Now that the weather is ridiculously amazing in Northern California right, now my mind keeps shifting to all the outdoor projects I want to complete. I swear I have design project ADD. That's just my personality when it comes to my home, I love my entire home inside and out which means I'm in a constant state of fluffing pillows, obsessing over fabric possibilities. Basically my home will never be 'done.'

In our backyard just off our laundry / mudroom (mudroom update coming soon!) we have a large patio that we covered with a classic style pergola. For me, its makes our backyard & patio. One of the elements I would love to add to our pergola is lighting! Currently on our patio we have to light sources. One light right off our back door and another light in the corner of our house. Just like lighting adds ambiance inside, I want to layer in lighting outside to add ambiance to our pergola. I'm dreaming up two ideas, I'm obsessed with bringing in large baskets and turning them into light fixture and I also like the idea of swagging cafe string lights on our pergola. Perhaps a mix of both are a must.

My style indoor & out is California casual meets modern with a dash classic, I love classic textural feeling of using baskets outdoors as lighting. My inspiration pictures, have me swooning over the possibilities. PLUS I love how bringing light fixture outside & using unexpected ones helps create a whole outdoor dining / lounging environment.

I've been basket stalking Target. If you been in Target anytime on the last 2+ years then you already know they have a booming basket selection that's constantly changing. I saw a few basket options online that I'll be picking up this week to try out at home. I pinky promise to share pictures.

This lighting project will be simple and easy DIY. My plan is to weatherproof the baskets and use a indoor/outdoor lighting pendant kit and hang the basket lighting from the pergola. I'm also wanting to hang cafe lights draped on our pergola for added ambience.

Below are photos of our pergola and patio area, taken around this time last year. Not much has changed in this area. Right now, we're in Spring clean up / clean off mode. Cleaning up our patios and washing away all the dreariness of Winter. Which is why it's THE perfect time tackle adding lighting to our pergola.

Can you totally picture two super large pretty woven baskets hanging from our pergola above our dining room table? I think they'll be a perfect addition to our outdoors. We also plan on finally finally adding patio furniture to our patio, so the current placement of our patio table + grill etc may change.

What style lighting do you love outside?

Hello friends, my home tour on my blog is need of an update! I though the easiest and best way to showcase my home tour is sharing my home on the blog room by room, then each week I'll update my house tour page. Make sense?

Every Friday, I'll be sharing rooms in my home. Today, I'm sharing my living room along with how it looked a few short years ago, when we moved back into our home for the second after re-building our home. Below is a link if you're interested in seeing our living room & bad pictures of how our living room looked circa 2009 #mindblown

I love seeing how rooms evolve over time. It's amazing to look back at a room and see how much its evolved over time + see ways my personal design style has changed. Below is our living room in late 2013, shortly after moving back in our home.

Below is my living room now. It's so fun to see the evolution of our living room. Pattern drapes have been hung, artwork is on the walls. bookcases flank our dresser turned TV stand. I love how modern + California casual + layered in color & pattern our living room feels.

Our living room is a mix of old + new. I found the vintage campaign dresser at Antique store and refinished it a glossy white, bought our coffee table via Craigslist (oh how I love CL) and scored our pretty aqua lamp and vintage side table at a Consignment store.

We have small home and our living room acts as our everything room since our home doesn't have a family. Our living room is where we entertain,have family movie night, play games etc. When designing our living room my goal was to make sure our living room was pretty + functional. Instead of one sofa + two chairs like our previous set-up in our living room before re-building I opted for twin sofas to balance our small living room & provide plenty of seating. Honestly, it was one of the best decisions ever! Plus, I'm a pillow hoarder and twin sofas means lots of pillows of my pillow loving heart.

To layer in color in our living room, I painted the inside of our front door Elephant Skin by Behr. Seriously, our front door was too pretty to be left white, plus by painting the inside of our front door, I layered in more color. Don't be afraid to paint the inside of your front door, my top suggestions: Black (its always classic) or Grey (its becoming a new classic and not going out of style any time soon) or consider staining the inside of your front door, but don't go too dark.