Welcome, Fall

 For me, the changing of the seasons means excitement and promise.  Each season has it’s own specialness that makes it unique. But there is none that I look forward to more than autumn. After the relentless heat and humidity of summer, the cooler days are more pleasant and the rich colors of foliage seem to celebrate the change and rejoice in the beauty of the earth. All those pumpkin, warm apple and cinnamon aromas remind me that plentiful family time is just around the corner, too. It just doesn’t get better than that.

Plus, I get to decorate the house like crazy! The most I do for summer decorating is changing out sofa pillows. Believe it or not, flip flops and inner tubes don’t make good living room decor and swimsuits drying in the bathroom don't count. So when that first day of fall hits, it’s a week of mayhem in my house, and it is worth every minute.

This year, I pulled out all the stops because of the great people over at LaughingMooseGifts.com. It all started with this simple little Hello Fall sign. I knew I wanted to put it on the front porch to greet guests and show my enthusiasm for the coming months, but when I took the “before” picture of my front door, I realized how bad it looked. I was actually embarrassed at how dinged up and dirty that not-so-white abyss was.

Now I’ve been meaning to paint my front door for years, but never found the time. So after feeling rightfully shamed, I grabbed my go-to paint colors and ran down to the home improvement store. Five hours later, I had a beautiful front door in Bunglehouse Blue (SW0048) and nice, creamy white trim.

The next day, I was finally able to get down to decorating. When Michael’s had their fall foliage on sale for 70% off a few weeks ago, I took advantage of it. Decorating my entire front porch (which is small)  cost me less than $100 and that’s including $48 in paint and I have to say that it's by far my favorite porch ever. In the past, I've made some half hearted attempts at decorating , but this year, I wanted a really full and lush porch. Look at this beauty.

The large floral display was a challenge. I knew my planter was tall and I was going to need some major height to make the display look proportional.  But since no one can see the back, I knew I could skimp on that section. So I focused all my attention on the front and sides. I started by placing  the tallest stem in the back and then shortening the other stems and adding them to the sides. It creates a triangle shape that brings attention to the center. I then placed the white pumpkin as the focal point in front and filled in around it with the rest of the colored stems. (Designer tip: for structured pieces like this, make sure there are no gaps in between flowers to create a lush look. ) Now if you'll remember a previous designer tip, mixing cheap with expensive is perfectly acceptable. I bet you can't tell which of these flowers came from the $1 store. They're right next the ones that had a $9.99 price tag at Michael’s!

Once I got the floral arrangement set, I added the hay bale and the pumpkins, but something was still missing. Now there are 2 options to decorating any space. A. Go big, and I mean BIG! B. Go minimal. There is no in between. Anything else looks underwhelming.  Since my minimal hasn't worked in the past, I tried the other approach and went full to the max.

 The hay bale had a lot of unused space that stuck out as stark and the door looked bare compared to the display next to it. So I added more pine cones, the sign and a wreath to make it  look much fuller and well thought out. Those were the perfect finishing touches.

 So that wraps up my fall decorating this year, and I am very pleased with how things turned out. How about you? I would love to see your fall decorations! Just leave some pictures in the comments below.