A Festive Fall Front Porch on a Budget

I'm going to get a little personal here.  The last couple months have been really stressful for my McKay and I.  McKay's job has been in jeopardy because of the nationwide sequestration.  With several rounds of layoffs at his work and more to come,  McKay and I have felt so uneasy about his future and the need to have a more stable job so he can finish his masters and support Amelia and I.  The good news is McKay has been offered a job with a government program where they allow him to go to school full time, pay him salary, and they pay for school!  This is a huge blessing, but there's one crappy stipulation, it's a significant cut to his pay :(

We've had to have some serious heart to heart talks about our finances.  We even thought of moving out of our home and renting it out for a couple of years to save money.  Even though that would save us money we just didn't feel right about that option and plus I would feel overly territorial about someone else living in my home, worrying about whether or not they're keeping it clean, and thinking about someone sleeping in my bedroom (it kinds of creeps me out).

We'll be able to survive, but money is going to be really tight for the next couple years.   It's hard to be at a comfortable stage of your life then being forced to feeling like a poor college student again.  You feel like you're taking three steps backwards.  After weeks of feeling mopey and "my life sucks" kind of mood, and dealing with some health issues (it's been a rough week).  I've realized that this isn't the end of the world.  Many people go through set backs in their lives and this one will be such a small one in the grand scheme of our lives.  We're extremely blessed and have SO much to be grateful for.  This new opportunity is going to get McKay through school, have a stable job, and allow him to be home more.  Not many families in our area do have options, and I need to remember that.

I'll stop my whining now.

My friend Allison from Cupcake Diaries asked me to be apart of her series of 30 Days of Halloween where each day she features a blogger creating something Halloweenish.  You can go here to learn about the series and see all of the other awesome Halloween ideas you can use this year.

Anyway, I really, really, really, wanted to dress up my boring front porch this year for Fall/Halloween for Allison's series but needed to do it on a VERY small budget.  I was pretty skeptical I could pull it off.

I set a budget of $5 and promised myself I wouldn't go over it and I'm happy to say I was able to stay on that budget!  It wasn't easy.  I wanted to get a few new fall decorations I saw at various stores, but I stuck to my guns and bought only what I really needed.  Everything else I used I already had in my house, found in the garbage, borrowed, reused, painted, and grew to get this front porch looking festive.