Our Eastern Pavilion

No posts lately as we've been spending all our time outdoors doing yard work. All our time. I'm sick of the outdoors and getting more and more tempted to hire a landscaper. But one outdoor activity that we'd been looking forward to all year was putting up our super-cheap gazebo that we bought at Plow and Hearth late last fall. It was packed into an itty bitty box and we were skeptical that all the parts were there, but we were hopeful.

It became evident quickly that we might need a few extra hands. The gazebo is made up of a 6 rounded horizontal bars with 6 vertical poles and then 6 more pieces to extend the ceiling. Nothing was very stable until it was all assembled, so there were some fun moments trying to stabilize and build at the same time.

But once we had the bars up, zipped on the roof and the screen walls, and put in the supports, we were pleasantly surprised both by how stable it was and how cute it looked. Our lawn furniture, courtesy of Kmart and a mishmash of things we already owned, looked really good in there.

Note the hammock in the back--also another haven to relax in, at least until the bugs come out. I was hoping it might fit in the gazebo so I could hide from things that bite, but no such luck.

My only complain was how empty the roof looked. I searched high and low online for hanging votives, candle chandeliers, and other random decor without having much luck. I almost settled for these on Amazon but they still weren't quite right. I was looking for something a little more eastern, like Turkish or Moroccan. I tried searching google images and stumbled on this website: http://www.thisnext.com/. I'm not usually a fan of aggregators that have no real content but this was the lead that brought me to World Market, which never occurred to me. Even better--we have a World Market not too far from home. So off we went in search of lanterns. Did we succeed? I think that's a resounding YES!

I scattered 6 lanterns on each of the ceiling beams, anchoring them in place with a tiny piece of sticky felt that we usually put on the bottoms of our furniture. I bought fake candles to put inside them, since using real candles near the fabric roof made me nervous. We're having a party on Saturday and I think this will definitely help set the scene. Even if they did cost almost as much as the gazebo (I told you--it was really really on sale by late fall).