Making Outside Decorations for Spring or Summer

Now that the weather is getting nicer, it is natural to want to spend more time outside. If you're trying to find a few unique ideas for decorating outside, why not make your own? Here are a few projects you can make fairly quick to decorate your yard, patio or deck.

Lighting:

Take a tomato cage and poke it into the ground. Take some grapevine and wind it around the tomato cage. Put a string of outdoor lights around the grapevine. A few of these around the yard gives off a lot of light.

Take some solar lights and put a colored glass lamp shade over each one. The sun will still get to them during the day, and in the evening you have a beautiful romantic setting.

A few strings of lights around an iron fence or gate.

A string of lights and some grapevine wound in and out a wooden fence looks very nice also.

Birdbaths:

For a quick bird bath, buy a 12", 14" and 16" terra cotta pot, and a 20" terra cotta saucer. (If you can find the glazed saucers they are nice to use) Turning the pots upside down, the 14" will go on top of the 16" and the 12" will go on top of the 14". You will be gluing together all the pots with a silicone adhesive or outside glue. Take the saucer and glue this on top of the 12" pot, centering it the best you can. Let adhesive dry, fill saucer with some water and add a few decorative rocks.

For an even quicker birdbath take an old enamel pie dish and set outside on deck, ground or old tree stump.

Wind Chimes:

For a wind chime base you can use a terra cotta saucer, pie tin, old plate or bowl (turned upside down),an enamel lid from a pot, a wicker or wire basket, or piece of foot long bamboo or copper.
For the chimes you can use old silverware, glass prisms, metal or copper bells, bamboo or copper pieces cut with a copper cutter or hacksaw. Cut at different sizes for different tones.
Drill holes where needed in the base of the chime, for the amount of chimes you will be putting on it. Make sure for the bases that are round, you put a hole in the middle for a chime. Drill holes in chime ends and put each in place with some heavy fishing line.

Planting:

Chair planters can be beautiful planted up for spring or summer. You can get an old chair that's seat is missing or any chair can have part of its seat cut out with a jig saw. Staple some screen along where the seat is missing, draping it down some for soil to set in. Add soil and plant your favorite annuals in seat. If the back of the chair is spindled you may want some plants with vines growing up it. If the back of your chair is solid you may want to paint a welcome sign on it.

Herb coffee cans are not only cute, they are very useful. Wash out a coffee can and dry. Turn coffee can over and with a spike or screwdriver poke a few holes in the bottom for drainage. Take your favorite color of enamel spray paint and lightly spray can, repeating process until covered as desired. There is no need to seal the can when using enamel paint.Once your can is painted and dried take a paint pen (if you are handy writing with paint and a paint brush you can just use them) and write the name of the herbs you are going to put in the can. Take soil and fill half way up, set herb in coffee can and add more soil until it is about an inch or inch and a half from the top. You can use one can for each herb or put a few herbs together in one can.