Let us take advantage of this ridiculously brief interval between Halloween and Christmas to talk a little about my porch.

Because I have a very frightening public service announcement to make: Thanksgiving is only two weeks away! 

RIGHT?! I realized this on Sunday, and it really freaked me out. I don’t have the Halloween stuff put away yet. In fact, I can see components of my kids’ weird Halloween costumes plus half a dozen plastic dollar store rats right here on my dining room table, just beyond my computer.

Speaking of Halloween, my big kids now favor unidentifiable costumes from obscure video games. And Ari wasn’t going to wear a costume or trick-or-treat this year, but then I suggested we pull something together just in case–which turned out to be wise of me because his friends went trick-or-treating so he decided to get one more year of it in after all. Anyway, so here they are: some guy from a video game, some other guy from a video game, Rat Santa, and Superman:

Gus taught everyone a Halloween song that he had learned in piano and the whole group of big kids sang this “Halloween carol” at every house, which I find completely charming. You have to work harder for your candy when you hit your teens.

Anyway, before I start madly cleaning my house for Thanksgiving/decorating for Christmas/painting my dining room (Dave says that last part isn’t actually happening before Thanksgiving. We’ll see)….here’s what’s going on with our covered porch.

I’ve always loved porch ceilings painted blue, but I wanted to do a little bit of a twist on the traditional light blue. And when there’s something to paint, I generally want to paint it navy blue….so we went with an opaque stain from Behr called “Atlantic.” I’m really pleased with it.

As I mentioned in the post about our fabulous new kitchen table, we moved our old farmhouse table out here awhile back. I wasn’t sure what to do about chairs for it, and I’m still not. We had mismatched aqua chairs with it in the kitchen, but the paint was chipping badly on most of them and a couple of them had fabric covered seats that wouldn’t last long out in the humid air.

For right now we have two of the least chippy aqua chairs, two chairs from another old table that were sitting in the basement, plus that one wicker chair from the thrift store. I had been thinking of all mismatched wood-toned chairs, but I’m kind of liking the little bit of color out here….and the chipped paint  doesn’t bother me nearly as much in this more rustic setting. So we’ll see. At any rate, I definitely still need one more chair for the other end (or for Dave to build a bench and then one of the side chairs to move to the end).

I picked up a little wicker shelf at the thrift store to hold some plants (stayed tuned for plants later; right now it’s empty pots).

And in an attempt to test whether it’s possible to put too much white wicker out here, I bought this dresser at the thrift store the other day to hold….well, stuff–mostly dishes. I have a bunch of mismatched blue transferware that I’m planning to keep out here. Too much, in fact, because if you just buy blue transferware plates every time you see them at the thrift store and you never stop to check how many you’ve already gotten, eventually you will have TOO MANY.

Like maybe thirteen.

And then the last thing we’ve done is hang up string lights (that’s an affiliate link; if you buy something after following my link, I get a small commission, but you don’t pay any extra. Thanks for supporting Boxy Colonial!) I’ve always known I wanted string lights out here because they’re awesome, so of course I want them. Abe says they make our porch look like a cafe, and playing restaurant is his very favorite thing, so that’s pretty much his highest praise.

Look! I got a picture where the lights make beautiful little stars!

If you look back at one of the first photos, you can see that there are wires hanging down where we took down the old ceiling fan. We want to replace that eventually, but the wiring is a mess out here, so that will require an expensive trip from an electrician. So it might be awhile. For now these lights are plenty bright (the cord goes through the window and plugs in in the kitchen), so we’ll probably just buy a plate to cover up the wires and leave things as is for now.

There are more things we want to do out here. Like actual plants in the pots (although November’s probably not the best time to start that). And I want a couple of comfortable chairs to go in the corner and maybe a hanging chair for in between the covered and uncovered sections of the porch. But we’re at the point where it’s done enough that we can use it and that I can stare, mesmerized, at my twinkly lights….so I’m not in any particular rush to officially finish. I’ll keep an eye out casually for things that I’d like to add and maybe be ready for a big, exciting room reveal in the spring.