they say a change is as good as a holiday!

The past 6 months I have been decorating a fair bit. It started with our bedroom, then the toy room, bits and pieces in all the other rooms but at this time of the year and leading into the festive season, I feel the outside is just as deserving of a facelift as the inside! We have a huge outside that is just as big as the inside of our house! When tidying up and giving the outside a facelift I always start with the pergola. Our pergola is screen enclosed so we treat it as another room.

In the past it was an open pergola with exposed concrete. About 5 years ago now, we screen enclosed it to make it our ‘entertainment room’ and had the ground covercreted to create a tile look! It was the best thing we did! We also added a nice big sail out the back so we still have an ‘outdoor’ shaded area where we often have afternoon tea or the occasional dinner on a hot night!

This week I was sick of looking at my faded cushions and covers on my outdoor lounge, so to create a fresh look, I purchased some cushions from Big W and Ikea and turned the seat covers inside out so they now look brand new! My very talented mother made the covers and I was going to buy more material so she could make new ones, but now I’ll have at least another couple of years up my sleeve before that has to be done again!

Cushions and seat covers before…..

After…..

I’m so happy with how it turned out! I love the leaf pattern on the cushions, as soon as I saw them I thought they would look great for an outside cushion and the red makes the area look vibrant and matches in perfect with the decor and my rose garden in the background!

We have big plans for our outside, but all in good timing! Our biggest plan is to eventually put a pool in! In a couple of months time to celebrate living in our home for 10 years, I will be writing a blog called ‘Before and After – 10 Years On’ which will illustrate how much we’ve done to our home over the past 10 years!