I know, I know, the common saying is It's Fall Ya'll, but I live in Canada and, I just don't say "Ya'll" very often. In the spirit of Fall I wanted to add a little something to my front door. I'm fairly new to the art of front porch decor, where I live not a lot of people take the time to decorate their porches, growing up our porch was 'decorated' with our garbage cans! So you can understand why I'm a beginner at this!
Here is my first attempt at Fall front porch decor! I'm still not completely happy with what I've come up with, I think I need to add a few more pumpkins and flowers but its a good start.
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I began with the two metal urns, I have no idea where they came from as they were my Mother-in-laws and have been at the front door for years. Lately they usually house a beautiful selection of local weeds, so I ripped those suckers out and covered the soil with little burlap squares. I used your regular run of the mill garden shop burlap and cut it to fit. I sort of tucked in the edges between the pots and urns to keep it in place. I'm sure this step isn't necessary but it looks a little more like I planned it rather than just let the kids dump some gourds in the dirt! After covering the soil I ... let the kids put some gourds on top of the BURLAP! Each urn has two gourds and one small pumpkin.
Next I popped some little pumpkins on the ledges of my plant ladder my amazing hubby built for me years ago. It's about six feet tall and has three copper rungs (one day they will oxidise!) and three plant ledges. I think I will add some small plants to this as well, it seems a little bare to me. After Thanksgiving I plan to paint BOO on the pumpkins to change up the decor and make it more Halloween-ish (Canada has Thanksgiving this year on the 14th of October).
I purchased my beautiful Mums from Wal-Mart a few weeks ago for $9! A total steal! I originally had them sitting in the plastic brown pot, but it looked, well, drab! I had a quick look around and came across the MUCH prettier ivory pot and ever so cleverly placed the plastic into the pretty pot and voila! Beauty by the front door! The pumpkin, was expertly placed in front by my four year old son! He likes to have jobs to do!
Finally the "Give Thanks" tags were hung on the door. I saw something similar on Pinterest, but didn't pin it for some reason. I liked the idea and did my best to duplicate them ...
I can use power tools, I know how to use power tools, and if necessary I will use those power tools, but I'm not a fan of the saws. That being said, my hubby was home so I drew out what I wanted and gave him the task to cut out the tags a few days before he had to leave for work. A few hours before he had to leave he came in the house with the above 'tags', they weren't exactly how I had drawn/explained (I wanted more tag and less arrow) but I thanked him and asked him, maybe when he cuts out the ones for Halloween he could look a little closer at my drawing, he said he would try!
Regardless, I'm very happy with my tags and they really were simple to make!
We began with left over deck boards, I had one cut to 9" and the other to 14". Then the corners were cut off the top 2" to make a point (grrrr). I then used a 1/2" bit to drill hanging holes about 1" from the top in the centre of the point.
I then mixed a white and a brown craft paint together to make an ivory (had I had ivory on hand I would have just used that) and painted the tags on all sides and edges. The lettering was done with the same colours used to make the ivory, I just used a lot more brown and a lot less white.
I wanted something a little nicer than my usual handwriting to dress up the tags so I searched some free fonts and found janda stylish script, I typed out Give Thanks on my computer in landscape in size 205 and printed it out. I placed the pages right-side up on my painted tags and then traced the outside edges of the letters with a sharp pencil (I'm sure a ball point pen would work as well). This left a faint indent on the wood I was able to see well enough to use as a outline to fill in.
Finally I cut a strip of Burlap about 3/4" wide by about 6' long. I folded it in half to make a double layer 'rope' I threaded through the holes and tied a knot in the ends and trimmed the excess to a nice length .
My final step was to put a screw through the back to keep the Give tag from hanging directly in front of the Thanks tag. I just decided where I liked the looks of the overlap and drilled a screw through the back ... and my Thanks tag cracked!!! So, before you throw a screw in, please, take the time to drill a pilot hole!!!!.
So there you go, that's how I decorated my front porch so far this fall. What about you? Do you decorate your front porch/door?
