The Front Porch

     The front porch was always a place to gather.  During the good weather, we spent most of the evening on the front porch.  The neighbors on each side usually joined us and the adults would laugh, talk, and solve all the world's problems.  The kids would sit on the porch swing and it was great fun to swing it high enough that the back of the swing would go over the side of the porch railing.  It was usually about that time we got yelled at for fear of one of us sailing off.

     Mother loved the front porch just as much as the rest of the house.  She was always doing some sort of decorating or fixing up and Dad always said she wasn't happy unless she had something under construction.  The front porch had a single light in the center of the ceiling and Mother, being quite crafty, decided it needed a little sprucing up.

     I don't know where she came up with the idea.  It could have been her own or maybe she saw it in a magazine, but it turned out to be one of her creations that we never forgot. 

     She gathered eight egg cartons, these were the old style, pressed paper kind, and cut the lids off each one.  She didn't need the lids, just the section that held the eggs.  Then she spray painted the outside, or bottom side of that section with green paint.  After she was satisfied with her paint job she painstakingly cut the ends out of each egg compartment.  So now she had eight egg carton bottoms, painted green with twelve little circles cut out of the ends where the eggs would sit.  

     As I'm thinking about this egg carton hodgepodge, I'm remembering Mother.  She really was amazing.  She worked outside of the home from 8 to 5.  After work, she would come home, fix supper, do the dishes and then work on what ever project she had going at the time.  She stripped all the woodwork in the house by herself while still putting in 40 hours a week.  She would change her clothes after supper, spread out old newspapers and diligently apply the messy stripper.  I can still see her sitting on the floor, scraping off that gooey byproduct of stripper and dissolved varnish.  I thought she was nuts, now I know from whom I inherited this malady of crafty madness.

     Back to the egg cartons.  I'm thinking this must have been around Christmas time because the front porch was always a show place for her talents.  Once she hung a large piece of white paper on the kitchen wall, set up a big spot light on the counter and made each one of us sit in front of the light so she could trace our profile on the paper.  We had to have our mouths open too.  She then cut out each silhouette, painted them black and glued them onto a huge round circle of cardboard that was painted white.  She pasted musical notes around the floating heads and the words, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".  She hung this treasure on the front porch and illuminated it with the spot light so the whole town could see us singing everyone a Merry Christmas.  It was a good likeness of each of us except my hair was too curly for her to trace so she just made little points all over my head.  

     Anyway, she now had these egg cartons with 96 holes cut out, each hole about the size of a dime.  She cut out 48 dime size circles of red cellophane and 48 dime size circles of green cellophane and glued these into the bottom of each egg compartment.  Twelve would be red, twelve would be green, etc.  Then she laced the cartons together, alternating colors, until she had an octagon shaped egg carton creation.  She then hung this from the porch ceiling over the lone light bulb and VOILA! , it twas the Christmas Chandelier.

     Mother was quite pleased with this hand crafted gem because she left it up a lot longer than the holiday season.  It wasn't so noticeable during the day, but at night it was hard to miss.  It was always fun to come home from a date and wait for the dreaded question....."Are those egg cartons?"  If I didn't come right in the house, the carton light would blink.  If I tarried a bit longer, it turned into a strobe light, flashing its 96 red and green beacons as a final warning.

     The front porch looks a lot different than it did when Mother was here, but it's still a great place to gather and decorate.  I'm not sure what I will put out there this year and if I'm going to accomplish anything, I'd better get busy.  One thing is for sure, there won't be any floating heads or egg carton lights, but the year I lit up the milk jugs still gets a laugh.