One of my favorite things is patio lights.  I like how they just brighten things up especially in the winter.  They just seem magical.  A few years ago John bought me patio lights and I have strung them up different ways in the back yard.  This summer, John decided that we should have a permanent structure to hang them on.  My original thought was to reuse the trampoline poles and place them in large garden pots and so I just jammed them in there but they were too low and the poles were angled due to the tension from the string of lights.  While John's mom was visiting, John had a few days off and we started talking about this project.  It grew and grew and grew.  Pretty soon we looking at building a large arbor that went across the back of the patio.  I wanted nice wood and to have it built with some style.  I started pinning different things that I liked.  John started pricing out wood and then started calculating costs.  Not to mention the time it would take.  Meanwhile, I kept the string of lights on the reposed trampoline poles.  Well, the cost finally snowballed so high and the time it was going to take was probably all summer that we looked at each other and threw in the towel.  Back to the drawing board we went.  One of the things I like is stone, stone walls, stone walkways, stone planters.  I love it when moss grows all over and makes it look like its been there for generations. We went back to my original idea but decided to put stone pavers flush with the ground so it would be easier to mow.  We then had a hole drilled through the pavers so that we could sink metal rods into the ground to provide stability to the poles.  We placed the pavers in the grass and measured the distance across and made sure it was a straight even line.  We dug out the grass, reused it to sod an area in the lawn that needed help, place sand down and then leveled the paver.  Next we drilled holes in the center of the pots which we purchased for a ridiculous cheap price from Costco so that they would all be the same.  After placing the pots in the center of the paver so that the holes lined up, we place conduit pipe in the ground by hammer it at least two feet deep.  The conduit pipe had to be smaller that the trampoline poles so that the poles would fit over the pipe.  However we ran into a problem being that the poles were then too low again.  So my brilliant husband came up with the idea of using pvc pipe as spacers which worked wonders.  It gave the height that we wanted and still allowed us to have the conduit as reinforcement.  Finally we sanded and spray painted the poles black so that there wasn't any rust of peeling paint, placed them in the pot and filled the pot with potting soil.  The last step was to buy plants and fill the pots.  I decided to stick with a white and green color scheme with a hint of red accents.  There were both annuals and perennials in the pot.  Final step was to string the lights.  Instead of the $5000 plus for an arbor, we have patio lights for less than $200.  And I love it.