Our Backyard: Outdoor Living with Canadian TIre

We’ve been working very hard transforming our backyard for a summer of entertaining! You may remember that last fall we did a full renovation in our backyard, we installed a brand new deck, added an outdoor kitchen and honestly we thought we were finished. But, you know us – always another project on the go right? So, we partnered up with Canadian Tire to make it even BETTER!

I love our new Summerhill outdoor conversation set, especially the fire table. This set works so perfectly for our home, our family and it’s so classic. We also picked up a new outdoor dining set, the table and chairs are from the Monaco collection – I especially love the chairs and think they’d work great for indoors too! The dining set sits comfortably under our brand new CANVAS collection offset umbrella, it has built in solar powered lights – how handy right? We picked up the outdoor rug last minute before the shoot from the CANVAS collection and it’s been holding up great.

So, we packed up our trampoline that was in a pure sand pit of a space behind the deck, I mean it served its purpose for the trampoline area but really nothing else. I debated doing a big veggie garden down there with raised beds and path ways but with us wanting to get the house up for sale, that didn’t make much sense. Originally I didn’t think we had room for a dining set until a friend suggested putting our conversation set down beside the desk, and there it began. It was messy there guys, there was one old section of fence and a whole lotta dirt, no plants other than the forest around it. We knew we wanted to showcase the entire back yard and make better use of this space so we got to planning, it’s never super simple around here haha! I saw it in my head right away, a pergola over the set and string lights, hanging plants everywhere to please my plant lady soul. The hanging planters on the pergola are self watering ones from the CANVAS collection as well, they’ve kept our annuals up there nice and hydrated!

Craig and his dad finished the fence firstly and painted it all white to match the exterior of the house which made a huge difference immediately. We added solar powered light fence caps from Canadian Tire, these fence post cap lights were SO easy to install and work great! The retaining wall was painted black to match the same black on our outdoor kitchen shiplap,  and we brought in pea stone for ground cover – these 2 things also made a huge difference in the space. Next up we built a pergola and attached the Canvas string lights to it, my oh my guys- this backyard at night is so magical!!!

I picked up these hanging fence planters while in Canadian Tire the day before our shoot and simply filled them with annuals I picked up from the garden center, we got 7 of them for between the fence posts. They add a nice pop of colour and I love that they aren’t plastic. I couldn’t help myself while in the garden centre and also picked up 2 organic tomato plants and 1 pepper plant too!

Some fresh watermelon slices and personal berry pies to celebrate the backyard being finished…

I hope you guys enjoy the outdoor living space we’ve created – do let us know your favourite part in the comment section below or share on social. A big thanks again to Canadian Tire for sponsoring this fun project, all opinions are my own.

Photography by Allie Young Studios