the balcony

I'm ready to share another victory in my organisational battle... the balcony!

We love to spend time on the balcony. We eat, we chat, we sit, we play, we paint.
But the setup used to be a bit of a disaster. While it did often become an explosion of toys, the major problem was the outdoor dining setting.

We only bought the table and chairs two years ago, and we bought it for this balcony. We spent so much time focussed on whether the table would fit, that we didn't even think about the chairs. Because the chairs were a 'laid-back' style, they took up so much space. We had to position the table and chairs in a 'diamond' configuration just so they would fit, and even then, it was quite a squeeze to get in and out. If you were unlucky enough to get a seat near the end wall, then you were stuck there til someone else moved out of the way. So it just didn't fit well, but we made do.

Also, when choosing a WHITE setting, we seemed to completely forget about the fact that we live next door to a freight train line! Oh, the soot. So much soot.

What were we thinking!? We weren't.

So, we agreed that we were both getting increasingly frustrated with the big, white, dining set, so, I was given the go ahead to sell that one and find something more appropriate. Boy was I excited!

Here is what we started with:

A mess, basically.

So I set to work researching different dining settings and configurations. We wanted to have at least four seats with a table, but we wanted to maximise play space when it wasn't in use too. So I was doing google searches for "compact outdoor dining" and the like. There were a few possibilities that popped up, but I think the final choice well and truly ticked the "compact" box.

Here's what I came up with:

It is a wicker dining setting with a tempered glass table top ($499 brand new from ebay). I added picture frame dots (approx $5 from Mitre 10) to the table top to keep the glass from sliding. You will see in the photo bottom, right, that all of the chairs slide in together underneath the table when not in use. Look at all the space!! I have also been covering the table with a nice cloth to keep the table top clean between uses. (Thanks for the suggestion, mum!)

Bit of a shame it only came with cream cushions, though. They are now cream, with pink and green chalk, and small dirty foot prints. At least they zip off and are machine washable.

Thankfully, I was able to sell our old setting for $100. (Yay ebay, again!)

I also bought some brick grip hooks ($20 for a pack of two on ebay), as you will see bottom left. These are brilliant. We can hang our candle lanterns on the balcony without having to drill into the wall. Plus we can move them around if we want them somewhere else. These hooks just "grip" the bricks, as the name suggests, and you hang your stuff on them. All this wind lately has put them to the test, but they haven't budged. I thought it would be good to be able to have something a little bit decorative out there since we don't have enough direct sunlight to support any plant life. We couldn't even grow a grass head out there!

It looks so nice on the balcony now with the new setting and the candles lit in the evening. During the day, the boys run around like crazy out there, and they use the table and chairs as a cubby house too. (They find so many uses for these things!) We are getting better at putting away the toys when we are finished with them. I also decided that the tiny magnetic letters and numbers from the white board should be hidden away for a while. They are a pain to clean up, and too many of them were ending up on the balcony below. Oops!

In the end, though, I think my eldest is just pleased that he now has a great spot to "sit and watch the world go by."