Holiday Decor for the Porch

Our front porch holiday decor has been a work in progress for about...oh, 4 weeks now. I'm sort of accepting that things get done on a whole different schedule with a baby and that if they get done at all that is a miracle. So I'll take my small wins when I can get them!

The first phase began when we put up some pre-lit LED garland. I snazzed it up a bit at the corners with some shatterproof bells.

Next came the wreath which we picked up when we went out for our tree. Later that week I figured out how to wire it with some lights and run the extension cord as inconspicuously as possible down the door. But despite all this effort, things were still looking a little sad thanks to the large black planters on either side of the door. They were sitting empty after I killed our second set of boxwood trees in them this summer.

That is until I came across a great big pile of evergreen trimmings at Lowes yesterday. Did you know you can literally fill a trash bag with as many of these clippings as you want in the garden center of your local Lowes this time of year? And fill I did! I didn't really know what I was going to do with them but I figured for the price of $0 I could figure it out when I got home and at the very least my car would smell Christmasy for the ride home.

So this is my 15 minute, how to turn some sad looking empty planters into something semi-holiday appropriate for $0.

First, stick a bunch of evergreen clippings into the dirt. No rhyme or reason really, I just stuck a bunch of them in. Next, stick something tall in the center. I used some curly willow branches I had in a vase inside. I haphazardly added some white lights at this point, stood back and decided it was a little too blah. So I took some clippers to our holly bushes which are very festively in bloom with lots of red berries at the moment. Magnolia leaves would have been nice too. But ours grow at a near glacial pace and I felt bad clipping anything from them. Finally, add some color with shatterproof ornaments. I rigged mine up on some stakes.

Except I had no stakes. All I had were these landscaping flags. I don't even know why we have these. I think maybe we had to flag the heads of our sprinkler system once? I don't know...

I pulled the little flag pieces off and stuck an ornament on...literally stuck the wire up inside the ornament via the little opening at the top. No rocket science here. I decided I wanted a few taller pieces so I used some masking tape to connect 2 of these stake wires. Ghetto, I know.

Insert staked ornaments into planters and call it a day.

I have to say, I don't hate it. And for $0, I'll take it!