When you want to feel patriotic, there is no better way than to decorate your house! Am I right? Whether you are decorating for Memorial Day, 4th of July, or Labor Day, these super simple decorating ideas are very easy!
Each year for the summer holidays, I typically start decorating either Memorial Day or July 4th weekend and keep it up until school starts, or Labor Day.
For the fireplace mantel, I’ll stick random things here and there. I have a red/white/blue candle holder that has nothing in them, use them strictly for the color scheme. A white wooden liberty sign, that I think I got at Hobby Lobby awhile back. Stick a few American flags in the fake flowers, and the USA banner taped to the mantel.
In our downstairs bathroom, the only patriotic decor I have is this Home of the Brave sign. I do have red, white, and blue hand towels somewhere just haven’t gotten those out yet.
Our little letterboard sign in the kitchen gets changed out pretty often, it’ll get changed for the next event or whatever comes up next. Whatever warrants something cool to say! haha
Patriotic towels on the oven from your local Kroger.
In the dining room bar cart, I have some plastic cups that say, “hooray USA” and “stars and stripes”. I filled them with paper straws and some patriotic taffy.
For the dining room table, all I did was put a plastic American flag tablecloth on and that’s it!
It’s very easy to decorate for holidays, with little time and on a budget. Some items I’ll save throughout the years and some things I’ll pick up when it’s on sale or a good deal. I love decorating for all the seasons!
If you have been around the blog for a while, then you’ll remember how we totally re-did our front yard last year! If you are new here, you can check out the entire process on this post.
We are so happy everything is still alive and kicking a year later! All the perennials we originally planted are doing great a year later. We were a little unsure how it was going to turn out after a year, but glad to say all is good.
The green flowers on the outer edge are hydrangea tiny tuff stuff, they are so green and full right now. Some of them are starting to bloom little pink hydrangeas, but mainly just the green leaves are all that you see right now.
These are a mix of vinca and impatiens this year, because the garden center did not have many vincas this year. I went with impatiens to go with them, which I have to say I’m not a huge fan of, but they’ll work for this year. The vincas are made to be in the sun, which is what this area of the yard gets lots of.
These yellow bushes are called spirea double play candy corn, which I’m still not sure of what they are supposed to look like. Last year, we didn’t have any of the purple/pink blooms so I’m guessing that’s the look? Not sure, but I still like them!
In this area are the mixture of vincas and impatiens, along with the boxwood that we kept from the original owners. The little tree in the back is called styrax snowcone, it has white blooms in the beginning of spring and then it turns to green leaves. The other green bushes are holly bushes, they are the lowest maintenance bushes along with the boxwood. All you have to really do is trim them.
Our big hydrangea bushes! This baby bloomed major last year, and this year nothing. We have one in the front yard by the front door, and another one on the other side of the garage.
The hostas are doing great, they look so fresh and crisp this year!
The front porch isn’t finished just yet, I still want to get a new rug and door mat, but the flowers are done for the most part. I had more last year which made the porch look fuller. It’s okay though, it still looks better than a bare porch in the dead of winter!
These hanging baskets are the death of me, I can never keep them alive all summer! I know they like tons of water, but I always seem to fail at these. So far, this one is doing good. We’ll see by the end of September how she’s doing again haha
The front yard will always be a labor of love for us. Kevin loves to keep the grass looking nice, and I love to keep the flowers looking nice. It’s a win win! So happy with how our front yard turned out!
I’ve always loved whitewashed brick! So much we whitewashed our fireplace!
We knew we wanted to paint our fireplace when we moved in, just took three years to do it! I’m not a huge fan of the red brick which is what most traditional fireplaces are nowadays. We headed to Home Depot and bought some brick paint and went to town.
Before we moved in, this is what the fireplace looked like. Look at little Hadley on the side, she was four years old here. This was a day when we were looking at the house, thinking about buying it, and all of the items seen here are from the previous owners.
Here is another view of the fireplace, after we put a few of our own things on it. As you can see, there is no TV or much at all in this room as we were literally moving in.
Here is my husband starting to paint the fireplace. All we did was tape up the mantle, the fireplace opening, and the sides along the wall paint. I can’t find the exact paint, but a very similar one is called Behr White Flat Masonry Stucco and Brick Paint. Kevin started painting, and I went behind him and filled in the grout parts. You can make it look super white, or very faint so you can still see some of the brick come through. We liked the look of still seeing the brick through the paint.
Here is the finished product! We are so in love with how the white looks, versus the old red brick. I’ve had so many people ask if we are going to paint the trim and mantle white also. My answer is always no, I love how it looks with the trim showing the wood.
The whitewash makes the room so much brighter! The red brick made the room look so dark! Such a small project can have huge effects on a room. Go paint that wall or change up whatever in your home. Small changes can make a difference!
I love to decorate for all the seasons and holidays. Easter is one where I don’t have many decorations, but the ones I do have are super cute!
The fireplace is always the center of decorations in our house. I love to put little things here and there on the mantel, and hang banners and things.
I’ve had the bunny banner for so long now, I don’t remember where it’s from. My guess is Target, or Hobby Lobby. Wherever it’s from, it’s lasted a long time.
