What's your outdoor home look like? We just spent the weekend outdoors and, frankly, couldn't wait to get back to town and inside the office. We're exhausted. Sometimes we get too excited about being out in nature that we do too much, squeeze fun out of every minute and wake up achy and tired on Monday morning.
Not that we wouldn't do it again, but what we are now striving for is a perfect balance between outdoor and indoor, as opposed to ping-ponging between ashphalt jungle and camping in a tent. The extremes are fatiguing...
Alex's garden last fall
In our ideal world, we'd have a city home that has an element of country to it - a home that we don't feel we have to get away from to maintain our sanity. Gardens, plants, window boxes and clean windows are all a part of this.
What else? Do you have an really nice outdoor element in your home? If so, please send us your pics, we'll post them any way you like: newyork @ apartmenttherapy . com (with OUTDOORHOME in the subject field).
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Last Week's Outdoor Home Post with outdoor space survey
(pic: Alex Bandon's blog at This Old House - The Shelter Life - is a great guide to a really nice DIY outdoor/indoor home)
I live in the best of all worlds! In more or less central Madrid (near the Real Madrid football stadium), in a flat with an amazing communal garden to which my sitting room, dining room and main bedroom windows face, and in the rear a tiny but sweet north-facing patio where the kitchen and by daughter's bedroom leads out to.
See flickr pictures of both in autumn:
patio:
http://flickr.com/photos/93704471@N00/389046631/
communal garden
http://flickr.com/photos/93704471@N00/303663558/
view Sofia's profile
I have a small and narrow balcony on which i planted some boxes and installed a small, foldable table. two people can sit there. The building i'm living isn't situated directly on the street and most of my windows face the front part of the big garden surrounding the building. There's no traffic noise ( reduced speed street ) and i birds singing wake me up on weekends! Pics are here ( last year's Greenest thumb constest):
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/greenest-thumb-2006-entries/the-greenest-thumb-contest-janines-minibalconygarden-010431
view Jany's profile
When we bought our house, it wasn't for the house (which is tiny tiny tiny) but for the yard. We have 125 ft of river frontage, a tiny woodland area, a private backyard and a tiny, tidy front area. The house was secondary, I loved this property.
view lorijo's profile
I too am exhausted from my weekend .. .but psyched. Voila, the work in progress, mostly done:
http://rednotebookstudio.blogspot.com/
view pam h's profile