Extend Your Outdoor Living

With the temperatures cooling down, we show you how to extend the season with our kick-off to fall entertaining and gardening.

Hide CaptionShow CaptionGet inspired and create an outdoor room.

Enjoy the good life—outdoors and in-style. Lifestyles writer Lourdes Dumke offers four basic tips for creating an outdoor room:

Create structure. Define your outdoor space with structural elements, such as walls, rugs and ceilings, just like with an indoor room.
Add furnishings. Get creative with outdoor furniture. You can spend a fortune on durable pieces made for the outdoors or go thrifty with flea-market finds. Use paint to add color to furnishings, walls or structures.
Add lighting. Go moonlighting with night lighting in your own backyard. Extend the daytime into the evening and enjoy your nights on the back porch or patio. Go simple with oil lamps or get more involved with professionally-installed lights.
Add accessories. Finish the space by covering the details. Add throw pillows to furnishings or create a bouqet of flowers cut fresh from the garden.

--Photo courtesy of Scott Cohen, The Green Scene, Canoga Park, Calif., www.greenscenelandscape.com