Lakefront Living Room

A few weeks ago, I took you on a tour of our newly updated outdoor living room. I shared the 5 elements that I think make for a cozy and stylish outdoor living space (You can catch up on that post by clicking here).

Today I thought I would give you a tour of the outdoor living room I created for us at our lake house in Washington. The recipe I used is the same as our place at home, but the look is completely different!

First a little backstory, we purchased this recreational property 5 years ago now and it was one of the best decisions we ever made. We spend most of our time here during the summer, and then we have been able to rent the house out during the winter months to subsidize the cost.

It’s really a perfect situation! This is such a special place for our family and I love that we are creating so many amazing memories here. The hours we have spent swimming, tubing and being outdoors is what I think summer should be all about!

One of the things we fell in love with about the property was the landscaping and huge yard leading down to the Lake. Our backyard in the city is postage stamp size, so the yard here feels massive to us! The huge oval paved patio is the perfect spot for an outdoor living room, and it gets lovely shade later in the day.

Our time here is precious and I want to be outside starring at the water every possible second!

This space includes all of the five elements I talked about in my last post, and I thought I would walk you through them today.

1.Comfortable/Conversational Seating

It doesn’t get much more comfy than this sectional. This used to live in our backyard at home, but bringing it down to the lake made so much more sense! When we have guests visiting us, which is almost every weekend, we have a happy hour tradition – at 4 o’clock ish, we gather here in this space for a cocktail or glass of wine, and usually some chips and salsa!

For now we have some plastic muskoka chairs for additional seating…hopefully we can upgrade those next summer!

2.Accent Tables

Having a place to rest those cocktails and snacks is extremely important. This summer we upgraded our coffee table situation to this beautiful firepit/table combo. Being able to have this fire on in the evening is so lovely! And what I love about this table versus others I have seen, is that the fire part is off to the side so you can use most of the table.

I like having side tables at the end of the sofa, I feel like you can never have too much space to rest drinks, magazines, etc. I got these little colorful tables from Target.

They are cheap and cheerful, and I love that they easily fold up when it’s time to pack everything away at the end of the summer.

This space see a lot of action all summer long so it has to be super functional. Here are some snapshots of what this space usually looks like!

It’s a hot mess in this space most of the time, but that means my family is outside and enjoying themselves, so I don’t mind one bit.

3.Outdoor rug

Like I mentioned previously, having and outdoor rug is really important to me. It helps to define the space and it adds color and personality. I fell in love with this one when I was looking through the outdoor rug selection at Target.

I scored it on sale at the beginning of July and it is such a great addition to the space! I love the warm peachy color…I am finding myself really drawn to this color lately. Ginger is also a fan of a good outdoor rug…perfect spot for a nap!

I saved a hilarious video of me trying to sweep this rug off for my photo shoot and Ginger “helping”…it is saved in my story highlights under Ginger.

4.Throw Pillows

A couch without pillows is like macaroni without cheese. Not only do they make a space look styled and put together, but pillows defintely make things more comfortable.

I have used patterns, colors and shapes on the outdoor sofa to make things interesting and colorful. I mostly used square pillows but then threw in a lumbar shape to mix it up a bit!

5.Greenery and Accessories

We have less plants here then we do at home because we are not here as much to water them.

This year I made some succulent planters, just like at home. They are low maintenence and don’t need a ton of water.

I keep the accessories pretty minimal here because this area sees so much action. I couldn’t resist this little succulent planter from Trader Joe’s though..