This is the first post in a series I will do each month on decorating for $0. I will show you how I put together different areas of my home using things I already had. Join me, will you?

For those of you who don't already know, I live in the South. To be more specific I live in South Alabama on the Gulf Coast. It's really hard to get MORE southern than me. And as a rule Southerners love front porches. In fact, a few months ago the cover of Southern Living Magazine was dedicated to front porch design.

I immediately became obsessed and made a LOOOOOONG list of things I wanted to do to our front porch. And while I do have some long-term porch goals, (yes, that is an actual sentence I just typed) right now I am going to be satisfied updating my porch for no money.

Sunday after church Jason and I set about sprucing up the place. Let me show you around and tell you what I did.

The first thing we did was create a planter out of an old wheel barrow we found on the back of our property.

The wheel barrow was HEAVILY rusted and missing the wheels, I actually liked that about it and thought it gave it a lot of charm. However, Jason pointed out to me that since we were using it to plant edible plants, we should place the pots in the wheel barrow, rather than fill it with dirt and use it to plant.

In the future I might use it for planting flowers directly. It was really easy, Jason just drilled few holes in the wheel barrow and we placed a stevia plant and a mint plant in it. So easy.

Next I decided to use this old, and somewhat dangerous-looking chair, to dress up the joint. Again, I found this chair in the barn, left here by the previous owner. I would never sit in this chair, or allow a loved one to sit in this chair, you can't fully tell from the photo, but it's a disaster waiting to happen.

So I stuck this basil plant in the chair and stuck a pinwheel my boys were playing with in the pot. I think the pinwheel adds a bit of whimsy to the porch.

Next I dressed up the wreath that goes on the front door. You may remember this is the same wreath from my Spring decorating update.

I pulled the ribbon off an old medal from my school days. The star and the other (RANDOM!) decoration were cut off a gift bag. I just pulled the flowers off the wreath and stored them for later.

The rest of the porch is mainly edible plants and a few flowers. I used this old galvanized bucket for a squash plant and a few peppers. I also threw in a bird's nest that I found in our yard.

If you're curious as to what I am using a trellis for the squash, it's the gate from an old cat carrier. Yup, we are all about the reduce, reuse, recycle around here. And yes, I did wash it. Very, very well.

Next I found these old plant racks that were also abandoned by the previous owner. The one on the left has bell pepper on it and the one on the right has a hanging petunia and some rosemary.

We have lots of edible plants and I am really proud of the container garden we cranked out this year. It has done so much better than our actual garden.

I wish I had a before pick to show you the vast improvement of the porch, but I am really proud of how it turned out. And I love that we didn't have to spend any money on the process.

What about you? Have you ever decorated using $0?

Featured