An unplanned party in the garden is great and often the best parties are the ones that just happen off the cuff, but if you want something a little more formal or more notable then you have to organize. The first step is to pick a date far enough in the future for most people to be unlikely to have a prior engagement, but not so far that they might forget about your barbecue party.

Depending on where you live of course, try to pick a date when it is unlikely to be cool or wet. This is hard in places like the UK, but may be simpler where you live. If the party goes on into the night it may get cool anyway and you could hire a few gas patio heaters in advance just in case. You could also have a sunshade or sheltered seating area in case of blazing sunshine or a light shower.

These days many people are vegetarian and you will have to plan in advance for them and other dieters, if they make up a sizable number of your guests. You could send out RSVP invitations and ask your guests to make known any special dietary requirements. I am not really suggesting that you have to cater to everybody, but if you have a lot of Jews or Arabs coming you will need to provide an alternative to pork chops and of course there are other minorities too.

In fact, you may have to do some research on the religions of the people coming to your barbecue party, because often cooking utensils may not have touched pork of meat or shellfish. Most people of the guests with these dietary requirements will have been in this situation before and will understand if you go some way to providing an alternative.

For this reason, you will need to get your RSVP cards back at least a week before your barbecue party and do a bit of research on the telephone or the Internet. Then start making up the barbecue side dishes. These should include baked or and boiled jacket potatoes and potato salad, baked beans, egg quarters and coleslaw along with pickles, relish, onions, chutneys tomato and curry sauces (hot and not so hot), as most people will eat them. These can be prepared a few days in advance and kept in Tupperware containers in the fridge. Bread in the form of buns is also essential so that people can make sandwiches.

It is important for a slick operation, to have your party area fully prepared before your guests arrive. it is a good idea to set the music system up in the garden shed or the garage to protect it it from any sudden shower. Provide plenty of tissues for wiping greasy fingers and plenty of bins for the debris. Finger bowls with lemon water would be useful for this objective too.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the propane outdoor heater. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

There are many different styles of patio furniture to choose from that range from classic to modern. There is also a full range of choice in that there are chairs, loungers, swinging sofas, tables, outdoor fridges, barbecue sets and patio heaters amongst other things. A full set need not cost more than $1,000, but you can start with a table and two chairs and build up your patio furniture set step by step.

The many choices you have when looking for patio furniture are the style and the material it is made from. Most patio furniture stays outside all day and all night in any weather, so it important to get furniture that is well-made and weather-proof. All weather furniture is normally made from plastic-coated steel, wicker, massive wood or moulded plastic.

Whatever you choose, make sure that the guarantee makes your choice worth the money. For example, I mean, if the furniture costs $200, and has a 12 month warranty, then you should be prepared to pay $4 a week for your investment and everything else is a bonus.

Another tip is to buy your patio furniture from a dependable manufacturer or a trustworthy retailer, unless it is massive timber furniture in which case you will want a trustworthy local craftsman. It depends where you live of course, but any patio furniture is going to have a hard time of it and it will remain outside sometimes no matter what your intentions are now.

Standard plastic patio furniture is pretty good and will stand up to all but the coldest of weather, which can make it become fragile. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can have the same effect on cheap plastic chairs. White is the usual colour, but there are others. Make sure that you buy something that will take your weight, especially if you are a bit on the heavy side. I have had legs of plastic chairs go on me, but luckily I was on grass both times. On concrete or near the edge of raised decking could be very dangerous.

Once you have chosen your patio table, chairs and possibly loungers, there are one or two other things that I think are essential to allowing the complete enjoyment of your patio deck. For example, if you want to use your outdoor furniture in the evening you may find it nippy or you may be troubled by insects.

This need not be a problem. You can get a patio heater at quite a reasonable price. A gas patio heater will keep up to eight people lovely and warm. To complete your patio furniture set, you might want a mosquito trap of some sort.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with commercial patio heaters. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

There are quite a few models of gas lantern. However, they vary not only in design, but also in the type of fuel they burn. Some people like the old fashioned style kerosene or paraffin lanterns. They like the design, the historical aspect and possibly even the smell.

Their benefits are that the fuel is low-priced and easy to find. However, their disadvantages are that they smell and are very dangerous if tipped over. The storage of surplus paraffin or kerosene is also a serious hazard, should a fire break out.

If you want one of these old style kerosene lanterns, they are widely available at camping, army surplus and hardware suppliers. If you are going to use them for emergency lighting, it is best to have four or five on hand, clean and ready to fill.

The wicks should be trimmed and the glass clean. Store them in plastic bags to prevent dust building up on them. Keep one already filled with kerosene so that you can fill the others by its light. It is safer and less wasteful this way.

