Summertime Porch Decor – and a Blog Hop!

Hello Peeps!  Today I’ve got a fun little Summertime Porch Decor to share with you.  It involves a bit of crafting, a vintage metal find, an old birdcage, and a bit of paint.  Nothing dramatic or difficult about this, but it gives a bit of fun to our outdoor decor for the summertime months.

To make it fun and exciting, there is a blog hop involved here today too!  I have several blog friends I’ve teemed up with to bring you a ‘Dose of DIY’, and you get loads of DIY fun 🙂  At the end of this post you will find the links to the other bloggers and you can hop on over to see their Summertime Door/Porch decor.

And to make it even MORE fun (can you stand it? 😀 )  We’re doing this blog hop monthly!  So we’ll be bringing you a ‘Dose of DIY’ every month.  The third monday of each month we’ll be here, bringing you a new DIY project.  Next month it will be pillows. (I really don’t know if I can handle that one 😀 heehee!)

I knew our category for our first month of this blog hop was ‘Welcome to Summer Front Door or Porch Decor’ so I was mulling over what to do with my front door – the door we always use and our guests always use.  I put a wreath on it at Christmas most years but the rest of the year I don’t do anything.  I wasn’t coming up with anything that thrilled me or seemed blog worthy, and since I was busy I didn’t send a lot of time pondering it.

Earlier this spring my hubby redid our small porch off our kitchen.  It’s in the front/side of the house and you see it from the road/yard/driveway just like the front porch with what we call the front door.  We use the kitchen door ourselves some but it’s not technically our ‘front door’.  As I was cleaning up the kitchen porch from some of the construction and preparing to add some fun decor I was struck with an idea that I loved and decided it would be my project for this blog hop.

I found this old metal time card holder at a garage sale last year for $2.  I gleefully scooped it up because I loved the color and vintage metal stuff always sells well at pop-up shop events and flea markets.  But then I could never bring myself to take it anywhere and put a price tag on it.  I really liked it but didn’t know how to use it.  But neither could I get rid of it.  The fact that my hubby liked it pretty well too, and that it was small, made it easy to keep hoarding it.

And now I’m very glad I did!  There was already a nail on the porch wall, and this had a nail slot in the back so hanging it took all of 1.5 minutes, including my dash to the back porch to dig it out of the pile.

I hung it on the porch wall and then thought about it for a few days – I knew I was going to add some time-card-looking things to it, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted them to say.  I’ve had these vintage seamstress work order sheets for awhile – a friend gave them to me a few years ago.  I also have the long card that says ‘patchwork’, also from a friend, that was the perfect size and shape for the time card holder.  I used the ‘patchwork’ card as a pattern and cut 5 pieces from the larger sheets, each one from a different area so they are all a mix of pattern.  Then I used a fine point Sharpie marker to write a word on each card.

This house serves the…

…LORD.

It looked a bit plain with just the cards so I added ribbons to each card.

And then tied ribbons around the bottom of the card holder.

And then added the dried flowers I’ve had in my decor stash for a couple years.

See how decor builds?  You start with on item that piques your interest and gets the creative juices flowing.  And you add to it as you go – this was all stuff I already had on hand, and all of it I’d had for a year or more.

The chippy, aqua chair was a garage sale find from last year too.  I have 2 more and they just might go to my next even with me at Avon Lake.  The bird cage and cage holder were both last years garage sale finds too.  

And the door.  My front door got a new coat of paint last year.  You can see it here.

This weekend as I was finishing up arranging everything here I kept telling myself I really should get this door painted.  I meant to paint all my exterior doors last summer when I did the front door.  But I never got to it.  So I finally convinced myself to just get the paint out and get it done.  And you know what?  It didn’t even take me an hour to put two coats of paint on the door and the storm door.  I’m so glad I did.  I really like it.

I know the paint on the siding is peeling.  I know that window needs replaced.  I know the outside of our house still looks rather shabby, but the new porch helped immensely and slowly we are getting there.  New siding is on our radar – it just costs a LOT of money and we keep putting it off.  We have a furnace now.  We have central a/c now.  The inside of the house has tons of updating and looks quite nice when it’s clean and tidy.  The outside will catch up someday 🙂

This little wooden planter box.  I. Am. In. Love.  My 9yo made this.  MADE THIS!  With a hammer and nails and just a bit of help and instruction from her dad.  She was so determined.  She wanted to make a box out of scraps.  So she drew lines where it needed to be cut and asked her dad to cut them on the table saw. So he did.  Somehow when your 9yo asks for stuff like this it doesn’t matter how busy you are, you take time to help her out.  Then he went on to pre-drill some holes for her so she’d have an easier time nailing.  And VOILA!  she made a box.  Then she wasn’t sure what to do with it.  I suggested she could plant some of my leftover plants from my earlier event in it.  She liked that idea so we did.  And she was thrilled that I wanted it on my porch.  I love some plants on the porches – if I can remember to keep them watered.

You can see how this porch looked a couple years ago when I did my Rusty Fence Project.

I still love that rusty fence and I still have the fencing and the pots I used.  They all had to come down when the new porch was installed and my hubby wasn’t overly thrilled with the idea of putting it back.  But the stuff is still around and I just might find another spot to put it next spring.

 The porch still doesn’t have steps installed yet – when those get put in I’ll share what we are doing for the steps and a pic of more of the house – and show you how, even though the house is in dire need of new siding, the new porch really makes it look cute.

And NOW it’s time for you to hop on over and see even more great ideas for front door or porch decor!  

These gals all have some great stuff to share 🙂

Jill

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