Big City Life

Louie lives in the City Side Lofts- which are right off the connector as you hit down town at 13th street. There are several people with patios that are all decked out, and namely, two with these trees that light up. One person has a small tree lit up with blue and orange bulbs, presumably for BSU, and then someone who owns one of the top level condos has two palm trees that they light up. The trees look super cool, and almost everyone would know which house was yours when you explained where you live and how it's decorated.

Anyways, Louie has been wanting to beautify his patio for quite a while now but theres been two problems- 1. It's been too cold and 2. We can't find any trees or anything to light up except for the same type of thing that everyone else has on their patio.

SOOOO operation Project Patio was underway. Mission- take a blah patio in the heart of Boise's downtown lofts and make it from drab to fab darling. :)

First things first was to find some sort of something to light up. We both liked the idea of a tree, but couldn't find anything unique....until last week. We went to the farmers market and there is a man there that sales metal sculptures and lo and behold what did he have.....only one of the most amazing metal trees. It is sort of a wire frame trunk with these branches that are kinda curly and come out of the top. It was almost perfect. After thinking about it for a week we went back to the farmers market this week and talked to him. Louie wanted the tree, but wanted two rows of branches vs one and wanted a few other things done to it. The guy said no problem...so- the order was placed and hopefully in 1-3 weeks the piece is done. Whew, step one, and possibly the biggest challenge was taken care of. NOW, we have to figure out how to decorate the tree. We want to get some light and light it up of course, but we need to figure out what color lights and how we're gonna do it. That will be easy though, we already have some ideas that we've been throwing around....we thought it would be cool to light it up festively for different holidays and seasons and stuff.  As soon as it's done I will get some pics up cuz it's gonna be super cool I think.

Once that was taken care of it was time to liven it up with some greenery. Last night we loaded up and headed to the store. We wanted to get some flowers and stuff to make an herb garden on the patio. What we decided to do was get a planter that hung on the railing of the patio and put some flowers in that, and then we would do the herbs in separate pots. We got a strawberry pot and planted seven varieties of herbs in it, and then just for a little variety, we also got four plain terra cotta pots and planted four types of herbs in that. The herbs we got include thyme, mint, basil, sage, lavender, oregano, chammomile, dill, rosemary, cilantro and I think marjoram, but can't remember the last one. We are going to have a HUGE herb garden here in a few weeks once everything takes off.

We also decided we wanted to do some strawberries and tomatoes. For those we got those Topsy Turvy upside down planters that hang.  It adds a little spice to have something hanging, and these things are supposed to work wonders. The tomato thing said up to 30 pounds of tomatoes from one plant and the strawberries were up to like 15 quarts of strawberries.....thats alot of tomatoes and strawberries...I guess I better learn to can stuff. :)

So, we got the herbs and flowers planted and the strawberry hanger hung, but need to do the tomato one. We need to pick up the tree and get that lit up and then find a little patio set. After that it will be just the small additions to make it feel more settled and homey. :)

Here is a sneak peak at our work so far. It's dark (obviously) and taken with a cell phone camera, so the quality of this picture isnt the best, but you get the basic idea. I will post again later all the pics of the process, but this will have to do for now!