The weather in Sacramento has been perfect, let me elaborate on how perfect. We've had sunny skies with temperatures only reaching the mid-70’s. Mild weather in Sacramento during May is seriously unheard of. Typically the Summer heat wave is already rolling in with temps in the high 80's to mid-90's. Since the weather has been so nice, I’ve been spending a lot of time outside working our patio. My plan is to have my patio ‘Summer Ready’ by Memorial Day, which is right around the corner. I’m basically picking up where I left off last Summer, see more of my patio here.

Last Summer I tackled a few patio projects, I gave my existing outdoor dining room table and chairs a paint make-over (see more here) and added lots of plants to our patio. We also added lounge furniture to our patio. Now that our outdoor living area is coming together it feels like the square footage of our home has doubled. I love having an outdoor living room and dining area.

I’m a firm believer, that when you have a have a small home it's crucial to fully utilize all your spaces, especially your outdoor spaces.

Our Patio Before

While I love how my patio has slowly come together over the past three Summers, there’s an area on my patio that’s an eyesore. When you have an older home, you sometimes inherit design dilemmas that cost way too much to correct. The eyesore on our patio is our electrical box and meter. Both are literally smack dab in the middle of our patio. While re-building our house, it was determined the cost to move the meter and electrical box wouldn't be worth it. My dad suggested having our contractor ‘build-in’ the meter and electrical box, that way it would look a little more finished.

I considered DIYing a panel to cover the meter and electrical box inspired by Dana at House Tweaking, who built a fab cover for hers. However, since ours a combination electrical box/meter we needed to able to have easy access to our electrical panel. Just an FYI, we have a smart meter, so having it covered up won’t be an issue for the electrical company. They still #BillUs!

See how the meter and electrical box sticks out like a sore thumb? Plus its right not to our outdoor seating area.

After looking for a design solution to help disguise the unsightly element on the patio, I found the solution a planter with trellis! I love planters on patios, I love how they add so much interest and color to outdoor spaces. When it comes to planters for outdoor spaces it's always better to go big and vary the planters in height and style. I recently added the Gardener’s Revolution Classic Vine Garden Kit to my patio. The trellis planter, comes in three colors: white, red clay and espresso. The planter is huge and I love that it has a grid style trellis attached to it. I also love the style of the planter it feels modern and fits in perfectly with the existing planters on my patio. The new planter adds so much good drama to our patio! Plus I love the vertical element of the trellis that draws your eyes up and out.

The Classic Vine Garden kit came with three large organic bags of soil and organic all-purpose fertilizer. I planted two Pink Bower vines inside my planter, and three small potato vines in the front of the planter. I took my time winding the vines through the metal trellis and carefully attached the vines with twine to the trellis. I can't wait for the entire vine to flower, its going to look ever prettier.

We shifted a few plants on our patio and moved the side table to the other side of the chair to make room for the planter. My husband and I placed the trellis planter in front of the eyesore on our patio, right next to our outdoor sofa.

As you can see in the picture, below the trellis planter is the perfect height to help disguise our utility box and electrical panel. Even before I added the vines to the planter, I was thrilled with the result!

The trellis planter looks incredible on our patio and the vine adds so much color and cleverly disguises our meter and electrical box. I’m also thrilled that the planter was easy to assemble and is self-watering! Even though I’m growing flowering vines in the planter, you can easily grow vine crops in the planter. I love how pretty the planter looks on our patio, its such a pretty addition.

This planter would also be perfect on small open patio or balcony for privacy. The vertical element of the trellis would help create the feeling of a wall. As the vines flourish over time, it would add the privacy element on an open outdoor area.

Modern Vine Trellis Planter

I'm thrilled with this new patio update and I can't get over how incredible it looks! What do you think of our new trellis planter?

This post is in partnership with Gardener’s Supply. All words are my own.

Hello! I normally reserve Monday for my Small Home Style design series, celebrating living small with intention and showcasing how to maximize a small home. I thought I would switch things up on my blog just a bit. As a quick reminder I'm working on decorating my small backyard patio, to transform this never used space into the perfect morning and evening chill spot for my husband and I myself to enjoy. Since my patio design falls under the category of Small Home Style, I thought every other Monday I would sharing how my design plan is coming along. You can read more about my design plan for the space here.

Over the weekend, we hung string lights outside our patio from our house to our large tree we have in our backyard. Below I'm sharing how we hung the outdoor string lights, plus a round-up of pretty outdoor string lights to add ambiance to your outdoor spaces.

Originally, I planned on using Cafe Lights I bought on Amazon, they arrived but it wasn't meant to be. The lights I originally bought while lovely needed huge amount of watts - I even checked our breaker and everything looked like a go, but once we plugged them in it tripped our breaker. We tired a few ties but it wasn't a go, I sent them back. Thankfully, Amazon makes it super easy to return!

