Budget Friendly Fall Decor Items

How many times do you decorate your house throughout the seasons each year?

Are you a once around Christmas time person, or do you go all out with each season/holiday and do it 4-5 times a year? Think about all the themes we could use to decorate our homes; Winter, Valentine’s Day, St. Patty’s Day, Easter, Spring, Memorial Day, Summer, 4^th of July, Fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years…and I am sure I’m missing many more! Gosh, that is a lot! Even if we pick a few of those a year that is a significant amount of time pulling out, setting up, and storing all our home décor stuff. And jeez, think about how expensive that can all be! Good thing there are LOTS of affordable and easy-to-store options when it comes to decorating your home. Today I am going to share with you some tips and tricks for some really inexpensive ways to make your home feel fall festive.

First, I select the areas in which I will decorate. This year it will be our family room mantle, kitchen table and console table in the foyer (not pictured below because I haven’t had time to decorate that one yet). I clear off everything first to clean and start with a fresh canvas for my creativity to flourish. The foundation of my decor is always silk flowers. Of course, I love real flowers but for us that is WAY too expensive to keep up each season. What’s great about faux flowers is you that can keep them to reuse throughout the year, or at the very least the next season, which certainly saves money over time. I typically purchase my flowers from Michael’s, A.C. Moore and the Dollar Tree. When shopping, I look for sales, use coupons and usually go at the end of each selling season to find super-cheap items to add to my collection for the following year. I also look for inexpensive but rather large items to take up space and offer a variety to our décor. A few examples here would be faux pumpkins, picture frames, wood signs, vases or something to hold arrangements, candles and pine cones. As you can see, I incorporated many of these into our mantle display.

Our coffee table (custom made by my hubby – check him out @root_and_ore) is a frequent play area for Kade, so I use a simple arrangement that I can easily move on and off the table. It is a clear cube vase (found at Michael’s or Amazon) that I filled with RICE! Yes that’s right, dry rice. And some years I have used popcorn kernels. It doesn’t get much more fall festive than that!! I fill the cube about 2/3 with either rice or corn and then start to build the arrangement by sticking the flower stems deep into the rice or corn so you can no longer see the stems. This is one of my secret tips!!! Rice and corn not only look super cool and are totally festive for the fall season, but are also extremely affordable!

Our kitchen, dining, and family room areas are set up as an open floor plan where you can see most of each room from the others. So I try to make sure our décor flows nicely from room to room, often incorporating the same items and, at the very least, the same colors. Our farmhouse table seats 10 but I typically have it set for 8 and add the other two place settings when necessary. Last year Spencer built a wood décor box to my desired measurements for our table. Here I “cheat” a bit and use floral foam that I cut to take up space in the box and then add the flowers/décor on top so I don’t have to fill the entire depth of the box. Each place setting has a dark brown charger plate with embossed leaves around the edges, cream dinner plate from The Dollar Tree (the ones I bought for Kade’s First Birthday Party), brown linen napkin, flower napkin ring, gold flatware, “S” coaster we handmade for our wedding, and mason jar. Typically I would have nice, real flatware but here I cheated again and found gold plastic flatware from Michael’s. When serving only 8 people I have food staged on each end of the table. This year I will be using a gorgeous cutting board Spencer made for us. I love how pretty it is and how well it fits in with rustic decor! So much so that I haven’t even used it yet. But don’t worry, that will change soon!

A few things to keep in mind when searching for decorations. Cater to your space, don’t force it by trying to add too much stuff. A cluttered space is not appealing. Keep your color palette in mind when decorating from room to room to keep a good flow throughout your home. For your dining space, charger plates and linen napkins are two simple, elegant and affordable ways to elevate your table décor. And most of all have fun with it! Decorating should give you a sense of joy and pride every time you walk into the room! Be sure to tag me when you post your festive fall décor pics… I would love to see them!

Leave a comment below on how you like to decorate your home for fall!

It wouldn’t be fall without some sort of apple based drink to sip on! And since its still pretty warm outside, we opted to leave the hot cider for later in the month and go with a nice cold treat! So as promised, here is our Apple Cider Slushie Recipe, both kid-friendly and adult varieties.