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Spring Front Porch in Greens and Burlap

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Christy

At some point, I should publish a list of all my front porch posts, because there are quite a few. I LOVE to change things up on the porch for different holidays and seasons. After taking down my Valentine’s wreath after that holiday, it was time to decorate a porch in a way that would take me through until spring. Since we’re putting the house on the rental market in just a couple of weeks, I wanted things to look clean, crisp, and welcoming. Here’s what I came up with:

Last spring, I also used a combination of bright green and burlap; and you can read about that HERE. The green cushions I used last year were Goodwill purchases and did not survive the summer (too much sun fade), so that’s why you don’t see them again. This year, the green comes from florist’s moss, in the “B” on my door, and in the moss sphere in the urn. The “B” was SO easy to make–the tutorial is HERE–I just posted it last week. Amy posted the tutorial on the moss ball HERE and it was a little trickier because of the shape, but not by much.

The white urn was a Goodwill find, although the tag on the bottom says it was originally from Kirkland’s. I’ve been toying with spray painting it black. Any thoughts?

The house number porch pillows are an easy project–I just slipcovered existing pillows using the tutorial I posted HERE. The polka dot cushion is from one of my favorite Ebay stores–I buy all my outdoor pillows there, and the old window is from the Nashville flea market. The chandelier is from a yard sale.

I also planted some white violas in my two black urns–it’s still cold out, but it’s warm enough for them! I added sphagnum moss and tiny grapevine balls for visual interest.

The black wicker chairs are from a yard sale. I scored both of them for $5. They just got a new coat of black spray paint (I respray them pretty much every year) and they’re good to go for another season.

The plant stand is from Hobby Lobby, a few years ago. My little old wicker table finally died this winter, so I spray painted this guy black and put him out there to take its place. I need a little table to hold my coffee or wine (depending on the time of day while I watch the kids playing out front.

In the end, probably what made the biggest difference was that we trimmed all the bushes in the front and spread new black mulch. Well, my husband trimmed the bushes and spread new black mulch. I was busy doing something else (maybe hiding in my closet?).

Anyone need to rent a house in Nashville with a sweet front porch and a whole lot of chandeliers inside? Just give me a yell!

Happy-almost-spring, and thanks for stopping by.

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Posted in DIY, Home Tours, Porches, Real Spaces, Spring, Yards and Landscaping | Tagged Burlap, Monogram, moss, Porch, topiary | 8 Comments

DIY Moss Sphere

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Amy

First off, I have seen this idea and can’t remember where so I don’t want to pass this off as exclusively my idea. Thanks to Pinterest there really aren’t original ideas anymore, right? Regardless, I am so pleased by the results of this easy project I had to share it.

I have had this little concrete urn for awhile now. If I recall correctly, it was a Homegoods find that Christy graciously let me claim as my own {or maybe I snatched it from her hands? I can’t exactly remember… } .

I use it in various ways in my decor…like with this tablescape…{the best cupcake recipe ever is in that post, just FYI}

Or in various decor on my mantel…

But recently it occurred to me that it would be the perfect base for a rustic but yet natural moss sphere. It seems very Restoration Hardware to me {maybe that is where I saw something similar?}.

Here are the simple steps I used to make this.

I purchased a styrofoam ball in the right diameter to rest in the urn from Michaels. I didn’t do this, but you may want to paint the styrofoam green first so the white doesn’t show through if you are a true perfectionist, obviously I am not!

I used this moss, the kind in sheets, to cover the foam. I actually think using regular loose faux moss would have been easier, though probably even messier. I would suggest laying out a trash bag underneath your work area as the moss gets everywhere!

Start by wrapping the ball with a large piece of the moss. A hot glue gun is key to this project, I used a lot of glue and it didn’t, as I feared, melt the styrofoam. The moss adhered very quickly. I used a few pins and tacks to hold it on while it was drying just to help it hold.

The only tricky part was adjusting the flat moss to the round ball as you work your way around. I did this by cutting slits in the moss, and sometimes even needed to remove triangular shaped pieces so it would wrap over the ball.

And, then I just used some loose moss to patch up any empty spots left when I was working my way around the ball.

Here it is…all done in our hallway. I like that the greenery helps fills in the empty look that the house has now that the holiday decorations are all packed away.

After trying it several places, its now gracing our front hallway with its little bit of {faux} nature. I am on the lookout for a smaller urn to make a small one to go with it next.

{You can find the instructions to make the initial frame HERE}.

Also, Congratulations to Jessica, Comment #47 who won our latest organizing giveaway for chevron shelf paper and chalkboard vinyls. Jessica said:

Thanks for the awesome giveaway opportunity! Loving the chevron paper and the labels would be perfect for a pantry re-do I have been waiting to start. I follow your blog via email. Love the laundry room makeover and want to paint mine now!

Good luck with the pantry makeover Jessica and make sure to send us some pictures when its done! Thanks to everyone who entered.

XO,

Sharing this post at~

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Posted in Crafts, Projects & Printables | Tagged accessorizing, diy, greenery, hallway, home decor, moss, moss sphere, projects, topiary | 7 Comments

Burlap & Lime Green–My Winter to Spring Front Porch

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Christy

Are y’all getting tired of my front porch? I hope not! I like to post pictures whenever I change it up a bit, because I like to show that with just a few minor tweaks (and not a lot of money), you can completely update your space for the current season.

My goal as I transition from one season to the next is to keep it fun, simple, and inexpensive. I’m always on the lookout for pillows and cushions for the front porch. It’s covered, so I don’t have to buy outdoor cushions, but I often do (my favorite Ebay source for outdoor pillows is mentioned HERE). I also pick up pillows at yard sales and thrift stores and give them a good coating of Scotchguard to minimize dampness and sun fading, but even if they don’t last forever outdoors, the price was right!

