Spring/Summer Front Stoop 2015

Have you been enjoying your Memorial Day weekend? We have had a busy one, but also productive! We squeezed in time with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, and we also got the third wall in our family room painted, power washed the back deck, and spruced up the front of our house for summer. And that last part is what I am here to share with you today. I think my front stoop for summer might be my favorite so far! So welcome to our spring and summer front stoop!

In an ideal world, we would have a covered front porch with a nice seating area. But for this house, we got a front stoop, so we try to make the most of it, even though it isn’t what we would want for our dream home, maybe the next one… I decided to add a chair to our front stoop this spring because I come out here to watch Mr. 7 Year Old play a lot and I never have anyplace to sit. I love the colors I have going on out here mostly Pink and purple with small touches of red, turquoise, and green.

There is also a new addition to our front stoop this spring- a new light! I will be back later this week with a tutorial for how to change a light fixture. This particular chair was purchased to go on the back deck. I actually purchased five of them to go with a new table we will be getting soon. We bought these at Big Lots for $20 each, and I absolutely love them! They are so comfortable and they are weather resistant wicker. We still need to seal our deck after we power washed it, so this chair will eventually move to the back and will be replaced with a different chair. But I love it out here! I wish I would have bought one more.

I love these chalkboard planter’s we bought! We picked them up at Lowe’s yesterday for $15.98 each, and they already had flowers in them. I thought they would be fun, so on this one below I wrote our street address with a chalk marker. We’ll soon find out how it holds up to the rain. I promised Mr. 7 Year Old that at some point he can draw pictures on them. But the fun part is that they can be changed over and over!

This stoop doesn’t get much shade. It is full sun until around 4:30 or so, so we have had a hard time keeping things alive out here. We tried to be really careful that all of the flowers we bought are for full sun for 6+ hours per day. Wish us luck! I purchased the mat in front of the door at Ikea a couple of summer’s ago. It is looking pretty tired, so I will be on the hunt for a new one, or possibly painting this one something fun.

If you are a regular here, you may have seen my DIY cherry blossom wreath during my spring home tour. I decided it need a little something, so I went out and bought this green polka dotted ribbon and made a cute bow. I think it was the perfect touch!

I am anxious to see how these flowers grow. Hopefully we can keep them healthy!

I wrote welcome on the other chalkboard planter. The guy who was helping us at Lowe’s seemed to be pretty knowledgeable about plants. He told us that when these particular flowers get to looking like they are ready to die, to cut them back about halfway and they would start blooming again for the rest of the summer.

I have had this little table for several years, and it is starting to rust. So I have plans to brush them down with a wire brush and paint the metal this summer.

I have two of these little wooden planters that I bought at Goodwill a couple of years ago. And they have only gotten better by being out in the weather. They say dill on them, so they were for planting dill I guess, but I plant flowers in them. I still think they are cute!

We dug out a bush that had seen much better days and replaced it with a new hydrangea bush. We have been watering it and giving it extra love, and praying for some blooms this summer! LC also mulched all of the landscaping, which we did not do last summer, so it looks so much better out front!

We also purchased this birdbath at Lowes yesterday for $39. LC loved the little gnome, and we thought it would be cute under the tree in our front yard.

I hope you enjoyed touring our front stoop today! As we speak the painted checkerboard floor of our back deck is being refreshed by Mr. 15 Year Old, and then we can put furniture out there for summer. I bought some herb seeds and instead of planting flowers in my pots this year I am going to try growing some fresh herbs that we can use for cooking. I thought they would be both pretty and useful, so we’ll see how it goes! I love to sit out on our back deck because it gets awesome shade in the evenings. We are getting a new table for the lower level, which I mentioned earlier, and I can’t wait to get it all finished so I can show it to you! You can see our front stoop for fall 2014 by clicking here.

Enjoy Memorial Day! We are going to spend this afternoon at the pool for our fist of many this summer.