Fall Decor

Having never owned a house before, Matt and I had never really gone all out decorating for the different seasons. So, we decided to take a bit of a break from major renovations and get in the spirit of the season by putting up some fall decor.

I didn't bother taking pictures of some of the little things we did around the house like changing out our white candles for butterscotch colored, "harvest" scented candles on our mantle. Our switching out our white candle in our kitchen for an apple scented jar candle.

Some of the larger projects we tried included making a wreath for the door to our mother-in-law room off of our main entrance hallway and setting up a cute little fall area outside our side door (and main entrance of our house). I'm super happy with how both turned out. The original brainstorming resulted in trying to come up with projects that we could put out (at least partially) in September and, with a few modifications along the way, could last us through November.

The first thing I made was the wreath. For a grand total of $15 (everything either on sale or 40% off couponed at Michaels), I picked up the following items:

A ready-made, grapevine wreath

Two packages of burgundy/orange/green berries (on the left side of the above picture)

Two packages of burgundy, orange, and clearish, crystal berries (I intended to use these sporadically throughout the wreath, but after I got the first set on, decided I loved the wreath as it was and didn't end up using them. I still like them though, so I kept them for use in some future project some day.)

1 yard of ribbon

I already had the thread.

I started by laying down the wreath and unwinding my berries. Then, I just started covering the wreath with the berries and tying it off with thread periodically to make sure nothing moved. You can see that some berries fell off the wire as I attached it, I just cut my losses on those and kept going. The wreath looked great without the berries that fell off, so I wasn't too stressed about it.

Here's a close-up shot of the wreath when I was about halfway done:

When everything was done, I tied the ribbon in a bow and Matt patiently held it in various spots around the house while I decided where it would ultimately live. Here's Matt holding it up to the front door:

I finally decided that I liked it on the door of the mother-in-law room. And here's my finished fall wreath hanging in it's final spot:

With my wreath in place, I turned my attention outside. Since we went from college life to apartment living, we had never had trick or treaters. I wanted to set up an area by our side door that looked a little festive. I did not want to devote a ton of time or money to this project, and I wanted it to last all season.

I stopped by a local garden supply store near our house and picked up the following items (along with some bundles of firewood, the grand total came to just under 40 bucks):
3 hay bales
2 mums (one yellow plant and one burgundy plant)
2 corn stalks

On the same trip to Michaels that I picked up the supplies for the wreath, I also picked up:
1 large Funkin (fake, carvable pumpkins)
1 small Funkin
1 small can of Chalkboard spraypaint

I set the haybales up on the edge of our deck next to our door. I used some planters that I had used for now-dead plants over the summer and planted the mums. Matt and I headed to Bengston Pumpkin Farm one day and picked up two very large pumpkins, one medium-sized pie pumpkin, two small pie pumpkins, several mini-pumpkins, several gourds, one medium-sized white pumpkin, and one medium-sized green and white pumpkin.

With all of my supplies acquired, I set to work!

I used the chalkboard spraypaint and completely covered each of the Funkins. I then used some orange chalk that we keep around for when our nephews and/or cousins visit to draw jack-o-lantern faces and write Halloween themed messages on the chalkboard funkins. I arranged the Funkins along with the mums, other pumpkins, and several gourds on the haybales for this finished product:

This arangement was re-arranged about a million times prior taking it down, but this was one option that was up for a short time. At this point, I had "Happy Halloween" and "Boo" written on the chalkboard Funkins. And just for fun, here's a night shot:

So, that wraps up our fall decor. Hopefully, it will be a little more elaborate next year. But, I'm pretty happy with the outcome of this year's decor. What do you think?