I heard it through the grapevine
Trying to replicate the appearance of an outdoor area like this at home can be challenging.
When I had the desire to create the look and feel of a real vineyard patio I looked to photos and my imagination. Like the ones here, but not exactly. As you will see.
The familiarity of having visited many wineries in British Columbia’s Okanagan wine region, Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, Willamette Valley in Oregon, Napa, Sonoma, Lodi & Temecula Valley in California and Tuscany, Italy may have helped.
A little decadence mixed with naturalness and something to take you away and remind you of vacation. Remember vacation? How about stay-cation? That’s the idea I was going for. I want to enjoy the wine regions of my home. Specifically the outdoors. After all, I’m an outdoorsy person!
So sitting in the courtyard area with a glass of wine overlooking my vineyard mural under the ivy instead of actual grape vines felt very relaxing and the next best thing to being at the real deal.
Although over the years, we discovered the ivy started to slowly get out of hand, growing more and more unruly. What once appeared striking started to take over the whole area and brought some undesirable pests along the way. So recently I was bummed to have to remove it away from the beams completely. A dirty task.
It took a little while to get used to the bareness on top of the cross beams where the ivy once was, but on the bright side literally, there’s a lot more light to an area where there was no light for quite some time. So now I’m re-creating the space once more.
It will still have a vineyard feel but without the vines. Once it’s finished I’ll take a photo and share it. A new potential and a realization that sometimes doing something out of necessity gives you a chance to create something else. Learning to let go of the familiar in any given area takes courage but it can turn out to be a positive thing. Not necessarily better, just different.
Doing so makes me want to modify a few more areas around my home, inside and out.
Maybe modify is a metaphor for simplifying life in general. A tiny transformation to keeping it fresh.
Anyone else feel this way?
Next: making the most out of smaller spaces
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