Picking up some household items at Target this week, I was shocked with the amount of stuff that was available for fall/Halloween decorating. Yikes. And once you buy all that stuff, it’s used usually for less than a month than stored the rest of the year. Buying a whole bunch of holiday decorations just doesn’t make financial sense to me. Plus in our small house I don’t know where we would put tons of decorations.
I enjoy watching huge displays in front of houses, so if this is your thing, feel free to keep on doing it. But, if decorating is just another to do, I’ll show you how to get it done fast.
Our fall decorations took less than 1/2 hour to put up. We got the brown tote from the basement marked FALL. All our decorations are in one area. All the holidays have one tote only except for Christmas which has a few more.
My daughter and I took everything out and decided to throw out the orange candles that weren’t really orange anymore and were bent funny, along with a couple items we hadn’t been putting out because they were just too tacky.
We started on the porch where we put up our autumn wreath. Then made a seasonal display on the little table. We have an all season stone house I got at a craft fair a few years back that we use all the times of the year. To that we added a scarecrow. And anytime we go for a walk we pick up leaves to put around them. When they get crispy we discard them. And we added some apple spice potpourri to the three terri cotta small pots that hang on the wall in a metal display to make it smell nicely. We change scents with the seasons.
In the living room we put away the summer decorations. The grouping on the entertainment center is a candle in small leaf brass holder, a picture of an autumn tree made of polished stone chips and a glass vase filled with autumn things. Each year the grouping can be different. A scarecrow is put over the door handle, a stuffed black cat goes on the cat house and the living room is done.
The last step is the fall towels that go in the bathroom.
The kitchen always seems like fall with apples, pears, cider and autumnal bounty.
Do you have any quick decorating tips?
My favorite decoration is a garland of silk fall leaves. I have 8 of them, two of each of 4 kinds. I always put out 4 of them & sometimes more. I am able to drape them on the mantel, around the TV etc in different rooms. It gives it the fall feel without a lot of fuss.
I put up a wreath on my door and that is about all that I do any more for the fall. I do more at Christmas.