Family Room & Front Porch Christmas Trees

Here's the family room Christmas tree:

I added the red snow flakes this year.  Other than that it's about the same as last year.

The front porch is pretty much the same as last year as well.

Christmas Front Porch 2014

Over the past few days I've been working on decorating the front porch.   I think I like the way it is now.  The whole red & white came from the candy cane decorations that were my moms.  I decided to use those on the front porch then work around it.

I spray painted the flower pot white to put the tree in.  I also spray painted white the 2 hanging stars and the reindeer .

Click HERE to see how I made the joy sign.

The ornaments on the wreath I just spray painted.  I think some were gold & some were blue so I spray painted those white & red.

Here it is from last year 2013

 and 2014

Here's the front porch from last year:

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Deck Table

Thursday and Friday I worked on making a table for our deck.  I'm so happy it's done.  It's so much nicer than using the old plastic table we had.   We don't use the deck too often to eat dinner on just because it's hot in the full sun with no shade.  Now all we need to get is a tilting umbrella....one of these days! :)

I started with some 4x4 posts to make 4 legs.  The table top is 2x8 pine boards.  I bought 5 that were 8 foot long.  I only lightly sanded them I didn't plane them down or join the edges this time like I did with my dining room table.  I also didn't glue & pocket screw them together.  This time I just used 3 pieces of scrap wood to screw them all together.

Before putting the table together I stained all the parts with Minwax dark walnut stain then put on 2 coats of Helmsman exterior poly.

The aprons were 2x4s that I ripped down to about 3" and then planed them down so they weren't as rough.  I used pocket screws on them.  The short ends are 27" and the long ends were 87 1/2 inches.  I held the 4x4s in about an inch from the edge of the table top then held the aprons in 2 inches from the edge.  I pocket screwed the apron to the table top then pocket screwed the apron ends to the legs.

Here's the table on the deck.

Exterior House Colors

We are trying to decide on stain colors for the outside of the house.  We have cedar siding that we put on and we clear coated.  The clear coat has long since started to wear off.

We are considering gray and green for the colors.
How the house looks now:

I'm not the greatest at editing photos but this gave us an idea on how it might look.

Here's what the garage side would look like:

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Christmas Porch 2013

I finally plugged in all the lights last night.  I haven't been feeling well this past week and ended up in the ER with a gallbladder attack on Saturday night/ Sunday morning.  I spent 8 hours there.  I've been dealing with this for 2ish years now.  I normally have an attack about every 3 months or so but since July it's really picked up and then this past week I had 4 attacks.  I had 2 small not so bad ones during the week then I had one that was pretty darn bad around 3am Saturday morning then had moderate pain for the rest of the day then at about 9pm I started to hurt really bad and it wasn't going away so we headed to the er around 11pm.  I have a follow up with the gastro surgeon on Monday. So we'll see what they want to do. In the Er they talked about removing my gallbladder but the OR was booked so they sent me home and said it wasn't an emergency.  Now I'm dealing with the pain and a low grade fever.  I'm so done with this!!

On to the front porch!

The wreath was green with gold leaves on it when I bought it a few years back.  I have since spray painted it silver, put some red glitter on some areas of it, added the decorations, ribbons & lights.

This is what it looked like before I changed it:

 Source

Here are the snowflake lights hanging in the front yard:

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Joy Sign

So last year I made a Joy sign for the front porch by cutting out letters with the cricut using the Winnie The Pooh cartridge.  I mod podged the letters on but after being outside for the Christmas season it didn't hold up very well.  The letters started to peel off.

So I took the board and gave the back side a fresh coat of white paint. Cut out  new letters and used adhesive spray to attach then spray painted the board red.  If I had vinyl I would use that instead.  I'm sure that would have less bleed through under the letters.  Mine did bleed through some so I went back and touched up the white paint.

After the paint was dry I placed in on the front porch.

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House Numbers

About 6 years ago, maybe longer than that, I painted our house number on a rock that faces the driveway by our garage.  It was fading badly and I could no longer stand the colors. 

Before:

On Sunday I repainted it and cleaned out the rock area in front of it.  Just like last time I used the craft acrylic paint, let it dry then sprayed an exterior clear coat over it. 

After I finished with that I got my ladder and attached some house numbers onto the front porch.

 

While I was cleaning out the closet by the front door my 12 year son found some of the Halloween decorations and decided it was time to put them outside.  He hung them up even though I suggested we wait at least until October 1st! :)

Dressing Up The Front Door

I bought a door knocker at the beginning of summer from Lowe's.  It sat and sat because I was a little nervous about drilling a hole through the door by myself.  What if I messed it up??  I got fed up of waiting on hubby to drill 2 holes for me so I decided to do it myself.   I measured where I needed the holes and marked the door and drilled and hoped for the best!  It was easy and it worked!

The kick plate was so easy. I held it up to the door, centered it and used 2 pieces of painters tape to hold it in place while I drilled holes and screwed it in.  After that was done I took out some leftover door stain and touched up some scratches on the door.

This is how it looked last week after I cleaned off the porch. 

Now it has a door knocker and kick plate.  We stopped at Home Depot to get the kick plate yesterday.  My 9 year old asked me if that meant he could just kick the door when ever he wanted to now.  I hope he was just joking when he asked me that!!

 

The dressed up door:

I'm not sure if I ever included a close up of Mr. Rooster.  I love him!  

I found him at the Tractor Supply store.

The porch and front door have come along way since we moved in!  Hubby did the new door, siding, roof and windows between 2004 to 2006.

Front Porch

This morning I decided our front porch needed a good scrubbing.  There was  a lot of dirt, pollen, dust, leaves etc all over the place.  I pulled all the furniture off it and got out my simple green cleaner, bucket, scrub brush and hose.  I didn't take a picture of the dirty mess!

But I do have a picture of what our house looked like when we moved in!  Dark dark dark cedar siding, brown roof, brown windows.  We moved into the house right after Christmas in  2000. 

Here's what it looked like back then.

Since then hubby has done a LOT of work on the exterior of the house.  He resided it, reroofed it, installed new windows and doors.  He redid some of the front porch, built a deck,  We ripped out all the shrubbery in front of the house.  He also made the front porch furniture.

In the picture above are my oldest 2 boys.  I can't believe Noah is going to be 16 on the 2nd and Matthew will be 15 on the 21st!!

Today before it got to hot out, the heat and I don't get along very well, I decided to clean off the front porch.   I had a little help (hose fight) from Dozer and he wore himself out.

Here's a picture from Fall of 2010.