Balcony Makeover - Holiday Edition

Hello Lovelies!

On Sunday I hosted a fabulous Advent party for my family, The Ladies, and their families.  If you are new here or haven't been paying much attention, my Oma and her two closest friends have known each other since 1959 and the three of them together have come to be known as The Ladies.

Through the sixties and into the seventies, the families would get together to celebrate the four Advent Sundays each year, but at a certain point that tradition, for a multitude of reasons I'm assuming, faded away.  Since I grew up hearing the stories of the Advent parties and all the other important and seemingly unimportant reasons that used to bring everyone together, I decided that I would start the tradition back up.

Traditions are fabulous...but there is A LOT of pressure when throwing a party that all three of The Ladies will be attending.  Or maybe it was just me that was putting a lot of pressure on myself since I saw the importance of the passing of this torch.  The Ladies threw Advent parties every year, but their children dropped the ball, so as the first grandchild to have any type of party with all The Ladies in attendance, I knew I had to do it right!

And that started with the terrible state that my herb garden had fallen into.  Shortly after I created my fabulous patio herb planters, I got some kind of virus and this:

 Deteriorated into this:

I am convinced that my new plants or even the soil had some plant disease of some kind as the jasmine that had been flourishing for two and a half years suddenly died as well.

There was no way that I could allow The Ladies to see my balcony in this state.

When I first purchased the planters, I was very unhappy with the teracotta color, but didn't really have the time to do much about it.  Since I had something of a second chance, I decided to deal with the planters themselves while I was dealing with the plants for the second balcony makeover.  So that's where I started, with the help of my fabulous neighbors.  Bridget's husband, Mike, got inventive and lined the planters with wrapping paper, taped them up, and we spray painted the outside and the inside of the lip.  This way, when I finally plant something else, it will look amazing without having the paint kill my new plants.

 Now that I had some fancy planters, I thought I would keep things simple and festive for the holidays.  So I went with poinsettias.  A bunch of them.

Not wanting a lot of fuss, I simply unwrapped them and dropped them, pots and all, into the new jazzed-up planters.  And the end result is something that I like to call Holiday Glam.

Three large plants in each turned out to be perfect!!

Unfortunately, the day I put the planters together was the first day of the cold snap here in Southern California and I was so afraid of something happening to my new friends that I have been tucking them in at night.  That's right, I build a little fort for them with my patio chairs and some old towels to keep them warm.  I don't think most people realize that poinsettias are actually tropical plants because we associate them with the holiday season.  Essentially they die if they are exposed to temperatures below 50 degrees and the second I brought them home, the nighttime lows dropped into the low forties.  FANTASTIC, but I tucked them in every night and they seem to be doing well.

Nite, nite little babies!

My little fort may not be very pretty, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!  Hopefully this will ensure things on my balcony stay holiday-tastic for the forseeable future.

Until our next balcony makeover!
XOXO!!