Hello Friends! It’s been quite the December so far. Lots of cozy Christmas Decor is going up in our house. It has made me think back to less than a year ago when we purchased this house. We have made SO much progress. I remember moving in, and crying at night becuase of how miserable and disgustingly dirty this fixer upper was. I mean, it’s one thing to flip a house top to bottom… it’s a totally different deal to do it while living in it… with a newborn baby at that! One thing I want to share more of on here is all of our before and afters. So I thought I would share our front porch all decorated for Christmas, along with the before photos of what the exterior looked like.

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this post, and  I was provided with products from Amy Howard to paint my door & shutters. But I only post & share things I love & think you will too.

One of the things that really got me excited to purchase this house was the outside. It was really the only thing in decent condition. And I just couldn’t wait to decorate that front porch for fall and Christmas.

Basically all my farmhouse front porch dreams are coming true right now.

So here is a shot I took of the “before” on the day we moved in.

The landscaping was a mess, and the shutters & front door, while in decent shape, needed some love. When summer hit, we tidied up the landscaping (ripped basically everything out) and I got inspired to make the exterior more modern. Bye bye blue! Bye Bye red mulch.

I decided to paint the shutters and door black. Becuase our porch covers the shutters and door from weather, I went with my favorite chalk paint from Amy Howard in black. This stuff is sooooo good. It doesn’t require a primer & dries to a beautiful flat looking finish.

I took these fun shots today, and I just couldn’t help but make the kids a big pile of leaves to jump into. We are used to New England falls & winters. All their leaves are long gone… but here in the south the trees finally decided it was cold enough to let go of their leaves… so we are kinda having a vibrant Christmas! Haha!

I mean, look at all those pretty crisp leaves!

Funny story about my front porch garland… Some of you might be familiar with @cottonstem, well, she featured the outside of my house on her instagram recently… and I just had to laugh to myself, becuase she was telling everyone how pretty and breathtaking it was…

And I was just over here like… “Ummmm, that “garland” is made of weeds from my back yard….”

But apparently it looks okay. It’s Erin approved! Haha!

That will just be our little secret, okay? Pinky Promise? Good.

I’ll post links to all my sources at the bottom of the post, but:

The “garland” is just weeds tucked over a lighted garland… the dinner bell is from the Hearth & Hand collection, the magnolia wreath is from Marshalls, and the small wreaths on the windows are from… Walmart… $2 a piece. Yep. I’m fancy. Haha! But in my defense, I did add some pretty real greenery from my bushes into those wreaths.

So there is a little tour of the outside of our farmhouse.

And here it is as the sun sets… One of my favorite contributions to our exterior Christmas decorations is my automatic timer power strip that turns on at dusk for 6 hours. It has all sorts of settings, but that’s the one I have mine on. I’m going to link to it below.

Gosh, I love this house. No more crying happens here. It’s soooooo pretty now.

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