Decorating My House with Holiday Greenery

My husband and I bought our first house a year and a half ago.  During our first Christmas in our home I focused on decorating the inside with a new tree, and other decor items.  This year I decided to work on the outside.  These are the results; wreath, flower pots on the porch, swags on the bannisters, and an arrangement in the pot on the mailbox.  My mom sent me the wreath, which lights up.  I simply made the bow to match the other items I'd made.

The tropical plants in the pots on the porch have finally died for the season, so I replaced them with branches of faux greenery and sprigs of berries to match the wreath.   Since silk stems don't have roots like real plants, and because it can get windy here, I started by putting some bricks of floral foam in the pots, then ran some wire across to keep it in place.  Then I filled the pots, 1 branch at a time, trying to keep them mirror images of one another.  Made some 6 loop bows and wired those onto the pots too.

I tried to find swags of garland to run around the entire porch railing, but couldn't find enough of any one matching set, so instead I picked up these two swags at Target, and added handmade bows to match.

Here's the whole porch all together.

Finally there's our mailbox.  Every one in the neighborhood is one of these brick postal fortresses.  Each homeowner seems to have done something different to theirs. Some plant flowers around them, some add light up house numbers, one is so covered in ivy you have to brush it aside to get the mail.  The previous owner of our house had a window box installed on the side of hers, and I try to keep it full of plants all year.  Since the mums I planted in September have died, I decided to fill it with greenery to match the porch.  I emptied the planter of dirt, and put in bricks of floral foam, and used wire to hold them in place.  Then I filled it with sprays of evergreen, pinecones, and berries, before adding the final bow.  The whole thing has hidden bits of wire keeping it in place against the winter wind.