This ended up being a happy accident! I came across these pretty Smith & Hawken Canopy Strings Lights while at Target. I LOVE the look of these string lights so much better, the pretty metal canopy over the light bulbs, adds a cool modern vibe under the my tree. Plus thanks to the metal canopy addition, the lights don't get lost under all the branches, it just adds to the ambiance. I'm also thrilled that they look so much more expensive than they actually are!! Win Win. For this project we used to sets of string lights, each light string has 10 lights.

Psst, place the order online and pickup in them pup in the store and save 10%

How to Hang Outdoor String Lights from a House to a Tree

We hung a black outdoor extension cord from the plug, running up the side of the house ( Most likely I'll paint the extension cord in the upcoming week so it blends in and secure it in place)
We used 5 Steel Hooks. The first two hooks guided the the extension cord up and under the eve of our house.
The third hook is attached to the upper trunk area of the tree, then placed the string light into the hook going back to our house. The string light goes into the next hook and then back to the upper tree trunk area, the string light ends at the tree.

Tips on Hanging Outdoor String Lights

Determine the pattern your lights will hanging before getting started. We created a Zig-Zag pattern since the tree is behind our patio and house, this pattern looked best.
The string lights are placed a a few feet higher on the tree and a under the eves. They are hung high enough enough that you can't 'reach-out' and touch them.
We hung them nice and taught, but gave them a little breathing room so that can move a little in the wind. If your placing string lights a great distance, I would consider adding wire that can be attached above the string lights.
We plan on keeping out string lights up April though the end of October since the 'winters' and I use that word very loose are mild in Northern California.

Last night, I got to see them in action and I'm in love!! I shared a quick video on Instagram Stories sharing how they look at night, user name @ChicLittleHouse click here to watch the video before its gone!! FYI: You may have have to be logged in on on your phone to watch.

The lights add such a pretty layered element to our patio during the day and look evening better at light. So much ambiance! I was in heaven last night, since our tree is so full and pretty right now, I love seeing all the lights under the green canopy. No joke it felt magical.

Here's a few quick details about my patio so far (see picture below) I choose the Standish Love Seat for the patio and went with the Standish Coffee Table, both Target. The love seat is fantastic, modern and comfortable!! The cushions are a dark grey and currently in the garage, I'm still waiting for the outdoor cover to arrive before the cushion go on. I'm obsessed with the Iris Chevron planter, so obsessed I also have one in my larger patio I planted a Japanese Aralia inside, they love the shade and this spot in my backyard gets a crazy good amount of shade. Again the string lights are Smith & Hawken Metal Covered String Lights. Looking for modern planter ideas for your outdoor spaces, check out this post.

What's Next? You ask.

Next up, we're planning on building two trellises that will be placed on either side our patio, we planted two Happy Wanderer vines last month that will flourish once we get attached to the trellises. I also plan cleaning our gutters, ugh they look a little dingy to me. I found a homemade solution on on the internet, that I'm going to try out. It's going to be a messy job, but I'll be so much happier.

Then, I want to address that awful red worn off painted fence. Who in the heck paints a fence red?!? It's a don't like a HUGE don't. We inherited the ugly red fence with our home, so maybe I'll spend some time sanding that junk off? + Clear out all the junk behind the patio.

Regardless I do see either a large Rose of Sharon bush growing in front of the fence or butterfly bushes!! Both flower, are evergreen and get crazy big once established. Having a large green flowering bush behind the outdoor sofa would look amazing! We also plan on freshening up the mulch in the entire front & backyard. We like to freshen our mulch once a year, I'll share deets on Instagram once we do.

Once all the work mentioned above is completed, I plan on adding more plants on the patio, because honestly the more the merrier. I love how much more lush a patio feels layered in plants, they make happy and make the whole look I'm going for much better. Looking for modern string light indoors to brighten up your outdoors for the Spring and Summer? I got you covered! Below is a round-up of pretty String Lights.

Modern Outdoor String Lights

Get the Look

ONE Glass Cut String Lights TWO Glass Covered Edison Lights THREE Cafe Lights FOUR Metal Covered String Lights FIVE Cargo String Lights SIX Mid Centry String Lights SEVEN Drop Cafe Lights EIGHT Metal Cage String Lights NINE Metallic String Lights TEN Globe String Lights ELEVEN Edison Lantern String Lights

I'm so excited to start our next project to get our patio ready for Spring and Summer! It's already looking so much better and I know in a few weeks its going to feel transformed! Any questions on how we hung the outdoor string lights? What outdoor projects are you working?