A Light at Heaven's Walk

Good day, my friends!

I am so looking forward to spending summer evenings out on our deck with friends. 

Love, laughter, and tall tales live there.  Oh, yes....

  

Evenings that are too warm to sit by the campfire so we all end up relaxing on the deck amidst the pillows and candles. Our homemade wine (that we've aptly christened "Fat Cat-Happy Dog" after our heartbeats at our feet) runs freely and conversation flows.  The flickering ocean scented candle mingles with the heady aroma of the peonies...

It's all about creating an atmosphere that is so warm and welcoming that they have a hard time leaving, ya know?

A place where as they step on to the deck, they enter into another room of Heaven's Walk. A room where the ceiling is the dusky evening sky sprinkled with diamonds around a bright full moon. The walls surrounding them are a small green arching iron arbor dripping with a lavender clematis, a frothy row of burgandy roses and peonies bursting with their sweet scent, pots of beach grass swaying at their feet, and vintage shutters propped up against the siding - complete with a sign pointing the way to the beach - and the seashell wind chime tinkles in the breeze.

(Sigh!)

Every spring I anxiously await for the day when it's warm enough to gather all the furniture, cushions, pillows, shells, and lanterns to create this embracing place of fellowship.

And one of the best things about this room is the lanterns filled with white Christmas lights.  It's a very simple way of filling an outdoor room with soft light that reflects so beautifully in everyone's eyes and bathes the whole area in warmth.

There's just something very special about it.

I nabbed a couple of lanterns years ago at Pier I and they've been hanging in my gardens throughout the years spreading light over the heads of many flowerbeds during the evening hours. They've been welding together time and time again by my hubby. They've been the attempted home of many garden wasps (oh, no you don't!), but they have withstood the demands of time and are a mainstay and anchor in my garden.

I do believe that no garden is complete without some sparkly lights....

 

 Want to know how to create this yourself?  

It's so easy...

Buy some white Christmas lights when you first see them out on the store shelves in the fall.  Buy a lot of them.  You're going to need them throughout the year (yes, I have mine plugged in all year 'round because they're just as beautiful in the snow).  Sometimes the white ones are difficult to find off-season, so you can use the green-corded type - but I so love the extra brightness the white corded ones give. 

Simply stretch them out to get those funny kinks smoothed a little, gather them up in a bunch, place them in the lantern, and plug them into an automatic timer. You can choose the amount of time you want them on. Place them on a table or hang them on a hook and you have easily and cheaply created a romantic, welcoming atmosphere on your deck or your porch!  

 

As I look out on the deck at night at the new white addition to my lantern collection, it puts out enough light so that it almost seems like there's a living room light on out there - and it reflects in the aqua vase that always seems to be half filled with rain water, 

making it just glow. 

So pretty!

So, the deck is ready for company this weekend. 

Fun, fellowship, love, and laughter.

And little white Christmas lights, of course.

 The lights are always on for you at Heaven's Walk...

 {{Warm hugs}}

~ laurie