A Little "Joy" Outside My House This Year

I know I've mentioned a billion times how much I love finding decorations during the holiday season that say "Joy."  It was my mother's name and every time I look at a "Joy" decoration I can't help but think about my beloved and beautiful mother.  She was a beautiful person inside and out and always brought such "joy" to everyone she met.

Well, during a recent shopping trip with hubby at a local home decor store we stumbled upon the "Joy" sign shown in the picture above.  It was gold and made of some kind of hard plastic with a Victorian type pattern cut onto it.  Gold, Victorian and "Joy" - seems like a perfect fit for me.

Unfortunately, it was large and I didn't have any place inside the house to hang it.  So, I walked away.

Well, to my surprise, hubby said, "Are you sure? It's really quite nice." He knows me too well and knows I might be thinking about it on the way home and decide I did have a place for it after all - which, of course, would require us to go back to the store.

So, I took a second look and "voila!" it dawned on me it would be perfect as an outside decoration for our farmer's porch.  It was quite festive and large enough to be seen from the street and would be a good compliment to my large artificial outdoor Christmas floral decoration, which is placed on the farmer's porch every holiday season.  I wrote about this on my Linda's blog in a post entitled, "I Can Do Better - My Xmas Evergreen Arrangement Decoration." Instructions for making one of your own are here.

It seems like every time we want to put up our outside Christmas decoration  it's freezing.  So, we try to do this ahead of time when it's a little warmer.  Well, the weekend after Thanksgiving the weather was predicted to be a little warmer so we decided to put up the outside decorations and started with our new "Joy" sign.

I was so pleased when I went down the driveway to see how it looked. It was perfect and could definitely be seen from the street. My mother would have loved it.

We used to hang a metal jingle bells candy cane decoration that was given to us years ago by a "dear" friend in the spot where we put the "Joy" sign so I had to find a new spot for that.

We always hang a smaller artificial evergreen wreath between our garage doors.  In looking at that wreath it dawned on me that it would make a perfect decoration for the center of that wreath so I fastened it to the wreath and hubby hanged it on the nail.  Perfect!

We took out the really big artificial wreaths that we always hang in the front of the house.  Usually they don't need to be fixed so we just hang them up.  This year I had to tweak the big bulbs a little as the heavy snow last year had weighed some of them down and loosened their attachment.  So, I tightened some of the balls and we hung them up.  They looked as good as new once again.

Even though they are 27 years old they're still "perfect." And, given they are 27 years old and still as good as new talk about a wise investment......haha Pretty soon their cost will be down to under $1.00...haha

If you want to read about these wreaths back in November of 2011 I wrote a Linda's Blog post entitled "20 Years Later and Still As Good As New!"

Last  but not least, we took out the front door Christmas hanging silk floral spray tower which I made in 2013.  I also wrote about it in a Linda's Blog post entitled" My New Front Door Christmas Hanging Silk Floral Spray Tower."

I was happy with the way our outside decorations came out.  We had a little "Joy" outside as well as inside of the house.  My Mother would be pleased.