This post is sponsored by The Home Depot Canada. As always, I would never promote a company I don’t love. Read my full disclosure here.
Remember this summer when I posted an update of our exterior renovation? Well… we’re still not totally done. We kind of underestimated how much time this one would take! BUT the week before babe was born, my dad and a friend put some major hours in and helped us get *almost* done. In the spring, we’ll need to finish off some of the panel around the back of the house and fill some nail holes and such. BUT that means the front and sides of our house LOOK totally done. So you’d never know ;) Which means for the first time ever I get to share a front entry decor post with you! It’s my modern Christmas porch decor (tis the season!). I’m kind of in love with having a front door/entry that I love. It’s actually worth decorating for Christmas and that makes me all kinds of happy. That said… we actually get snow here (y’know… being in Canada) and we don’t have a large covered entry- so little decorations and chairs with pillows and throw blankets and things like that would just get covered in the snow (sorry Pinterest). I wanted to keep it simple but festive and totally non-breakable for my kids. Before I chat more about what we picked out…
It’s another week of our Modern Holiday Home series! If you’ve missed the first few… this month, I’ve joined forces with four other rad Canadian bloggers who love black, white, greenery and shine as much as I do for our Modern Holiday Home series. We’re going to be bringing some fun holiday projects and decor EVERY SINGLE WEEK for five weeks. It’s been so fun to take on a challenge that’s focused on modern holiday decor AND a supply. This week we took on holiday decor in partnership with The Home Depot Canada and I couldn’t help but spiff up this space since we have never ever decorated out here- hello Christmas entry! You can find all of our decor posts linked at the bottom of this post- and I KNOW you will love them because I totally do… every single one of these could go in my home!
If you follow along with Lemon Thistle, you’ll know I’m in The Home Depot Canada all the time. Between the renovations we’ve been picking away at for the past four years and the DIY projects I love to take on with this blog- I’m sure the staff know who I am by now. With life being so busy with all that and all those kids we have, I honestly don’t get out much just to shop so I always like to detour to the decor section of our Home Depot when I go to pick things up. So this challenge was super fun for me because I had an excuse to buy all the Christmas porch decor I wanted for this space. Not just paint brushes and screws and things. Not that those aren’t exciting too ;)
On to the modern Christmas porch decor! So keep in mind we’ve never decorated the outside of a house before- so this girl has only ever bought Christmas lights to go on her Christmas tree. I actually had to bring my husband back to the store so he could read the boxes of lights and tell me how many and what kind we needed… and clips and all that jazz. I didn’t realize there were SO MANY KINDS! My only goal was to get warm white lights but that still left plenty of options! We ended up going with these Warm White LED Lights. I really love that they have little clips on them so I could clip them directly into the garland and not have to put up two sets of hooks or wrap them around the garland.
Speaking of garland… isn’t it dreamy!? The Home Depot Canada came out with a bunch of different garland and wreath combos this year and they are all so beautiful and perfect for my modern Christmas porch decor! I chose this flocked pine one because of it’s simplicity and that flocking. I’m borderline obsessed with flocking this year. And look at those crystal-y pinecones! They’re gorgeous! Also… long needle pine garlands are by far my fave of faux holiday greens. Don’t ask me why but I’ll take that over cedar or fir any day!
I love that they come in matching sets with wreaths- it made decorating SO easy, you guys! I kind of feel like it’s cheating because it all coordinates without much effort. We snapped up this flocked pine wreath for the door (doesn’t it work so well with the navy door colour?) and Shane had to stop me from buying another one for inside our house.
Can we talk about hanging garlands for a hot minute? We learned a lot (code for we struggled hard) hanging this. After calls to my dad and reading boxes upon boxes of clips- this is what we decided. We used nails on angle between the trim and siding at the top to hold most of the weight. You can’t see these when it’s not the holidays so we’ll probably leave them up. For the sides, we used Command All Weather Light Clips. But they fell off… until we learned that they will stay on ONLY if applied to a not freezing cold surface. So if you warm up the spot you’re going to stick them to, you’ll have MUCH better luck with them hanging on. For reference… the command hook we’ve had on our door all winter in the past was put on in the summer and it’s never fallen off once. Having clips down the sides of the garland keeps it from swinging around in the wind and hitting the windows.
Other than the garlands, lights and wreaths around the door, we also swapped out our planter (recognize that DIY?!) for holiday greens to bring this modern Christmas porch decor together. The Home Depot Canada always has great holiday greens in bundles (like I used in this arrangement) but this year with baby on the way (he’s here now!) I just wanted to have a drop and go option. I picked one of their premade ones and dropped it in the planter. I swapped out the red bow that came in it for some rose gold sprays, sticks and pinecones. All of them are from The Home Depot Canada and all of them are so darn pretty, you guys! I just want a vase full of those sticks. Also… if you’re loving rose gold (like the glittery sprays in the arrangement), one of their holiday decor collections this year is ALL rose gold. And it’s gorgeous.
Last but not least, we layered a holiday coir door mat (this is the only one they have online but in store they have a huge selection!) over our regular door mat (very similar to this one). I really love how they layered together! The holiday mats are so nice and it is great to have coir in the winter when you really need to be able to brush off your boots BUT they’re always so tiny compared to other mats! I think they just look small next to the oversized door so this layering solution is my new fave.
I’ll leave my Christmas Porch decor at that- I’m really in love with how much our entry has changed over the past year- it’s finally something I’m proud to share a photo of! No more photos of wreaths hanging in my bathroom or driving over to my sister in laws to get a photo of a wreath on a door ;) And GUYS can I just say that I am so bummed I didn’t get photos of this Christmas entry while we had snow?! It snowed HARD the day that we bought all these pieces and by the time we had it all set up and styled, the snow was melting and not looking beautiful. So I waited patiently for it to snow again and it hasn’t! It’s been weeks! I guess I should be happy that it feels like fall again, but wouldn’t it have looked 100x more beautiful if it was a winter wonderland?!
Make sure to check out the other projects in the series! I could honestly put any one of them (or ALL of them!) in my house and they’d fit right in. I love these ladies’ style!
LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM:
The Learner Observer | The Sweetest Digs | Love Create Celebrate | Harlow and Thistle | Lemon Thistle
I so hope you found some amazing inspiration this week on our Modern Holiday Home series! We will be back next week with some more modern Christmas inspiration for you all!
Gemma
Wow, the entry looks so grand!!! Love that you carried the garland all the way up there. So pretty!
Colleen Pastoor
Thanks so much Gemma! It’s amazing the difference having the garland all the way to the ground
Lindi
Oh I love it all! I wish my outdoor space looked as beautiful as yours! It’s really stunning!
Colleen Pastoor
Thanks so much Lindi! This is the first time we’ve had an outdoor space we love :)
Jo Airey
Love the beauty and simplicity of your front entrance! The look says so much with minimal decoration. Just the inspiration I was looking for this year. The frosting on the branches is the cherry on the sundae!