Next to the fireplace, we’ve started to accumulate board games / toys in the wooden crate. I stuck the wooden Easter bunny on top of the crate for some additional decor by the fireplace.
In the corner cabinet in our kitchen, I placed a small bunny to give it an Easter vibe.
In the bathroom, I like to switch out some of the things on the shelves. And I always change out the hand towels for each holiday / season.
Love to decorate for the seasons! Easter is only a few short days away. Nothing like decorating at the lats minute this year. #newbornlife
We have lived in our home for almost three years now. When we first moved in, the front yard was super plain and no color. The yard consisted of lots of pine trees, boxwood bushes, and a ginormous ivy like bush. Don’t get me wrong, it was super low maintenance and all we had to do was trim some of it down occasionally. My husband and I wanted lots and lots of color, flowers, etc. Well, after almost three years, we finally got the front yard we’ve always wanted!
The before photo above was taken about a year ago, look at those huge pine trees, all the shrubbery by the front porch, and the gigantic bush on the side of the garage. You can barely see the house!
The after photo above is our dream front yard! It looks amazing! No more pine trees, and all those pine needles that fall into the mulch. And all of that shrubbery that was blocking the house is gone. It opens up the house soo much!
It took a lot of work to get the yard where it is now. We dug all of the old stuff out by hand, we had some helpers which made it easier. But it took lots and lots of work digging up thirty year old roots, and trust me when I say there were so many roots it was insane!
Next on our list was to remove the pine trees! Some people ask why did we get rid of them? We were just not fans, the pine needles that fell into the mulch, and how much the trees covered our house. These guys did four trees in one day, it was very cool to watch!
My husband put in the paver wall himself. It took many trips to Lowes, because you can never really be sure how many pavers you are going to need right? It took us awhile to decide how high to make the wall, and I’m glad we went with the curvy design versus a straight wall, things like that, but we are so happy with how it turned out.
Lots and lots of work with this wall. Some pieces he had to chip off to fit right, kept calling him Jesus with his carpentry tools!
Here’s a closer view of the flowers. The only pieces we kept was the three boxwoods on the far top. Everything else was all planted by yours truly! It was a chore to plant everything, because as I dug into the ground there were roots in every hole. Soo so many roots! We weren’t expecting the hyrangeas to bloom so fast, but they are huge and so pretty!
Vinca’s are my favorite, they do very well in direct sunlight.
Here’s the front view of the flowers. The tiny tuff stuff hydrangeas are smaller than the lime ones closer to the porch. I’m glad we went with the smaller ones in front so they didn’t takeover the view from the front of the house.
We have another hydrangea lime light bush on the other side of the garage. There used to be a huge bush here that took over the entire space. Hydrangeas are so much nicer!
The front porch is a large variety!
These need to be desperately trimmed down, they are growing so fast! I love the Vinca’s, and the shade combos by the front door. They are a mixture of ferns, coleus, and I’m not sure what the pink flowers are in there.
I’m not sure what the hanging basket flowers are, I’m so bummed I didn’t save the tag! I love how the greenery cascades down from the basket, and the yellow flowers are so bright!
And three months later, it’s so awesome to say everything is still alive and well. Nothing that we planted from scratch has died. It’s all doing so great! The front yard was a labor of love, lots of hard work, and lots of hours spent sweating and working very hard. I’m glad our vision came together, and so very happy with the end result.
Before school on Friday, Hadley looked so cute with her hair. She has been wanting to do different things each day for school and I love that! She used to be an all hair down or all hair up type of kid. Now she’s branching out with new things.
After school and work, we visited Daddy at the fire house. He picked up an extra shift so it had been two days since we had seen him! We love going to the firehouse!
After dinner, we had a movie night! We made a fort, with pillows and her favorite blanket. The movie was Yes Day, and we watched it on Netflix! I made a small candy charcuterie board for us, a few new things she’s never had before and loved. One being unicorn marshmallows, yum!
Saturday morning after her shower, she’s been really into this Kindergarten workbook we got her when she was in preschool. Doing school work on her own? Awesome.
Saturday we worked on our front yard. After living here for almost three years now, we’ve been wanting to rip out all of the shrubs and old pine trees. In the top left photo, the tall half dead tree came out, the green weird tree behind the lamp post, and lots of other things. All came out!
The before photo on the left, is a great photo of all the random things that were planted we think when the house was built. The after photo on the right is a great shot of how much you can actually see the house now!
We are obsessed with how different the house looks! It’s only been a few days, and every time we come home or leave, we still look at the house like wow look at the changes! We have more to do, but the big things are pretty much done. With the exception of the huge pine trees that are not pictured here. Those bad boys are coming out this week!
Hadley was excited she can reach the garage door pad. She still looks so little though! She stayed outside with us all day, helping, playing, etc.
On Sunday, to end the weekend we did the Heart Mini! We ran most of it, and little Miss Hadley rode her bike for the entire three miles! She was such a trooper!
The weather was so nice over the weekend, and we got so much accomplished and had fun doing it. Huge thanks to my BIL/SIL for all the help! We have so many plans on sprucing up the front yard now, can’t wait to start!
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