Urban Nest

I wish I could remember how this idea came to me, but several weeks ago I bought two full sets of reflective house numbers at my local hardware store to hang from our Christmas tree.

They have a bit of that schoolhouse decor about them that I’m so drawn to right now as well as a graphic quality that has always appealed to me — bold numbers in a classic font.

We put our Christmas tree on our sunporch every year, rather than inside the house. And since our house is on a busy street and the sunporch faces the road, it works really well for our indoor and outdoor decor.

Of course, decorating a tree that is exposed to the elements (it’s a screened in porch) means not risking any of our sentimental or delicate ornaments. So we always try to come up with something interesting that can’t be damaged. This year I’m using house numbers!

It’s such a simple detail that most people walking past will never notice, but it’s fun for me to look for the numbers as I pull up to the house in my car, and of course, the detail is prominent when we’re on the porch reading or having a cup of coffee.

I also brought a few indoors to tie the look together. I strung one number to the handles on each of my flower buckets and stacked them up the stairs. I haven’t quite figured out what do fill them with though. I can’t find a fourth kissing ball and the wrapping paper will be gone shortly. Any ideas? 

And because I can’t seem to shake my adoration of canvas drop cloths (also from the hardware store!), I threw one around the base of the tree for a rustic, weather-proof tree skirt. Now I just need to sweep up the pine needle mess I made last night!

Any hardware on your tree this year?

Tags: christmas tree, hardware store decor, house numbers, schoolhouse decor

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under Feather the Nest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.