Don’t Forget the Door
Ideas for decorating your front porch for the holidays are endless - from rustic to formal to traditional. There is something for everyone.
It’s almost Christmas and I can’t let it go by without a post on the front porch. Although I don’t actually have a post on my front porch to decorate. I did on my last house, lots of them. I had this big covered front porch that extended the length of my house and I could wrap the columns in garland, hang garland and wreaths along the railings, and put out all my decorations. This year I had to be selective and just pick my favorites because my porch is much smaller, but big enough to make it welcoming.
First let’s talk about options. If you don’t really have a porch, or you just want to keep it simple, you could just put a wreath on the front door. Talk about options here - wreaths come in all different varieties, colors, materials, etc. You can go traditional, farmhouse, simple, formal, fancy, glam, plain, lighted, unlighted, or pair it with some garland around the door. Just a little something that cheers up your visitors, the carolers, or even the amazon drivers that will be stopping by every few days during the holidays.
If you want to do more than a wreath, topiaries are a popular decor item. Here is a blog on how to DIY it if this is your style.
Here are some porches decorated with just greenery:
You can go formal:
or rustic:
Saved from crateandbarrel.com
Lanterns are always fun and easy and can be filled with more than just the traditional candle.
Image saved from Pinterest
Here’s a simple and tasteful idea:
Image saved from apartmenttherapy.com
This one has a rustic feel done with wood cutouts:
Image saved from countrydoor.com
Maybe you are lucky enough to have a big front porch with seating. You can change out your decor and pillows to fit the season. The fake snow in this first one is a nice touch I might try since we rarely get a white Christmas.
Whatever your taste there are endless possibilities. Google it, look it up on Pinterest, or just use your imagination. Grab some greenery, ribbon and something wintery and see what you come up with.
This year I just pulled out what I had from the years before - the two small trees I’ve had for literally 20 years, and the sled I got off the side of the road when we lived in Germany 23 years ago on “junking day” when people put there unwanted items out for the trash. I’ve had the wreath longer than I can remember, and the taller tree was on my neighbors curb with a free sign on it. (Hey - I’m not proud - there was nothing wrong with it and better my house than a landfill, right?) I added some ribbon, and picked up the bird house the other day on Hobby Lobby’s 66% off sale and added it to the mix because odd numbers are always better and it helped balance out the bigger, heavier tree on the other side. Now I think I’ll post this and go cut the tag off my birdhouse. I just noticed it in the picture.
My Porch Christmas 2021
Why Decorate When No One Else Sees?
Today I’m going to share with you a little hallway that comes in from my garage. But first I have to whine. Just a little bit. Due to the fact that I have never had a mudroom, or even a decent back entrance, my six kids have spent their lives coming in through the front door and dropping everything right there - by the door, or in my living room, or on the stairs - depending on where we lived. I would nag at them to put it all away and because they weren’t afraid of me or my nagging, we would have piles of shoes, because of course they never wore the same shoes twice in a row, or put the ones from yesterday or last week away in their closets, and it was a constant irritation. (I have a friend who can just look at her kids and they hop right to it or stop whatever it is they are doing. I was not blessed with that motherly gift and if I tried to give my kids a “look” they would laugh at me.)
I tried in our last house having them come through the garage, and I set up little cubbies for them and it worked for a little while, but because we didn’t have a lot of storage space in the house, the garage became that place and so they had a hard time navigating their way through the obstacle course that was our garage and soon started using the front door anyway. I was going to solve this in our new build by having an awesome mudroom with its own front entrance with little cubbies for their backpacks and shelves for their shoes, but since I didn’t get to build after all, I now have a side entrance into my laundry room with room for some hooks and a bench. But I also have lots of storage in this house and a detached garage for my husbands projects, so we actually get to park in the attached garage, so those little cubbies are actually accessible just before they come in the house from the car.
So just inside the door from my garage I have this little hallway with a closet. It’s a perfect place to hang our keys and to put a bench where we can sit to put on our shoes. Between the side entrance and the garage, we never come in the front door and I never have shoes and backpacks in my living room. Happy day! I came across a blog post that I had saved a while ago where someone had done a super cute entrance and the idea was perfect for this hall.
Inspiration from mindfullygray.com
I fell in love with the color I painted my upstairs bathroom and decided to use it again for the lower half of the wall. Of course I painted all my wood trim white like the rest of the house. Then I stained a 1x6 to match my closet doors and hung it with some hooks for jackets and purses.
About 20 years ago we lived in a house in Germany with a big picture window that looked out onto a field with some fruit trees and hills in the background. It was gorgeous in every season, with the flowering trees in the spring, the fall foliage, and then the sparkling ice hanging from the tree branches in winter. I have pictures from that window from all four seasons and I’ve always wanted to do something with them so I framed them and hung them above the hooks. They aren’t professional photographs by any means, and they are from the days before digital when you took a picture and then six months later took your film in to be developed and crossed your fingers that some of the pictures turned out ok, but they are meaningful to us and they are hanging in a back hallway so they work here. In one of them my two oldest girls are standing in the field when they were little, which makes it even more nostalgic.
Here you can see my “four seasons” photographs. It’s a narrow space so it was hard to get a good view. I also found a rustic bench and I used dark bronze coat and key hooks.
I decided to go a little more rustic here since this is a back entry into the garage. I took down the old generic light fixture and added a dark bronze lantern to match the finish on the hooks. It just felt like a great place for a lantern. My lower wall is Benjamin Moore’s Dartsmouth Green 691, and the rest of the walls are Ballet White OC-9. Ballet White is a light beige with a green undertone and a high LRV so it brightens things up and goes really well with all the green in this room. This may not be a highly visible room in my house, but it’s now a little bright spot that brings some joy as I come and go throughout my day.