The View from the Curb

We are pretty good at boosting the curb appeal of our house…but not very good a keeping it in tip-top shape.  A lot of that has to do with time and money and not necessarily with the fact that we don’t care what it looks like.  The plants we planted several years back have been fertilized maybe three times since and there’s an area in one of the landscaping beds that has seen four different perennials get planted and then die every year.  I don’t know if we (ok, I since I did all the plant choosing) picked the wrong plant for the wrong amount of sunlight or soil or what, but we’ve had to replace those three plants way more often than we’d like.  As of this moment, there are three hydrangeas living in those spots.  I bought them on clearance at Lowe’s last year and two of them are actually doing pretty good, albeit small.  The third is hanging on by literally one, tiny leaf.  Sigh.  I guess we’ll see how they come up next spring.

On either side of that bed are the original decorative grasses we planted way back when and those bright flowers, they are f-a-k-e.  Dollar Store, fake, red-orange daises that I thought would play well with our red-orange front door.  I sorta felt like a smartie-pants when I thought of the idea to “plant” fake plants but I didn’t want to share too quickly in case they didn’t stand up against the elements and my plan failed.
 
However, I’m happy to say that, after weathering this Southern sun, heat, and rain for the past five months, they still look pretty dang good.
       
Good enough that I’ll probably head to the ‘ole Dollar Store next year to grab different flowers just to switch things up and good enough that I might “plant” more elsewhere because who doesn’t love flowers that are 100% self-sufficient?!  I mean, with all the time we don’t have in the world, it was really nice to at least look like we had some sort of green thumbs at work over here. 

Try it and see for yourself!  We highly recommend it!

One other thing we did to the front this year was install spotlights to light up the house a little more at dusk and after dark.  This has been on our to-do list for years now but we just couldn’t financially pull the trigger on lights when there were so many other things needing to be done.  But, one day last winter I was walking through Home Depot on a mission to grab a ceiling fan for our screened-in patio when I passed the landscape lighting section and, in that section, a couple of boxes of spotlight kits for 50% off.  I called the Headmaster as quick as I could and he gave me the go-ahead to grab one.  I did and he installed them a few months later.  (Anthony used to work for a landscaping company so he is a whiz at installing outdoor lighting but if you’re not sure you can, the Thrift Decor Chick, Sarah, has an awesome tutorial that even had me thinking I could.  The only reason I didn’t is because Anthony wanted to himself.  #controlfreak  ;)  )      

Our kit included four spotlights but we only ended up using three – one at each protruding corner of the front of the house.  It’s crazy what a difference just adding a little mood lighting can make!

Next up, we really need to work on our grass situation.  We’ve got a very unbanlanced mixture of sand/dirt, weeds, and grass that is really begging for help.  Sod is out of the question because of the price so a-seeding we will go next spring. 

But anyway, the moral of this whole story is…if you want to boost curb appeal in a big way with little maintenance, sink some fake flowers into the ground and grab some landscape spotlights!  The season is rolling around where outdoor stuff will be going on clearance so keep those eyes peeled!

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P.S.  In case the clearance section around you isn’t turning anything good up or you just want to know, this kit (affiliate link) off Amazon is just like the one we bought.  :)