I never knew how much I loved fall, until I had a home of my own to decorate. We have lived in our house for 9 years and I have decorated our mantle, front door, our table and now I am focusing on the front entrance of our home for each holiday and season. I love how welcoming a decorated fall front entrance can make your home and how easy it is to do!
Why The Front Entrance?
I have always loved the front of our home. It has a little bistro sitting area, a porch hammock swing and some amazing acoustics when those Colorado storms roll in. However, I have never really taken the time to decorate each holiday season. I do have flag bunting that we put up for the summer and obviously we decorate for Christmas, but everything in between, my front entrance is just a little drab.
As you can tell by the color of our front door, I like to stick out just a bit, so adding some flare to our front entrance was something I have been wanting to do for a bit! However, that flare needs to be done on a budget, and so I took $100.00 and went shopping!
Changeable Holiday Welcome Sign
I spent about $20.00 on the supplies for the “Welcome” sign and purchased all the pieces at Michaels. The sign itself only took about 10 minutes to make, which was awesome, but it will be out year round because I plan to change out the “O” with various holiday symbols throughout the year.
Since the stores are currently carrying fall and Halloween decor, I grabbed some wooden leaves and a wooden pumpkin to be my “O”s as well as the wooden letters that spell out the rest of, “Welcome”. I hot glued the white letters down, although, I have since had to re-glue them down with wood glue because the head of the sun did not hold the hot glue well.
Once the white letters were glued down, I went to work on creating an “O” out of the wooden leaves. I used hot glue to adhere these to each other as well. The hot glue has held these together just fine, so I have not had to make any fixes to this. It was a simple overlap in the shape of an “O” as you can see in the photo below.
Once the wreath of leaves was made, I placed a small piece of velcro on the back to make it easy to change out this “letter” on the sign. Hot glue has still held up well here.
I also placed velcro (the same grain) and then placed the opposite grain velcro on the board. I did put a tiny nail through the velcro on the board to make sure that it stands the test of time for a while. I tested out both the leaf wreath and pumpkin in the space to make sure I had the placement perfect.
I then nailed the sign to a wooden stake (although it does come with a string to hang it) and placed it in an old potted plant by the front door. I added dollar store bunches of mums, which, are a classic fall color and will be easy to change out with each of the seasons.
The result is beautiful and really brings the warmth to our front entrance that I was hoping for. It will be easy to change with each season and I am excited to see everything come together as I swap out decor through the year.
Easy Pumpkin Towers
I wasn’t done at the $20 welcome sign. I wanted to make some of those amazing pumpkin towers that you see all over Pinterest, but rarely see in people’s actual homes. I had the perfect bases from some Christmas trees that I knew would be great. All I needed was some varied size pumpkins and a wooden dowels to make this work and be able to change it out as the seasons change as well. For about $25.00 I snagged all these items and was ready to get to crafting.
I took the large white pumpkins and removed the stem. I then poked the wooden dowel through the center of the pumpkin. It is really important that you do this slowly and keep it center or it will not look right. My black vase bases have a concrete bottom with a hole in the center, so I made sure that the wooden dowels fit into the hole and pushed the pumpkin all the way down, so it sat flush on the vase. I then added some hot glue to hold it in place.
Next, I added a medium sized pumpkin in the same manner. I cut the excess dowel off at the top of the pumpkin so that the next layer can just sit nicely atop and not poke all the way through. I did leave just enough that there would be about an inch of the wooden dowel in the top layer. I added a dollop of hot glue and placed the small final pumpkin atop it.
I then added a few little leaves and berries to it with some hot glue to give it a little flare. I looks super sharp and natural on the front porch. I am really glad that I went with the more antique and natural looking pumpkins instead of the classic orange ones and that I chose varying colors.
I made two of these, to frame the entrance. You could go larger if you would like, but our entrance is already framed in, so I was ok with these being just a little smaller. They turned out great and will be easy to alternate other fun decor through the year in and out of them.
Final Fall Front Entrance Touches
Pumpkin towers and welcome signs done, only left a few small things to decorate. I bought some strands of leaves to drape around the door and the hand railing as well as some scarecrows to put in the flower beds. The cost of these were $15.00, for a grand total spent in decor of $60.00. I came in $40.00 under budget and my home looks so pretty!
Everything really pulled together nicely and looks very nice. It is clean and sharp and everything matches well. I will say that the week after I decorated we had our house painted and that really made everything stand out even more with the bright whites and new reds that we painted the house in.
I used a staple gun to put the leaves around the door, but my husband suggested installing those little white hooks around the door as permanent fixtures to keep things in place without causing more holes in the molding. We are doing this after we take down the leaves in a few weeks.
I can’t wait to share more of our front entrance decor with everyone. I know this is going to be one of my most favorite projects of the year and that it will continue to bring happiness to those that walk up to our home and to us as well!
