My Front Door

This year, I decorated up my front door for Christmas. I love crafts, and I love houses that are decorated nicely. However, I have neither the money, or the patience to do so myself. Every time I try, the kids are one step behind me, messing it up, breaking things, or hanging off from things. I've just accepted that it will be another 8 years before I can truly decorate my house. At that point, Gillian, my youngest, will be headed off to college.

Anyway, last week I went to JoAnn's, and found 9 foot pine garland (not the fullest of full, but not bad) for only $1.99. I picked up two with the intentions of decorating my doorway outside.

Today while I was on the phone with my step-mom, I got motivated. I hung it, added ribbon that matches my wreath, and hung ornaments from it. I love how it looks, but I do need to go through and straighten the garland a bit. I only wish I had thought to wrap it with clear lights first. Maybe tomorrow?

Here is the wreath I made last week. I made an all green and silver one for my mom a few weeks ago, and liked it. Then last week, I saw an all silver and pink one, and liked it. I went in to Walmart and took a few minutes to peruse the ornaments. I saw the large, glitter covered pink "Let It Snow", and thought it would be perfect for the wreath. I picked up all pink and silver, then reconsidered, and added green in.

I love how it turned out! I had picked up both lime green and white sheer ribbon, but hated how both looked on it. I had a premade silver bow in the closet that I found for $.29 at Goodwill, so I used that for the bow on this one. I attempted to attach the "Let it Snow" by hot glue on the ends to hold it in place, but if you look close, you can see the spot where it was glued, and came free. Ah well!

Because I went with 3 colors, I had several ornaments of each color left over. When I set about putting the garland up (or, as my 7 year old calls it, "Garlic"), I brought out the left over ornaments, as well as some iridescent icicle ornaments to hang from the garland. I also grabbed the sheer green ribbon I hadn't used for the wreath.

I used light clips to hang the garland. They slid between the frame and siding nice and snug, and each has a clip on it that I slide the wire from the garland under, to clip it into place. There are 3 clips on top, so I could swag it, and 2 clips on each side, to hold it in place.

Once it was hung, I added the bow first, which wasn't long. I only did a simple 2-loop bow in the middle, and barely had enough ribbon to swag and hang over the sides.

From there, I used pipe cleaners to attach the ornaments to the garland. Some flopped badly, so I used the garland pine and wired it around a bit to support the ornaments from underneath to place them better.

I hung the icicles from the top swag, and then took my last pink ornament, a silver ornament, and a green ornament and hung them together, and hung them from the bow in the center.

I really like how it looks, and counting all the small things, I spent $21 for it. $15 for the wreath, with $5 total spent on the garland & icicle ornaments. The ribbon is barely noticeable, but I still like it there.