How to make your front porch more inviting!

View from my porch

My email inbox gets messages like this all day:

Make your front porch more inviting with these simple design tips!!!!

I LOVE design blogs. Maybe more than anything else I read. I love throw pillows and light, airy porches with linen curtains. I mean, if I had it to do over again, I would probably MAJOR in interior design. I don't know if I'm especially talented at it, but I really love to THINK and DREAM about it. I also love to write words is ALL CAPS so you can FEEL my passion for things.

One of my favey-fave bloggers, Glennon Melton of Momastery, recently blogged about interior design and organizing in her kitchen. Click on over. It will just take a moment...I'll wait...

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....(whistling)...

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That's hard stuff for me to read. I mean...why NOT make it as cute as it can be? I think we get tangled up in the obsession and the "keeping up with Joneses" (hey, that's me! except not.) So, as the porch email came across today, I'm putting on my own perspectacles, Glennon-style.

Hot mess on the porch.

I had a cute rug on my porch. My dog ate it. I sometimes forget to water the plants, and they start looking all manner of scraggly. Like fungus-ed, yellow and scary...but then they're ready for halloween! I really want to paint my rocking chairs that are all a little worse for the wear. But I had maybe rather blow bubbles with my kid and watch my husband throw the stick for the rug-eating dog. We tried ferns last year. Do you know how much upkeep ferns are in the SC sunshine? Like twice-a-day waterings. I'll probably do them again, but I took a year off this summer (and mother nature has laughed at me by giving us a cool, wet summer!). I had some throw pillows on the chairs at one point, and between the rain and the canine with an appetite for all things lovely, they are now holey and stinky.

Sunporch...cute, huh?

These pictures on design blogs and in magazines do not show you that outdoor spaces get messy, wet, sandy and eaten by otherwise-delightful dogs (I pretend that he is otherwise-delightful since it was my urging to get him). You know what these pictures also don't show? The PEOPLE who make your porch more inviting. Glennon is absolutely right. The best makeover is the one with LOVE as the "after."

I mean, look at those handsome plants.

Cute rocking chair!

So cute. So hungry.

Makeover complete.