Front Porch Fall Decor

 It's Friday!!! 

Yay for 3-day-weekends, and yay for football season kicking off. 

We have a busy weekend ahead of us with lots of food, friends and football. But before all of my guests arrive, I have a long list of to-do's. 

I can check the front porch off the list though. It's done. For now at least. 

We have a tiny front porch...I'm not even sure you could really call it a front porch. It's more of a pass through. 

It's not big enough to have big beautiful displays like the front porches below:

 source unknown

source unknown

However, it looks barren when nothing is there. 

Everything has to be small in scale when decorating this porch because I want my guests to feel welcome at the front door, not claustrophobic.  

I couldn't really get a good full scale picture of the porch. The brick wall kind of takes up the picture, but in person it's much more inviting...I promise:o)

And, yes, I did just water the plants before taking the shot. It looks like my pumpkins got a little excited;o) Guess this photo won't make it to Pinterest;o)

The mums really make the bench pop, and keep it from blending in with the massive boring brick wall behind it.

To try to keep things symmetrical, I brought a small teak chair from the backyard, and used it as a plant holder. The old granite ware pitcher has holes in the bottom of it, so it makes a perfect planter now.

I will most likely be adding more pumpkins and a possible mini hay bale, but that's where I will have to be patient. The pumpkins aren't quite ready, and we'll have plenty of pumpkin farm field trips to collect those:o)

Partying Here:

Engagement Party

This past weekend, I had the honor of helping put together an engagement party for a very sweet friend's nephew. It wasn't supposed to be at her house originally, so when I got the call, we had to put all crafty gears into over drive.

I had her email me a few pictures of things she wanted to see at the party and ran with it.

I'll provide some of the details, but I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking.

This little sign was at the base of the stairs as you walked up to the front porch. It's made of balsa wood. The sign was stained and hand painted with their names and the date of their wedding.

 In the front entrance, there was an heirloom Bible for guests to sign or highlight their favorite verse along with photos of the bride and groom when they were children.

The gift table

Aren't the flower arrangements beautiful? I love hydrangeas and blue mason jars...you can never go wrong with either of those:o)

There was additional seating outside.

 Here are the center pieces for the tables. Battery operated votives and tea lights were life savers for this outdoor affair.

This was the drink station. I thought it was pretty lucky that we share the same last initial...The mother of the groom made the little flags for the paper straws. I wish I had taken a closer shot of them. They were adorable. 

I had a lot of helpers in putting this together, and it wouldn't have happened without all of their help. 

I was so grateful to be apart of making this sweet little couple feel extra special and I wish them great joy and happiness in the years ahead! 

Milk Can Table

Last weekend I got a wild hair and decided to tackle a ton of projects that have been sitting in our garage for MONTHS. The hubs was getting a little flustered with all of the junk stacked up in there, so I finally bit the bullet and got down to business.

My mother gave me this milk can who knows how long ago;o). It belonged to one of her friends, and had been painted a taupe color. For the longest time I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, but after wandering thru Lowes the other day, I knew it had to be a table:o)

The table top was around $17...a little more than I would normally pay for something, but I needed the 24" round top so it would look proportional. I used one coat of primer and 2 coats of Cherry Red by Krylon for the paint. Because the top of the milk can was such an odd shape with concave and convex curves, nailing or screwing the table top down wasn't an option. So I decided that liquid nails was the way to go.

Here it is nested between our two chairs:o)

Isn't it so sweet?:o)

Here is the other side of the seating area.

The seat cushions came from Old Time Pottery. The swing was shorter than the cushion, so I wacked the ends off and stitched it back up

Other Projects we have going on around here: 

Here is our BIG work in progress...the hubs has been busy working to create privacy off the back patio. This is Stage 1. 

He has done a FANTASTIC job!

 The side of the house

My container garden:o)

can't wait to "harvest" these veggies!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday!

Participating in:

75th Power of Paint Party