I decided to build the love seats out of ceder, mainly because they will be outside and I wanted something that would weather well. Living in Edmonton Alberta we get some pretty serious weather swings throughout the year. Hopefully it holds up. I am not sure if this is a common thing with Cedar, but doing anything cross grain on this stuff leads to serious rip out. I am still new to all this and need to work on sharpening my chisels and planes which should help this issue as well (also, not generally needing to go cross grain that much anyways).

Here is a quick look at my "shop". We were evacuated from Fort McMurray due to the forest fires. I found a sweet little 6 inch jointer for a song as well as an old Radial Harm saw. I went out and bought a cheap planer that was on sale and I was off to the races. Space is a little tight, I move the side-by-side out to the drive way when I am actually working.
Update: Since this time I was able to go back and get into my house and grab my crappy little table saw and a few other tools and have retired the radial saw as that was a disaster waiting to happen.

I built the decided to attach the base together with mortise and tenon on the front side. They turned out OK, a few gaps here and there but nothing that shouldn't look a lot better once its all planed flush. I probably need a new saw as currently I only have a $15 (Japanese style) pull saw from the big box store. I was going to do the same joint on the back, but was concerned about how I was going to attach the backrest and so I went with a lap-joint with 2/3rd material on the top so I have room to put a longer tenon into the bench to  make sure it is solid and secure.

I glued up the two lap joints separately, making sure that the interior angle was square and then glued up the cross beam with the mortises. All in all it worked out pretty well being my first serious glue up! As a side note, I am sure you are all jealous of my amazing assembly table. Not having a work bench is driving me absolutely nuts.