Making it pretty for the holidays: DIY on the cheap

It'll be our 2nd Christmas in our new house, last year I didn't do much in dressing up our home for the holidays however, this year I've been searching through Pinterest looking for inspiration.  I went on a pinning spree late in the night, planning out what I'd like to do. I saved my Pinned list to my phone and went hunting for items that reflected my list.
My plan was instead of hitting up the typical decor stores I'd do a little hunting for my holiday treasures. On Sunday, I skipped going to church,  grabbed my work gloves, a saw ..forgot my camera (oops) and went for a drive in the country. 

My first stop was along one of the Range Roads, just outside of Devon and walked along the river  found some driftwood & branches hauling those to the car. On my scavenger hunt, I came across a property that had been demolished over the summer, making way for a new development, grabbed my work gloves and ended up finding an old lantern under some wood, where the barn once stood, two window frames, a horse shoe, a very rusted out bucket and some more wood.  On the way home, stopped in at Home Depot for some fresh garland boughs, and had purchased from Michaels craft store some fake red berries on a branch, my wire wreath frame and ribbon. 

To assemble the wreath, I used the wire wreath frame from Michaels, some florist wire to attach it to the frame. Then went through my box of Christmas decorations and added in the Gold Christmas balls & the Apples (also from my christmas decorations). Wrapped the ribbon around for the final touch and trimmed the end of the ribbons to finish it off. The wreath took me about 30 minutes to assemble.. ( the wire and I got into it, had a few issues with working it around the greenery, it took a little finagling to get it so it wasn't noticeable.. hats off to florists!)

For the Front Porch, I took the rusted out bucket, wrapped around the plaid blue and red ribbon. To give the logs inside the bucket some added height.. I used a couple of pop cans to help stagger them out. I had my husband chop up the wood I found into smaller logs, then added in the greenery from the garland I bought at Home Depot and tucked in the berries from Michaels craft store. Tucked the barn wood (this I had from a previous project) to complete my country side christmas look. 

I have a few more projects in the works from my finds that day, will share those with you over the next couple of weeks.