But blogging about it seems to have slowed, as these things sometimes do. I will confess there is a reason...I've been obsessively preparing for the upcoming holiday season. The holidays for me always mean not only baking cookies and decorating, but also making numerous (in the double numerals usually) homemade gifts for family. The preparation for this part has to start at least in mid-November, and gets me in the holiday spirit (yes...gasp...before Thanksgiving).
This year I've also been distracted by trying to plan out the decorating ideas for the new house. We have literally twice as much space here to play with as we had in our apartment, and I'm hoping we can find or make enough inexpensive festive things to fill all the space. One area that still is a riddle to me is our front porch.
Right now, it is decorated festively for autumn...
...but I know once I have to take down the pumpkins, the wicker plant stand, the mums, and the overblown but dying plant on the stand, (basically everything green on the main stoop) the front porch will look alarmingly bare, as it did in this listing photo from last year before we bought the place:
I have the leaf garland around the door secured with hooks I plan to use for faux evergreen garland, and I have a wreath for the front door, but the problem is that everything large-scale, like a set of faux Christmas trees, or a pair of topiary plants in urns, that might make a holiday impact on this porch also would cost us an arm and a leg we don't have to spare right now. So please, internets, help me...what can I put on my front porch that will be impactful and festive for the holidays, but won't break the bank??
Are you going to do anything with lights? I find that they go a long way to pepping things up... at least when it's dark out.
ReplyDeleteWhat about a chair or a bench? We have a set of chairs that we spray painted red. They stand out nicely. Of course you don't have room for a set, but a bench or even a single chair is kinda welcoming and decorative (even if you never sit in it).
If you or a friend have some cut thin tree branches, you can wrap them in bee lights (the tiny white lights in warm white tone, not that blue led color), and put them in an old bucket.(Plaster will help them stand up unless you have something else to wedge them in) Does anyone have an old wooden American Flyer sled that you could put a big red bow around?
ReplyDeleteI definitely concur about branches in buckets! Collect greenery (in small pieces) from evergreens that have broken or are too crowded or touching the ground, use branches that needed to be pruned (your hawthorne?) or that have naturally fallen, and give them a sprinkling of lights, preferrably solar-powered warm-white LEDs!
ReplyDeleteSadly we don't have any outdoor outlets on our house, so if we want to do lights it will be more of a challenge. Not impossible, so I won't say no, but we'll see how we run on time and money for this year :)
ReplyDeleteI found a lovely white iron bench a month or so ago on Craigslist and almost bought it. Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't :(
Painting Queen, I have a bunch of branches in the basement that will do just fine for that! :D
Linds, we're going to go out this Friday to gather evergreen boughs. Wahoo!