Transform Winter Lawn 'Ornaments' To Easy Holiday Pots

By Phran Novelli

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Didn't I just tell you to empty out your pots? Well, let's fill them up again! Containers that can withstand winter weather outside shouldn't stand bare through the season.

Sometimes it seems like too much bother or expense to fill them - that was what my friend Chris was thinking until the other day when the wind blew a branch from her neighbor's white pine tree into her yard. She found the easiest way to get rid of it was to cut it up - so she just stuffed the boughs of pine into her outdoor pots, urns and windowboxes. Then, she snipped some burgundy branches from her red-twig dogwoods, bits of broadleaf evergreens, and added extra color with a few fruits from her crape myrtle and the winterberries that the birds hadn't gobbled up quite yet. Adorable.

And just like that, her yard is decorated for the holidays with pots full of fresh, festive garden goodies that didn't cost her a penny!

So, clean up your yard - pine cones, boughs of holly, pretty twigs and evergreens - and see what you can find to fill up your pots.