However, the modern equivalent of the kerosene lantern is the propane gas lantern. Propane gas lanterns burn with a very clean flame, which is also quite hot, so it does warm up its immediate surroundings, maybe to a distance of a foot or two. Therefore, it can keep faces warm on a cool evening in the garden.

Propane gas lanterns are fueled by gas canisters. They come in various sizes from quite small to large, but the gas does burn for a long time. The small canisters are best for emergency use and the larger ones for use on camping trips or in the garden. They are relatively inexpensive, are clean to burn, provide some heat, are light weight and are very safe.

On the safety side of things, it is clearly very important that you follow the manufacturer’s directions when using any kind of gas lantern, because they are all a latent fire hazard, especially when camping in a wood.

Become acquainted with the operation of the lantern you make your mind up to use before you have to use it. The gas lantern may get hot so be careful with it and get used to lighting it in the daylight so that you know what you are doing, when you need the gas lantern for real. One last suggestion, if you are taking a propane gas lantern on a camping holiday, take enough canisters with you. The merchant should be able to let know you how many hours they will last for the use you are going to put them to.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the propane outdoor heater. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

I have seen this done to stunning effect in Prague in October when there were heavy snow storms. People wanted to sit outside and get pleasure from the snow storm as long as they were fairly warm. A person’s primary heat comes from the body and is retained with decent clothing, but it is nice to have a patio heater near-by just to add a glow to your face and hands.

If you have a business that only opens when it is warm enough, then you have an expensive business and these days expensive businesses do not survive long. You need to wring every last cent out of your business real estate and if that means putting patio heaters in, then that is what you should to do.

Patio heaters come in a range of guises, but they are not that expensive to buy. Sometimes you can rent them too. Most of these outdoor heaters run on bottles of propane or butane gas, but there are mains gas varieties too. There are also electric ones, but they tend to be costly to run, unless you can generate your own electricity.

I think that the best two types are the box type where the gas cylinder goes inside the apparatus and the heat is directed at foot to knee height and the street lantern style, where the heat comes down from about seven or eight feet in height. The gas container also fits inside these models lowering their centre of gravity and making them more difficult to unintentionally knock over.

These heaters are very safe although patrons should be advised to exercise caution if they have young children with them. A standard heater will keep up to two tables and eight people warm enough to enjoy themselves even while it is snowing.

The hire of a few of these patio heaters or even their purchase will soon be off-set by your increased trade, especially if your competitors are not using them. My wife and I will never forget our time in Prague, when it was snowing, drinking coffee and eating cake outside, watching people go by while we were as warm as toast because of the restaurateur’s prudence in providing patio heaters.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with the propane outdoor heater. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

Oak is definitely not cheap, but if you consider that it will last for ten to twenty years, whereas plastic and metal may last two to four years, it does not work out a bad deal over the long term and during that period, you will have been sitting on garden furniture that is the bee’s knees in every way.

Just a point of interest here that will give you more range when you are buying your hardwood garden furniture, oak and cherry wood share many of the same characteristics as far as garden patio furniture is concerned.

The patterns of whorls and rings in the timber is truly beautiful, so in order to maintain the stocks of these trees, please make sure that your patio furniture comes from a replenishable source.

Make sure you follow the maker’s recommendations as far as preservation is concerned. This will prolong the life of your hardwood furniture, making sure that you will get extra life – up to twice as much – life out of your hardwood garden furniture.

The maker or craftsman will probably deliver your furniture primed and stained and maybe varnished too. If you get raw timber furniture, the maker is probably leaving your options open. The least you should do is rub an oil into it.

Ask at your decorators’ merchants or timber merchants which is the best. You could also stain it and varnish it. Ask to see examples before you go ahead, but it has to be done at least once a year anyway, so you can change approach when it wears off.

This category of furniture will be seen often at commercial venues, because it is so hard wearing and long lasting, if correctly looked after. You should let commercial sense guide you and follow suit, if you can afford it. If you cannot afford a full suite of hardwood garden patio furniture all in one go, why not buy one or two sticks of furniture a year?

Once you have your furniture in place, you can start thinking about accessories. The most common accessories are lighting, power points, mosquito zappers, sun shades and patio heaters. You will perceive that restaurants and pubs with a patio will use patio heaters when the weather gets cooler.They have to do this, otherwise customers would vanish.

You can learn from this for your back garden. Get yourself a patio heater so that you can get pleasure from your garden patio in comfort every month of the year. Add a few extra plants and a few nocturnal blossoming plants. Put in a small pond with a fountain and some fish. Complete the whole picture with a few spotlights pointing at your favourite features and hang up a mosquito trap. This way you will get the most out of your oak or cherry wood garden patio furniture.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with commercial patio heaters. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

Is your garden patio a bit congested or do you have loads of room? Are there other things you would like to have out there? How about plants? Do you have enough plants and bushes – eye candy? Will you be using it only in the daytime or in the evening or even at night too? Will you need lighting, for instance?

