Our Christmas Front Porch

I wanted to share our Christmas front porch earlier than this but it has been so cold lately, we have been staying inside a lot.  I heard someone say recently, “When I go outside the air hurts my face, why do I live somewhere where the air hurts my face?”  Lol.  That is what I have been thinking too.  I am thinking another Disney trip to Florida sounds great right now.  Who is with me?  🙂

Our front porch decorations are pretty simple but cute.  We found a vintage sled at an antique store, which pretty much stays on the front porch all winter.  I gave the swag on the sled a makeover this year with some new buffalo plaid ribbon and some rustic jingle bells.  The buffalo plaid matches the theme inside the house, and I wanted to continue it outside.  

The tree in the crock is actually the top from an old Christmas tree!  It works great as a mini tree for decorating.  By the way, I don’t leave the crock out in the really cold weather as I don’t want it to crack.

I love skiing and using skis as winter decorations is such a fabulous idea!  I really want to get some antique wooden ones but have not found any yet.  My mother-in-law found these vintage skis for us and they work great for the time being.  I thought about painting them, but the colors worked with my theme this year so we left them as they are.

We have plans to update the outside of the house this summer.  New shutters, garage door makeovers and new (or painted) door handles are some of the things on the list.  That will be nice to get rid of the 1990’s brass and give the house better curb appeal.

For our front door, I made a simple 2 Christmas minute wreath.  Seriously, it took me 2 minutes to put it together!  Now that is a project I like.  🙂  Click the link above for the tutorial.  Of course it also fits into the buffalo plaid theme.

This ceramic planter was a homemade Christmas gift given to me for our front porch.  We used to do a homemade gift exchange on my mom’s side but unfortunately do not anymore, due to some of the family members being too busy.  It was such a fun way to do gifts and I highly suggest others to try it.  It is so fun and rewarding to give away a gift you have made yourself.

I love the color of the planter, and we have since painted our door red which matches it very well.  It originally came with some evergreen branches in it but those of course died after the first winter.  I replaced them with some live branches again the second year and was a little lazy about changing them out in the spring.  One day we saw a bird flying into the planter.  Turns out it was a mama bird and she had made a nest and laid two eggs in it.  As you can see in the picture we have a little window right by the planter so that whole spring we watched and waited for the eggs to hatch.  Finally they did and we got to see the baby birds grow up with a front row seat.  It was one of the coolest things ever!  🙂

After a while the baby birds were gone, growing big enough to fly away I suppose.  Not too long after that, two more eggs showed up in the nest again.  So we got to see the whole process again.  It is something I will never forget.  Unfortunately it has not happened again since that year, and this year I just decided to use some artificial branches in it.  I think they will look better through the whole winter.  I added some pine cones and ornaments for Christmas.  

Well that is it, short and sweet.  I would love to have some big wrap around porch with rocking chairs, but we have to be appreciative and work with what we have.  🙂  How about you, do you decorate your porch for Christmas?

Kimberly