Front Porch Makeover

We bought our house almost a year ago now. I LOVE almost everything about the house...ALMOST. One thing that I really hated about the house was it's curb appeal. The inside was AMAZING, a true diamond in the rough but the outside was seriously the beast of our beauty. The outside has a desert landscape which really bugged me. I am from Texas were the grass grows green so to have desert landscape was a real bummer for me. However this is not going to change and I have learned to love it and it's benefits of low maintenance. We also HATE the color of the house. It's a plain white stucco with a grey colored roof. Here in St. George a white stucco house doesnt stay white for long because of the red dirt and sand. The lower half of the house starts to turn a burnt orange. Our plan has been to paint the outside of the house and add some rock to the bottom half of the house but that will take a lot of time, money and energy so to help my curb appeal problem I started with the simplest project, the front porch. I am amazed at the difference it has made! My house is so much more inviting now! Here is my before picture.

Oh, this is so sad. How ugly is my door?!?! This was actually the second time I have paint my door. The first time I did it a yellow and navy blue....total FAIL! I am sure my neighbors thought my door was the eye sore of the neighborhood! Even the paint on the door frame is ugly and chipping off!

Here is my after picture

 

I chose a Clark Kensington Santorini blue, a Mark Twain house yellow and a good old plain white for my color scheme. I made my wreath from a wreath bought at a garage sale for $1 and some greenery bought on a Walmart clearance for .60 cents a stem. 

 I used about 15 stems and wired them on with craft wire. I had a good friend cut out our last name in vinyl and use some white scraps of fabric to make the fabric flowers on the sign next to our name. The total cost of my wreath was $10 dollars.

I also finally got my front porch bench made! Does anyone remember when I bought this little twin headboard for $3 dollars at a garage sale?

Well here she is now!

I will have a tutorial on how we made the bench later this week!

I also used this awesome frame my mom found at a garage sale for $3 dollars. I painted a thin white piece of wood and went at bought some stencils letters and numbers from Lowes to have a piece of stenciled art to go in the center of my frame.

 I also made my first pillows!!!

I used a white canvas for both of these pillows. For the one with the yellow flower I cut a 4 inch strip of fabric and painted it yellow. From there I followed a tutorial I found HERE to make the rest of the flower. For the small pillow with the F, I found an F I liked online drew it on paper cut it out and then traced it straight on my pillow. You can also just print out the letter you want and trace it on there but my printer is broken!

Here is what I used to decorate the left side of my porch.

The pot I bought at a garage sale for $3 dollars. I really didn't want to put real flowers in it because I discovered that I have a black thumb and can't keep anything alive so I placed a large moss ball that was used at the wedding inside. The box that my pot is sitting on was also bought at a garage sale. I can't remember how much I spent on it but it was only a few dollars Here is what it looked like before

And After!

 

I love seeing my front porch every time I drive up in my drive way! It make such a difference about how I feel about the outside of our house! I have also been getting compliments from the neighbors already!