The Marrs Collection is a collaboration with the Better Homes & Gardens brand and launched exclusively at Walmart this week. The line includes 30 outdoor home and decor items designed to create a beautiful outdoor living space that also provides a functional space for entertaining, relaxing, and making memories. All the pieces are fairly neutral, so whether your style is more modern or traditional, you’ll be able to mix and match new pieces with items you already own. “Our hope is for these pieces to help families create beautiful spaces they can live well in,” Jenny says. “That’s the most important thing about the things that you bring into your home; You want to feel like they facilitate the memory-making and facilitate an opportunity to have people over and fill the table up.”
Building the Collection
The couple is adamant that your outdoor space, whether it’s a spacious yard or a small patio, should be an extension of the rest of your home. So when they started creating this outdoor collection, they began by pulling inspiration from the most-loved items in their own home: Their porch swing and dining room table. “We have three porch swings in our house,” Jenny explains. “The porch swing is just really important to us, it represents a place to rest and unwind and a place to just rest. For us, that was the most important piece for the outdoor collection, so that’s where we started.” They also wanted to include a piece that was more functional for entertaining—like the dining room table Dave built for the family’s home. They created a teak version of Dave’s original design, so it would be outdoor-friendly, and then designed comfortable outdoor chairs to match. “For us, it’s all about bringing people around the table, and all that the table represents,” Jenny says. “It’s a place where people can gather, where you can just start bringing your friends and family in, where you want to bring people together.” Dave hopes people are inspired by the way they’ve incorporated their own family life into the collection—and while he’s proud of the look and the quality of the pieces they’ve created, he also wants people to think of the items as functional outdoor items, rather than just pretty furniture or decor that’s not meant to be used. “Jenny and I always say we want things to be authentic, to be ours, and to be something that we believe in,” he says. “And for things like this swing and this table–I’ve put them together, we own them, we have them and we’ve used them and I want people to look at it and say, this is something that we can get a lot of use out of as a family and create memories.”
Dave and Jenny’s Tips for Creating an Outdoor Space
The way that Dave and Jenny created their outdoor collection is the same way they suggest building your own outdoor space: Start with the big things, then add the accents. Here are their best tips for curating your own outdoor oasis.
1. Know what you want from the space.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or adding onto an existing outdoor area, Dave says the first step is to figure out what you want the space to be used for. “Number one is figuring out what your space can hold and how you’re going to use it,” he says. “If it’s for friends, family, or community, you’ve got to have a place where people can gather—then you can go from there.”
2. Pick a main feature that supports the goal.
Once you’ve decided what you want the main function of your space to be, pick one main item that facilitates that idea. Of course, if your space and budget allow, you can add multiple larger pieces. But if you’re limited on space or can’t add a lot of new items at once, they recommend starting with one main goal for the space.
3. Layer, layer, layer.
Once you’ve added a focal piece to your space, Dave and Jenny agree that the smaller layers are what really makes it ‘yours.’ It’s an opportunity for you to bring your style outdoors as a continuation of your inside space, and adding decorative elements is what will give your space that comfortable, at-home feeling.
