Just Another Hang Up: Outdoor Lighting Ideas...

Monday, April 19, 2010

Outdoor Lighting Ideas...

Yesterday I was visiting the blog, "Finding Fabulous," when I came upon this post about innovative outdoor lighting. Jane creatively revamped some thrifty finds to resemble the Pottery Barn Mason Jar votive holders below.

Pottery Barn has a way of making even canning jars look chic and sophisticated. Amazing. And luscious. This post reminded me of some of the candlelight lighting we used at our daughter's wedding reception last August. Five of our children have married in the last seven years. Four of those wedding receptions were held in our backyard. Several weddings back I made the votive holders you see below out of inexpensive glass vases. I hung them from hooks I bought for that purpose at several of our children's weddings since then...

Photos courtesy of Angie Wilson Photography

About a year before the wedding last August when the idea of a wedding wasn't even on the radar screen, I came upon the mini-lanterns below at our local grocery store. It was the end of the summer, and they were selling all their seasonal items at a fraction of the original cost. I bought bunches of these little lanterns for $1 each because I knew someday another wedding would be scheduled, and I could just imagine them hanging from the tree off our patio for just such an occasion. We used them a year later at our daughter's reception. We hung them from very thin wire from the tree branches. As the evening grew darker the wire seemed to disappear, and the lanterns were beautiful as they magically hung below the tree.

One last idea. We have a birdbath underneath the tree where we hung the little lanterns. I asked our amazing florist Sarah, from Painted Primrose, to build a wreath to put in the birdbath. We placed a candle inside the wreath for an additional light source for the garden area. Breathtakingly beautiful!