I found five lime green chair cushions at Goodwill a few months ago; I think they were $1.99 apiece. Three of them were squeezed onto my glider and the other two are on my black wicker chairs (hmm, the wicker chairs will need another coat of spray paint come spring). I think the lime green really pops with the black and white polka dots and paisley. I also put lime green candles in my chandelier; they’ll get burned sometime over the summer, although I’m not going to be sitting out there anytime soon!

I have a mixture of pinecones and Osage oranges on my table. The Osage oranges are from my back yard, and yes, you’ve seen them before–I’ve had them in my outdoor decor since Thanksgiving (that post is HERE). They last forever and smell great.

The burlap is cut from a grain sack that I found at the Nashville flea market back in September. I bought a metal cabinet for my laundry room {HERE} and asked the guy to throw in the feed sack, figuring that I can always use burlap. I cut it into strips and tied it around the pillows on the porch, and also fashioned some into a bow to make a simple grapevine wreath for the front door.

The rosemary topiaries on either side of the front door are still left over from my Christmas decor, and hopefully I can keep them alive until it’s warm enough to plant them. I LOVE great big rosemary bushes in my landscaping! I thought about tying some burlap around the planters, but I decided that might be overkill. Just like accessorizing when I get dressed, I need to remind myself that less is more. Oh, and do you like my NRA sticker on the right sidelight window? I figure that should be even more of a deterrent than the alarm signs that my neighbors put in their yards!

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The little corner to the left of my front door is a great place for a vignette, although often there are footballs, pieces of sidewalk chalk, and bike helmets stashed there. Right now, I’ve got my watering can and a couple of grapevine wreaths in there. The grapevine wreaths were hanging on either side of my mailbox at Thanksgiving–see, I told you that I just keep moving the same pieces around.

My total cost for the front porch was under $15, for the five cushions and the four candles. And, of course, Easter’s only 40 days away, so it won’t be long before I show you what I do out here for the holiday. I promise that the Osage oranges will be gone by then!

Thanks for stopping by!

Posted in Home Inspiration, Real Spaces | Tagged Burlap, cushions, flea market, lime green, polka dot, Porch, rosemary, shabby chic, topiary | 4 Comments

More Fall Front Porch Decor–Just in Time for Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Christy

I’m really looking forward to Christmas, but I like to give Thanksgiving its due. That can be hard, sometimes, when the Christmas stuff is in the stores in AUGUST, but I love Thanksgiving, and I think it’s one of our country’s most meaningful holidays.

My Halloween decor isn’t very different from my Thanksgiving decor, because we don’t do the whole cobwebs-and-spiders thing for Halloween. We do carve pumpkins, and I put out luminarias (just white tealights in Ball mason jars) to line the sidewalk and the steps for the trick-or-treaters, but other than that, things don’t change very much at our house from October 31st to November 1st. No wonder, then, that I felt the need to jazz things up a bit today. Here’s how the front porch looks after I tweaked it a bit…

Can’t see anything from this far away? Don’t worry, the close ups are next!

My seating area is shown below. I have a glider, two chairs, and a little table. The glider is from Walmart (about 15 years ago) and the chairs were $5–for both–at a yard sale. I have to give them a coat of spray paint every spring. We love to sit on the front porch in the evenings with a glass of wine and watch the kids playing. My son and his buddies are usually throwing the football in the front yard, though, so one of us might have to jump in as referee.

I change the colored cushions out a couple of times a year. Obviously, the orange ones are in rotation right now, but the red ones will have their turn beginning the weekend after Thanksgiving. As we were sitting on the porch on Halloween, passing out candy, my husband asked me why we had so many cushions! Sometimes I’m not sure that he “gets” my vision! As an aside, I buy the cushions from a great Ebay seller (click here for a pillow giveaway), and they are pretty reasonably priced, as well as being completely weatherproof.

Below you’ll see my “window to nowhere” on the porch wall, and the hanging candle-lier (is that a word?). I usually light the candles when we’re sitting on the porch, and they get a color change to match the season, too. The white ones I had out this summer kept melting and wilting off sideways–we had a HOT summer in Nashville! The metal “B” is from an online store, and I added vinyl polka dots to match the cushions.

I have two of these pumpkin topiaries flanking either side of the front door. Usually, I buy the real Cinderella pumpkins and stack those as topiaries, but in this house there’s enough of an overhang that these faux ones won’t get wet. The black planters are filled with petunias or impatiens all summer

To the left of the front door, I have a basket filled with extra pillows (take that, honey! and the watering can. I’m not watering much of anything right now, so I filled it up with some sprigs from this cool bush with purple berries in our backyard. We back up to woods, and there’s a lot of interesting greenery back there.

By the way, I think I stole the pillows in the basket idea from Amy’s porch post. Even though she’s in Virginia and I’m in Tennessee, we decorate our homes in a shockingly similar manner, and if wasn’t for this blog, no one would notice!

I didn’t want to leave the mailbox out of the fun, so I put up a couple of grapevine wreaths and wove some of the unknown purple berry plant into them. My vinca died last week when we had a hard freeze, so I yanked them out and put a few mini pumpkins in the empty space until I find some pansies.

I think my next post will show the screened porch, but let me leave you with this picture as a sneak peak–I am so pleased with the very cool live decor I’m finding right in my own backyard!

Can you even believe those hedgeapples (aka osage oranges)? I just love them–and they smell so good!

Happy Fall, Y’all! Thanks for stopping by.

**Don’t forget to enter our giveaway for a pair of red and green polka dot pillows–perfect for decorating for Christmas!! Giveaway runs 11/21-11/27. (GIVEAWAY CLOSED)**