This is where your own personal stylishness can be added to your shop bought furniture to make the patio truly your patio. So, if you live in a home that only has a small garden, you might want to consider things that hang rather than things that must be sited on the ground, which will take up walking space.

If you do not have much space, but you want to grow plants with edible fruit such as strawberries or tomatoes, you could get some hanging baskets. You can hang them from bushes or standard lamps or fix them to a boring wall. In the same way, you could grow herbs or other small flowers in a window box which has been fixed to a wall or placed on top of it. Or put shelving up and put boxes and pots on that.

If your patio is too sunny, you could grow sunflowers or put up a trellis or an arbour and grow vines or clematis up it. Bamboo grows quickly too. If it is too shaded, plant plenty of bright yellow and white flowers and maybe paint the walls white or pink, if you are not keen on glare.

If your garden patio is a much larger, you could add garden accessories in order to further your enjoyment. For instance, you could construct a barbecue area out of stone slabs or bricks. You could add a fountain too. A fountain makes the very soothing sound of running and splashing water and fish are a delight to watch.

For the cooler months, you could build a fireplace, if local bylaws permit or get a patio heater. They are very efficient and can keep a fair radius warm, depending on the ambient temperature.

You will probably need some type of lighting as well, if you reckon on spending some evenings on your patio. I suggest a few spotlights to highlight your favourite flowers and the fountain and a broader beam light that you can read by. Do not put these lights near where you mean to sit because they will attract flying insects. However, they make a good distraction from you and will keep all but the blood sucking insects away.

For parasites such as mosquitoes, you should get some form of mosquito trap. Some are very good and promise to keep a quarter or even half an acre clear of mosquitoes and other such nuisances.

For all these extra accessories you will need power points. Therefore, if you plan your garden with pen and paper as I suggested at the beginning of this article, then you will be able to show the electrician where you want the points and what-not in your new garden patio layout.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with commercial patio heaters. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

And birthday parties should be a load of fun. It does not have to be a children’s style party, of course, but you could still dress up and play games.

You could have a barbecue for all your friends and family and do it cowboy style. Have a barn dance that would make ‘JR’ proud. The food for this is straightforward enough. Start by providing plenty of Texas sized spare ribs, half-pounder hamburgers, T-bone steaks, and jumbo size hot dogs with loads of bread and salad.

For music, it has to be country and everybody has to wear cowboy clothing, although it would probably be better to leave the shootin’ irons at home. Annie Oakley style clothes for the ladies and Buffalo Bill style for the gents. If it is going to be a big party, ask everyone to bring their own favourite dish, in true Southern style. That would be a great way to celebrate an adult’s birthday for the family.

If you do not go much on the macho cowboy scheme, you could try a Caribbean style barbecue. Dress in flash short sleeved shirts and vivid colours or swimming costumes. The music could be reggae and calypso and the food would be grilled fish and chicken with salad and plenty of fresh fruit. Provide hot and not so hot chilli dips and barbecue sauces. You could have a go at limbo dancing too, that is always good for a laugh.

Or maybe you would prefer a humorous barbecue party and all dress up like the hillbilly family ‘The Clamperts’! That would be fun. The men could wear old velvet hats and old clothes tied up with string like Jed and Jethro and the women could come as Ellie May or Granny. I suppose that the original food like possum and bullfrog might be difficult to get hold of in some areas, but you could just provide what you like for this one. Steaks, hamburgers and fried fish; bread and salad with cake to finish.

Another favourite form of barbecue for a birthday do is the Luau. An Hawaiian barbecue is really something else. You will need bright colours and plenty of tropical Hawaiian decorations. You could provide half coconut shells for drinking out of and lots of coconut and pineapple based drinks. You should ask your guests to wear loud Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts, provide plenty of leis and hula music and a ‘loudest Hawaiian shirt’ contest is compulsory.

If none of those tickles your fancy, how about a ‘Vicars and Tarts’ barbecue? You can use your own imagination on that one though. Any more tea and crumpet, vicar?

If your barbecue party is to continue into the evening and it might get chilly, you could hire or borrow some patio heaters, just so as to give you a few extra hours in the garden.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with the electric outdoor heater. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

Therefore, it can be better to delay until autumn or winter, so that you can see the correct lie of the land. You could make a plan of the garden on graph paper and take a load of photos too. Identify the photos on the back of them and relate them to the grid on your graph paper. There may be rises and hollows, potholes, rocky patches and even a marsh or a pond to cope with.

These are almost certainly natural features and if you want to change them, you will have to tackle the fundamental cause. The feature is only the symptom. Like freckles or spots! If you look at the state of affairs in this way, it makes planning simpler.

