Pops of Sunny Yellow

The outside of our house overwhelms me a little bit. The yard is huge, and parts of it are a tad wild and unruly. I don't know what most of the plants are, and although I have lots of ideas and vision, I just don't know where exactly to begin.

So, to get started on sprucing up the exterior, I decided to address a smaller area, something that is small enough for me to feel I can wrap my head around - the entry! Technically our house does have a 'front door', but nobody uses it (meaning it's a little sad and neglected). I'll tackle that later. For now, I just wanted to inject a little bit of color into the side entry- enter the pops of sunny yellow! The first step was to refresh this bench I got for $30 on Craigslist.

A few coats of Sunporch Yellow, and voila! Things are looking sunnier already.

Then, I got inspired. Why not refresh the mailbox as well? Our driveway is located in the midst of Fern Gully and my parents have driven right past it each visit thus far. Now we have a landmark - turn by the yellow mailbox!

From this:

To this!

The yellow has now taken over! To complete the picture, I added a few sunny pots (still need to plant something in there, but this is a work in progress), and a pillow on our porch swing in this top fabric from ikea:

As C and I walked in the giant blue box, I saw a the perfect yellow and white striped pillow in the store display, with my name all over it. I'm a sucker for anything striped. I didn't want to steal it from it's happy display home, so I kept my eyes open for it throughout the rest of the store, but it was nowhere to be found. I left a patient C at the bottom of the escalator and did a couple more wild laps through the other two levels looking for the darn thing but to no avail. He convinced me to just take the one from the display, where I discovered it wasn't actually for sale - just a floor sample of a pillow and a case made from the fabric you can buy. The checkout guy must have seen the crazy in my eyes, because he rang it up for me in some magical Ikea code anyway, and I left a happy camper!

(Sidenote: While I was running two levels above him, I texted C to tell him I wasn't successful. He texted me back "Why? Did you trip over all that hair you were pulling out on the way to find your pillow?" Made me laugh.)

I think a few plants in white and yellow, and a nice patio umbrella will complete the picture. I have my eye on this one from World Market:
Almost there!