Boosting Our Curb Appeal: Front Porch & Landscaping

Well, it's been a minute since my last blog post. Or three months. Whatever.

For those of you on Instagram, I do tend to post small (generally un-exciting) updates more regularly there (@littlehouse.onthecorner). 

Anyway, we've made a bit of progress in our kitchen remodel, but I'll save that for another day. Today, I'm just sharing some simple improvements we've made on the outside of our house.

Back in May, we had the house exterior painted (see the reveal here). It was a major upgrade, and since then I've felt increased pressure to up our curb appeal game in other areas. It started with tearing out some overgrown, ratty-looking hedges in our landscaping, which have been replaced with some flowering (bee-friendly!) plants.

Landscaping circa Feb. 2018

Landscaping circa Sept. 2018

Blanket flower, catmint, and coneflower
have replaced the euonymus bushes.

Along with landscaping, I've also been freshening up our front porch presentation. That kind of started last fall with painting our front door. But recently I've made a few other changes including a new wreath, a new door mat, and touches of greenery courtesy of a couple Boston ferns (which have proven to be the best plants to survive all summer on our full-shade porch).

Boston ferns for the win!

Rag wreath made by yours truly.

(Shameless plug: I also sell these on my Etsy shop, Sandplum Studio.) 

Found this door mat on clearance at Target for $10.

Love the colors!

And let's talk solar lights, shall we? We previously had some lining our sidewalk that actually stopped working maybe, oh, a couple years ago. But this summer I finally got the motivation to look for some replacements. I ended up finding these on Amazon, which really stood out compared to all the other traditional solar light designs.

What I like about these lights is that they not only look good illuminated at night, but add a sleek feel to the landscaping during the day. However, a disclaimer: the sidewalk to our porch is on the north side of the house and doesn't currently get a ton of direct sunlight this time of year. These solar lights probably need 6+ hours of sun a day for maximum illumination. So some of them were looking pretty dim at first. But all I do is pop off the solar panels and sit them in a sunny spot all day while I'm at work, then put them back on in the evening. It's not the ideal situation, but it does the trick and I'm willing to keep doing it since I like how they look. We'll see how I feel about that a couple months from now in the winter. 

So, there you have it — our gradual curb appeal boost. Not the most earth-shattering update, but sometimes it's the little things that can make a difference! (At least that's what I try to tell myself.)