Happy Tuesday! Is it just me or this week flying by? Definitely not complaining about it at all – I am ready for the weekend!
Anyways, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We had my family in town, so we spent a lot of time with them. It’s always nice to catch up.
While my family was here, we did almost all of my Christmas decorating. I loved having the extra help! My mom is really good at decorating and design, so it is nice to get an extra eye on everything.
Last year, we didn’t do any outside Christmas decor, and I felt a little bit like the grinch. I wanted to do something this year, but I also didn’t want to spend a bunch of money to get lights put on our house. A few weeks ago, Alex found these really cute planters while browsing our favorite DIY/Build website – Shanty2Chic. Once he showed me the idea, I was sold!
We followed Shanty2Chic’s instructions almost exactly, but we used a nail gun instead of screws. I don’t feel the need to re-write all of the steps here, so check out this post if you want the actual build guide. As always, feel free to ask me specific questions if you have them!
Our stain color was Jacobean by Minwax – you can find this at any Home Depot. I’ll link it here. We also did 1 coat of polyurethane on top after the stain dried.
I originally went to Kroger and purchased real Christmas trees to put in the planters. When I got home, I realized that they were probably too big. The label also said that the trees could grow to 15 feet! After coming to my senses, we returned those and went to Target to get fake ones. The good news is that these were the perfect size and they were significantly cheaper! You can purchase the Target trees here.
I added a little bit of decoration to the trees since they were plain. I went to Hobby Lobby and purchased little berry stems to put in the trees. I found them in the Christmas Floral section of the store.
The trees I purchased were pre-lit, but I wasn’t going to utilize those lights since we don’t have outlet on each side of our front door. Instead, I found LED string lights that were battery powered. I found these at TJ Maxx, but had to purchase a few more sets from Amazon.
My mom and sister helped make the bows on the front of the planters. I purchased the ribbon from Hobby Lobby in the Christmas section. To be honest, I am not sure how they made the bows, but they looked up a YouTube video for instructions. It did require some wire and a hot glue gun! In order to get the bows to stick to the planter, we just used a simple command strip.
Overall, it was a pretty easy project. I am also excited that we will be able to use these year-round. We will just need to swap out the Christmas trees for something else! I will be sure to share how we change these planters throughout the seasons.
Let me know if you have any questions about this project. Also, leave me a comment if you decide to try it – I would love to hear how it goes for you!
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