A Simple Christmas Porch

This afternoon I snapped just a few photos of our pretty new porch,

 decorated very simply for Christmas time.

We bought those black urns at Lowe’s this past summer,

+ of course, at the time,

I was already dreaming of how pretty they would look at Christmas.

They look like cast iron but are actually made from old tires,

which means they are lightweight + are supposed to be durable enough

to make it throughout the cold winter months.

Each window in our house has a single electric candle,

which is one of my favorite things to do.

I think it is so quaint, especially in a 2-story house like ours

(+ this one, below:)

We hung some artificial garland made of mixed greens,

including some blue spruce,

which coordinates divinely with our blue spruce topiary.

Yes, I know this Dachshund is tacky, but how could I resist so much cuteness?

She’s standing in front of my seats from the old Busch Stadium in St. Louis.

I bought that ginormous wreath at a garage sale one warm summer day.

It’s hard to tell in this photo, but those are big, retro red bulbs.

Yes, I use a lot of red in our house, which is especially festive at Christmas time.

Did I share a photo of our new mailbox?

Look!  Yet another Dachshund — a boot  scraper, actually,

which I placed next to some old, red boots I bought at a vintage store.

This may or may not be the final version of our Christmas porch,

but whatever — I am going to keep things simple, with red + greens.

Our Pretty Stone Pathway

Since I last blogged about the Dutch colonial,

there’s been unbelievable progress, out front!

Let’s remember the sad before, a few weeks after we bought the house:

Here’s a look at the midway:

And as it looks today, the ‘almost’ after:

WOW.

I think I’ll just share bits of it at a time, in small doses.

Let’s start with our new stone pathway

which transitions between the new brick sidewalk + our side yard.

Here’s a glimpse of it, as one approaches the house:

We went shopping at a nearby landscaping place + looked at stone,

+ we bought 3 large slabs of limestone.

G.O. brought out his trusty 4″ angle grinder with a masonry blade, as one does,

+ cut the slabs into smaller, stepping stone friendly pieces:

We had scooped out a shallow trough for the stones.

Once we decided we liked their arrangement,

we put a layer of ordinary play sand underneath each stone:

Funny story.

He grabbed some bags of said play sand at the garden center,

not realizing until he got home that one of the bags contained purple sand!

Who knew?  Crayola makes colored play sand!

In his defense, he said he thought the bag was purple!  HA!

Look!  It’s Chloe the Dachshund!

 

I’m love the gentle curve of the stones,

because I think curves in the landscaping are beautiful + visually pleasing.

Now it’s time to discuss all those beautiful plants!

After weeks + weeks of indecision,

I knew this side of the porch needed a topiary

I remembered seeing some blue spruce topiaries at Home Depot,

+ since I am a huge fan of the blue spruce any-thing, off we went.

Over G.O.’s very strong objections.  Of course.

But people.  COME ON.

Nailed it!!!

Those spiky, grassy plants underneath are ‘Lucerne’ Blue-Eyed Grass,

which have small, bright purple-blue flowers in Spring through early Summer.

Nearby, we planted some silvery-white Artemisia,

as I wanted to repeat the silvery blue needles of our topiary.

Those are going to look great, once they fill in.

Since white flowers also complement silvery foliage,

we planted these cuties along the curve of the stone pathway.

Rapido White Bellflowers:

We repeated these sweet small rose plants on both sides of the pathway,

as I wanted to visually tie that area together.

The green + burgundy Purple Palace Coral Bells

are repeated from the opposite side of the porch,

to once again, tie the whole front foundation plantings together,

from 1 side of the house to the other.

The Coral Bells were planted to accent the 2 curves in this bed —

both the stone pathway . . .

. . . + the curve where this bed meets the lawn (+ the new grass!), out front:

Disclaimer:  everything is going to look so much better with dark brown mulch!

I ordered nearly $80 worth of Spring-flowering bulbs

a couple weeks ago, + I want to plant them before the mulch goes in.

Stay tuned!