For example, a rocky patch probably means that the Earth is throwing stones up gradually and if you want to clean it up, you will be picking up rocks for the remainder of your life. Similarly, if your wet patch is the result of natural drainage from higher ground, you will have to drain it and put in permanent drainage, because it is not going to stop raining for you.

So, you can either work with nature or you will be working against it for the rest of your life. Either that or paying someone else to do it for you. Another point is that the wildlife that uses your area does so because of how it is. If you change the landscape, your current range of wildlife might move on or just die. A lot depends on how much land we are talking about, but in general, I would say that the larger the plot, the more you should leave it alone.

On the other hand, you can add features more easily than remove them. For instance, if you have an area with poor soil, you could improve it with compost or put a pond there. Shade and existing fences or sheds should also be noted on your graph paper, although being man-made, these are simpler to remove or alter.

Next you should make up your mind what type of garden you want, within the constraints of the existing landscape, how much work you are willing to put into it and how much money you want to pay out on it. Improving the natural features of the land is the simplest way of landscaping your garden.

If you have a marshy area, why not put a low wall around it and turn it into a pond? If you have a rocky patch, why not gather up the stones and build a rockery? If you have a couple of trees, try growing wisteria, honeysuckle or vines through them.

If you are in the shade, buy flowers that prefer the shade and vice-versa. It is a effort to go against nature and unless you have a good cause to do it, it is not really worthwhile. Then build a patio or deck and sit outside and enjoy all the landscaping that you have saved yourself in your garden.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with outdoor heat lamp. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

The best thing to do is talk with your contractor about your plans about size and materials. If you want to have a go at making it yourself, take the dimensions to your local builders’ merchant and get them to give you a price. If you need it, they can normally recommend a contractor to you. This can be a good idea, even if it is only to get an idea about price.

There are also lots of ‘standard’ plans available too. You could get a few gardening magazines, you will be able to tell the ones you want by their titles. You could also look on the Internet. There is also designing software for this type of project, it just depends what you want your input to be.

You could just hand the whole task over to your builder, if that is what you want. However, I would go for a drink with my wife and take paper and pens. Over a drink or two, I would encourage us both to make a few rough plans of what we would like. Then you can discuss and amalgamate the plans.

You also have to come to a decision whether you want a raised deck or one at ground level. A raised, wooden deck might help keep the snakes at bay, but a stone patio puts you right in the middle of your garden and flowers.

A consideration, depending on where you live, could be the use of patio heaters. If you think that you may have to use patio heating at certain times of the year because of the weather, you might not want your patio deck made of wood. After spending time and money on your new patio deck, you will want to make use of it whether it is a bit chilly or not, which is where the heaters come in.

Furthermore, patio heaters are not that pricey any more and not that dear to run. If you add a mosquito trap and some lighting, you will have a pleasure to enjoy for the rest of your life.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with commercial patio heaters. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.

After all, you are normally allowed to have a barbecue and cook food in your own garden, but there may be bylaws on cooking food on an open fire in a park or picnic site for fire safety purposes, so most people take pre-cooked meats and sandwiches.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both types of party, but we will begin by looking at the food aspect, as most parties centre around food. An advantage of having a picnic is that you will be able to muck in with your fellow revellers more, because you will have already cooked the chicken wings and legs and made the sandwiches the night before.

You will have bags of sausage rolls and small cakes and all you will have to do is lay them out for people to help themselves. If you run out of sandwiches, people can make their own with the sliced bread that you will have brought just in case.

The disadvantages of a picnic are that you also have to tie your time up the day before making all the food and you will need transport to get there with your hampers, bottles, flasks, plates, beakers, tissues, flannels towels and whatever else you normally take with you. People may not even like your choice of sandwiches and if you let them make their own with what you provide, there could be a terrible mess. Your sandwiches could also curl up overnight of go off in the heat of the day or in the back of the car. This is a particular danger with pork, chicken and eggs.

You may have to put up a tent or rig up a shelter for those who can not stand strong sunlight. You may also have trouble with ants and wasps and the toilet amenities are often abysmal. Also if it begins to rain, you have little option but to pack up and leave for home or a pub

Barbecue food on the other hand is cooked there and then and cannot spoil. The only danger is under cooking, but it is not too hard to get it right. There is not much likelihood of cooking huge quantities more than you require either as the chef will see when his food is not being taken away.

This is one of the disadvantages of barbecuing though, someone needs to stand there all day and cook, although this can be done in turns and there is usually a string of men willing to show off their expertise as a barbecue chef.

With a barbecue you have the advantage of shelter if it rains and the toilets are better than in the park and if it gets cool later on in the evening, you could use a patio heater to prolong the party.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with the outdoor heat lamp. If you are interested in patio heaters too, please click through to Residential Patio Heaters.