Lately I have noticed that the back yard is looking super cool at night because of the lights we put out in the yard. I don’t think I ever showed you the DIY globe lights we created. I guess the days getting longer and maybe the sun a little brighter lately has caused the solar lights to kick in stronger and last longer. They have been pretty dim this winter and some nights they don’t glow at all. Now they are glowing like crazy.

We have always loved those very expensive (of course… don’t we always love the expensive cool stuff!) yard balls that glow at night.

i
mages via: here, here, and here.

I’ve seen them in magazines and online specialty shops and just couldn’t bring myself to spend $300 – $1000 on a “bauble” that large. Lets face it… they’re not really a necessity. But they are fun… so we made our own.

(oh how shameful. Look at those weeds!  and that dirty globe!)
The backyard has two lights. One on the side of the house and one directly outside the back door.

I have Richie on the hunt for glass and plastic globes all the time. He brings them home from estate sales for pennies. The glass ones we fill with concrete, break the glass, and have cool concrete balls for the yard. You can see one of them in these pictures and here’s a tutorial post I did on them. The plastic ones are used for the night time glow. We just place them on top of a solar yard light and after the light has charged all day the globes just come to life. Your only real expense is the solar light but we already had those for the yard anyway.

It was difficult to take pictures of them at night. I said it once, I’ll say it again and again… I am NOT a photographer. But I’m trying and learning. The higher ISO makes the pictures sort of grainy and really you should take night shots with a tripod.. which I didn’t have time for. So it is what it is… but they’re not too awful.

I love sitting in the living room and looking out through the glass walls and seeing those globes all lit up. We have a couple of big hunks of blue/green glass placed in the yard and Richie focused a light on them and made it glow. It looks like kryptonite to me! If Superman shows up to help with our renovation, I’ll definitely hide the Kryptonite.

We’re easily amused… obviously.