Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Christmas Countdown Day 4: A little outdoor decor!

In the day of the inflatable Christmas lawn ornament, I'd like to open your mind to a bit of an alternative... These lawn ornaments were again inspired by my husband's time spent in Arizona over Christmas.


The second year in our house, we decided to make a couple of wood silhouettes for ornamentation in our front flower beds. We got several sheets of oriented strand-board from my former place of work and I got to work with our jigsaw, drill and staple gun! I laid the sheet out on our two saw horses and used a set square to draw out the design. I then cut it out with the jigsaw. In order to mount the lights, I drilled holes, spaced relatively evenly along the perimeter of the tree shape. I picked up some outdoor paint (and I actually got this green at a miss tint price because the clerk couldn't get the shade right) and painted it with three coats.  I used LED Christmas lights and put the bulb through the predrilled hole and used our staple gun to staple the cord in place. I cut out a support piece for the back and affixed it to the tree with three large hinges. We've since added grooves to the support and we thread twine through and tie them down on garden stakes... Between the wind and the neigbour's cats, we've had to restring both the tree and the snowman twice (to replace broken bulbs)!


I made the snowman in a similar fashion, but measured out the circles of his body with a pencil tied to a string. His hat is a foam sheet cut out and cemented to a piece of cardboard! After six years, his hat is a little weathered but it keeps the snow off his head!

With a simple string of incandescent bulbs along our house, our simple little bungalow comes alive with a little bit Christmas cheer!


Thanks for stopping by today - hope to see you tomorrow for Day Three!

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