Who doesn't want to build a house for a miniature pig?

This is my friend Hamlet, an Extreme Royal Dandy pig, who lives across the street from me at a Montesorri school called Owl and the Dove.

and this is his new house...

I think everyone likes it.

Note Buck (chihuahua) for scale!

UFO patio

Thankfully, summer and fall have been busy with lots of interesting projects which I'm hoping to share in the next few weeks.  This first one is perhaps my favorite, maybe because it is in my own yard and I had the artistic liberty to do as I pleased.  I was hoping to have the patio done last year, but it has dragged on as most of the projects do at my own house.  This time procrastination was supremely beneficial, because the idea did not come to me until this spring.  I had been thinking about it for a year and wasn't quite satisfied with my ideas yet, but this one lit up my mind in an instant.  

I'm not quite sure the inspiration, except that i wanted a metal element, and a feeling of enclosure on the patio by using an overhead structure.
Enter 16' and 8' diameter metal circles, that were referenced as the "flying saucers" in our design meetings.  Luckily, I had a highly skilled welder and artist, Adrian Haley, to do the installation for me. Check him out at addesignspdx.com. They were incredibly heavy and cumbersome, to say the least.  
I'm hoping to run some cable cross pieces in the small one to grow a vine up and over it.

The planter box and bench are in progress.  The facing for the box will be the reclaimed Doug Fir leaning against the fence.

Patio project next:  paint neighbors garage, build bench and planter box structure for the big patio and a small platform/deck underneath the small one. 
I'm also hoping to find some single person hanging chairs, something like this, perhaps, to hang from the big circle. I want it to look and feel like little cocoons hanging from the sky.