$35 Front Porch Make-over for Christmas

Flipping through the decorating magazines this time of year, who isn’t motivated to spruce up a tired Christmas theme?  But like so many of us, budget is a large factor.   This year, I found myself attracted to the natural urn displays with tree sprigs and a few decorations for the pop of colour.  I also decided to switch out my tired door wreath for a decorated swag.

I went to the local grocery stores, box and home supply stores and could not find prices I was willing or able to pay.  The cheapest I could find, at a quality I wanted - $59 for a decorated swag and $40 for an urn display.  “I must be able to do better than that”, I told myself, and better I did.

• $15 for a basic, undecorated swag at Home Depot,
• $17 for a container of ornaments at Walmart,
• $8 for reindeer bells, ribbon and a few larger ornaments at the Dollaramma, and
• Some items I already had around the house; glue gun and sticks (wood chop-sticks and wood meat-kabob sticks), twist ties, and plant sheers.

I started with the urn.  Why would I pay $40 for springs and twigs when I already have bushes and trees in my yard that could use a fall trim?  I clipped and constructed as follows:

1. Empty old fall content from urns.
2. Collect two small planters, with leftover dirt from summer, to ground the new display.
3. Cut one multi-sprig branch from a bush for each urn centerpiece.
4. Cut many sprigs of pine/fern style bushes and trees – using the smaller/flatter ones for the first perimeter to fall over the edges of the urn.  The second type should be hardier and stand straight, once pushed into the dirt.
5. Lastly, pick three decorative balls.  Hot glue a stick to each ball and stick into the dirt, amongst the sprigs of pine/fern (in my case, cedar and juniper sprigs).

10 minutes total preparation time.

Voila – a beautiful, natural display that cost less than $5.

The decorated door swag took a little longer but turned out much nicer than the store displays.  I used decorations from the same set purchased for the urns, to tie the look together.  Instead of $59 for the store-bought version, this luxurious swag cost $30.

1.  Lay out swag with ribbon and ornaments to get a sense of the look you like, before pieces are affixed.
2. Attach bells first to the bottom the swag.
3. Weave ribbon from front to back, leaving large loops at the front for a fuller swag.
4. Lastly, attach balls with twist ties, in a repeated ‘S’ pattern, from the bells at the bottom to the larger bow at top, careful to rotate the colour and texture of balls used.

10 minutes total preparation time.

If you are ‘doing the math’ on supplies compared to the cost attributed for each project, you are quite right that it does not add up, yet it IS accurate.  A number of Christmas balls were left-over and deducted from the cost of the projects.  The remaining decorations will be used throughout the house on the indoor tree and garland to tie the outside displays to the inside décor. 

I am very happy with this project and so excited to complete the rest of the Christmas decorating.  For a total of $35 and one hour of my preparation time, I was able to update my entire holiday theme – now that is a great budget saver AND eco-friendly.  No branches or sprigs were cut that didn’t already need trimming this fall. 

Please share your great ideas for cost cutting projects!!! I will be back for more of the heavy lifting, in the coming weeks.

Happy Holidays!!!