Holiday Décor {Outdoor}

Our street is mostly comprised of retired people. Retired people who do not bother with Christmas/Holiday decor . Well, with the exception of our optometrist/neighbor who put lights on the front of his house and about 50 lit candy cane thingies. No joke. There are a TON of them.

Seeing as how Daniel and I have spent a lot of time on our living room makeover, we had little energy and funds to do a HUGE outdoor display for our house. However, being the person that I am, I insisted we do something. The other day we were at Bealls (a department store) I saw this in their store (excuse poor quality pic- I was trying to do it quickly so I wouldn’t get in trouble!):

Isn’t it simple and lovely? So, I set out to do this on our front porch:

Garland Materials:

-9 foot lighted garland ($10 at Target, we had on hand from last year)

-2 extension cords ($1 each at Dollar Tree)

-7 larger sized ornaments (6 from Dollar Tree, $1 each; big blue one from Target $5)

-Staple Gun & Staples

-Ladder/step-stool

-Ribbon (I used a black velvet ribbon I had on hand- probably used about 4 yards worth)

-Scissors

I basically just hung the garland using my staple gun & step-stool/ladder. My porch isn’t that wide, so I just folded the extra length in to make it look fuller and ended up with this:

I’d love to tell you I measured out each strand of ribbon, but I didn’t. I winged it. I always made sure to cut the ribbon longer and THEN shorten it. Makes it easier that way and gives you more freedom to move the placement, etc.

Then, I decided every front porch needs a wreath of some sort, right? I saw lots of them in store for about $20+, but I was determined to make my own. I bought a $4 wreath from Hobby Lobby and about 6 of the 75-cent decorative picks from Hobby Lobby on sale. I also gathered up random ornaments I hadn’t used on the tree.

Wreath Materials:

-Wreath

-Ornaments

-Floral picks

-2 Poinsettia clips (About 75-cents at Hobby Lobby)

-1 glittery bird

-Green wire/ornament hooks

Total cost: About $12ish plus tax, maybe $15 total overall.

Now, I didn’t use hot glue or anything fancy because I wanted to easily be able to remove/add/replace items on the wreath. I basically stuck the floral pick on, wrapped it tightly around a branch of the wreath or used the ornament hook wire to secure an ornament to a branch and moved on with my day. Took me maybe 20-30 minutes all together.

I hung the wreath on my cabinet in my office area:

Placed my pretty blue bird where I wanted him:

And I started adding ornaments/floral picks one by one.

I added/moved stuff quite a bit to make the wreath look sort of symmetrical, yet unique. Finally, when it was to my liking, I put in on our front door:

Here’s how it looks during the daytime:

And lit during daytime (sorry its slanted):

And now some pictures at dusk:

Pee Wee is admiring the view. Or so I think.

And finally some pics at nighttime:

I absolutely love it. I wish we could have done more, but with time and such, it’s just not going to happen. Total, I spent about 1.5 hours on the front porch, and I love it. My husband says it looks red, white and blueish, but our *actual* colors are teal, silver/gray, red, black. I can’t wait to show you all our living room & indoor décor this week as well. Hope you all enjoyed our little tour of our very little porch area. Here’s a sneak peek of our indoor décor AND our living room.

This post is linked up at: