I know it’s past the 4th of July, but patriotic decor will be up in my home until its time for fall decorations. I love celebrating the 4th of July. I love celebrating the United States of America, so we celebrate all summer. I am so thankful I was born in this great country, I am so thankful for the men and women who serve and sacrifice so that I may enjoy freedoms. I like to add a new piece of decor each year and with our summer home project being outside on our side yard, I thought adding a new patriotic piece for our backyard would be perfect.

This project is so quick and easy! I’m talking a few cans of spay paint and one hour easy (my kind of project). The hubby surprised me a few weeks ago by bringing home a few pallets he found for free! Yippee! You can find tons of great pallet projects on Pinterest, but I wanted to start with one that didn’t require the pallet taken apart.

First determine how big you want your flag. I wanted an equal amount of red stripes and blue stripes on my flag, so the hubby used his circular saw to cut the pallet down to 6 boards. I also wanted all the boards to be the same width, so we removed the end board since it was slightly wider than the rest. Four easy cuts with the saw and my pallet was ready to be painted.

After cutting down to size I taped off the area that would be blue with stars. I spray painted the blue and taped off the areas for the red stripes.

After spray painting the red stripes, I used paint leftover from our picket fence to paint the white stripes. The white paint is actual “outdoor” paint and it will be interesting to see if the spray paint holds up as well, better, or worse than the outdoor paint.

I printed a star template using my computer, cut it out and used it as a guide as I hand painted the stars. I didn’t have a stencil but that would have made painting the stars a snap! I used a technique I use all the time when painting on wood and its super easy…. firmly trace around the shape, letter, graphic etc. with an old pen. The pen indents the wood creating a groove that is easy to follow when painting by hand.

I love the splash of red, white, and blue it adds to our backyard! I think I might keep my pallet flag up all year; it will be striking in the winter against all that snow!