Even if you can’t get away for a vacation this summer—whether it’s because you lack the time or just because things are so expensive—you can still have a lot of fun in your own backyard! Sometimes, when my family and I can’t coordinate our schedules for a long family getaway, we plan a staycation filled with lots of fun activities in our backyard! And with summer still a few weeks away, there is plenty to get your backyard ready!
Roast Hot Dogs & S’Mores Around a Fire Pit
Adding a fire pit to a backyard can provide lots of opportunities to enjoy your backyard. My family and I love our fire pit
Eventually I would like to build a DIY paver fire pit around our metal portable fire pit. For now, I just put our fire pit on some cinder blocks in our backyard. We have a really nice paver patio but I don’t want to use the fire pit too close to the house as it could pose a fire hazard.
We like to make some crescent roll hot dogs and have a mini s’mores party. And now, because one of my kids is mostly vegetarian, we often roast vegetables over the fire pit too. We have pretty Marshmallow Roasting Sticks
Play Cornhole
My husband gifted me with an unpainted cornhole set a few Christmases ago. I spray-painted my cornhole set in colorful stripes, and we use it for backyard competitions. We can get really competitive with our corn hole games!
My daughters and I have been enjoying playing cornhole together—you can see in the below photo what my cornhole set looked like before I painted it.
Our Shih Tzu pup, Mochi, likes to get into the game, too! He loves stealing our bean bags! Thankfully, my husband bought us extra bean bags so it’s not much of a problem if he steals one. It turns out that corn-hole bean bags come in all sorts of colors—you can even get patriotic bean bags for Memorial Day and Fourth of July.
Get a Game Going
Badminton and volleyball are also fun games to play in the backyard—one of my daughters loves badminton, and I like volleyball, so I got us a Baden Champions Volleyball Badminton Combo Set so we can play both!
The Baden Champions set includes a very sturdy outdoor net with poles, a volleyball, a ball pump, 4 badminton racquets, 3 shuttlecocks, boundary lines and a carrying case. We really enjoy playing backyard volleyball and badminton games together!
Play With Your Pup
Having a family dog can lend a lot of fun to a family afternoon in the backyard! Some of the best times my daughters and I have in our backyard are playing with our little Shih Tzu pup, Mochi.
We got him a little plastic dog pool
My daughters and I also like to hit tennis balls into the yard with a tennis racquet so our dog can chase them. He looks so cute and proud of himself when he trots back with a ball in his mouth! I recently also got him a tennis-ball launcher for dogs, so I am looking forward to playing with that with him! I think using the launcher instead of my tennis racquet will be a lot easier on our arms.
If you don’t have a truly securely enclosed backyard, get your dog a collar and test them on their recall to stop that element of dog safety rearing its ugly head!
Relax & Get Some Fresh Air
Sometimes, it’s nice just to sit in the yard together and relax! I have a patio pond on our paver patio; I recently put some chaise lounge chairs next to them. It is a great place to sit back and enjoy a cool drink or read a book. We used to keep fish in the pond and it was so much fun watching them, but caring for them over the winter inside was a lot of work—so I switched to plants and then eventually to pretty faux pond flowers.
The chaise lounge chairs we have are the KeterPacific 2-Pack All-weather Adjustable Outdoor Patio Chaise Lounges, from Amazon. And recently, my husband and kids also got me a hammock, for which I made a DIY waterproof hammock pad. There are a lot of ways to relax in my backyard now!
Do you have plans for your backyard this summer? Please share in the comments!
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