Cheering Up the Place – Outside Edition

I haven’t hung Christmas lights outside of my house in years since I’m lazy and they wouldn’t come back down until the last of the snow melts in the spring. Who wants to take down lights in January in the middle of a snowstorm? Not this girl.
However, this year I decided to hang some on my back patio simply because I miss exterior lights and also because I figured I was hanging them under the protective cover of my new patio roof so I can easily remove them before spring as well. I went simple – a few strands of white lights (2 icicle lights for the top of the patio and two strings of simple white bulbs for the doorway) and my grapevine reindeer (end of season clearance from Target years ago).
Here are the lights at night:
 Of course the patio looks completely different during the day. I kept the white wall decoration up since I figured it looked holiday-ish and I hung the huge metal ornaments I bought this summer on clearance at a store in the UP from ribbon to the roof support beams. Ignore the hose that I have yet to put in the garage. :) It was difficult to get a good picture where you can see everything since the ornaments are hard to see against the lattice in the pictures but they look amazing in person.
  The patio table got a little holiday decor with a strip of burlap (left over from covering my bushes for the winter), a wooden birdhouse decoration I received as a gift from my parents years ago, some greenery from the pine tree in my yard (I just trimmed it up for the year) and a few pinecones that I had in my holiday stash.
Finally, the reindeer greets you as you walk to the door. I used some more tree trimmings to cover the power cord for the lights.
That’s the last of the decor to show you in/around my house. I think I stuck with the ‘organic’ theme pretty well, even outdoors. Total cost of exterior decorations was ~$12 for the large metal ornaments that I bought this summer since everything else I already owned or I took from my yard.

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