Harvest Season Front Porch Planters

I finished the porch wall trough planters this week. I had mentioned going to Dollar Tree and spending $10 plus tax on some faux florals, pumpkins, and leaf sprays. I also said I'd try to go to another Dollar Tree and pick up a couple more sprays to fill out the planters.

To hold the faux decor in place, I used the lid to a styrofoam cooler, cut in half.

I had a can of spray paint in brown that I bought for another project. Styrofoam really soaks up the paint. A few coats later, and I had 2 brown flat sheets for the troughs.

Above are the additional pieces I bought at the other Dollar Tree. I spent $5 plus tax on 2 sprays of cattails and 2 sprays of yellow marigolds. I cut all of the sprays apart into single stems so I could divide some of the elements in each arrangement.

Laying this all out, I could see the troughs would look a bit sparse. So I dug through the box of free pile faux foliage and found fern, ivy, and leaf pieces.

I took some time over the weekend to lay it all out in a pleasing arrangement.

Again, I could see it would still look sparse and show too much of the brown styrofoam. I added a roll of boxwood garland to secure around the highly visible edges.

The styrofoam pieces needed a little trimming down to size with a serrated knife in order to fit inside the coir liners. Once I had them sized right, I placed some plain blocks of styrofoam under the brown ones as support.

Many of my florals had stems that would poke into the styrofoam nicely. For those pieces that didn't have any such stem, I added toothpicks. This is to prevent birds, squirrels, and wind from tossing these objects around. I secured lengths of the boxwood garland with regular U pin hairpins.

For the loose leaves, I made stems using hot glue and toothpicks. To make inserting the pieces easier, I used a wood skewer to pre-poke holes.

Ready to see the finished product? Drumroll, please.

And here's one of the finished planters.

My front porch is looking ready for harvest season, which will carry us through Thanksgiving. I'll switch out the planters with something wintry the first of December.

So, costs -- 

I spent $15 plus tax at Dollar Tree to create both arrangements. That's $7.50 each! I also spent $18.50 plus tax on the two coir trough liners.  The second expense is for reusable parts of the troughs that will be used 4 seasons of the year for a long time. I think my costs are pretty reasonable, and I created something very similar to an autumnal window box that I had seen online.

Lunch Meat for Less: Home-Smoked Chicken Breast

While I was using the smoker to smoke the short ribs on Monday, I threw a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the smoker. I used some of the leftover rub from the ribs on these chicken pieces and put them directly on the interior racks. I kept the smoker at about 225 degrees F during the time the chicken was in there. After about an hour of smoking (and when the interiors reached about 130-135 degrees F), I wrapped the chicken breasts in foil. It only took about another 20 minutes to bring them up to 160 degrees F in the thickest parts. 

At that point I removed them from the smoker but left them in the foil on a plate. The temperature rose to 165 degrees F in that resting period. After they cooled (about 15 additional minutes), I refrigerated them wrapped in the foil and inside a plastic bag.

We used one of the smoked breasts cubed and in a main dish salad for dinner on Tuesday. Today, Wednesday, I thin sliced the other breast for 4 sandwiches at lunch time.

I paid about $2.29 to $2.49 per pound for the boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I figure they lost some water weight in the smoker. So maybe my finished cost per pound for the smoked chicken is around $2.75, or up to $3.00/lb. The least expensive chicken breast lunchmeat I can find at Walmart runs about $7.00 per pound.

I realize I could also simply bake chicken breasts for lunch meat. But the taste of the smoked chicken really elevated the taste of our sandwiches. The chicken was tasty, unsalted with exception to the spice rub on the outside of the meat, lean, and moist. I also didn't incur additional cost to use the smoker for the chicken, as I was already smoking something that day. The only drawback of home-smoked that I can see is that because it doesn't have any preservatives, it likely doesn't keep very long in the fridge. We used the meat up within 3 days. If I wanted to keep the smoked meat longer, I'd freeze it in portions.

I will definitely add seasoned chicken breasts to the smoker on other days that I have another piece of meat in there.