Decorating My Front Porch for Fall

This week I went to my favorite local farmers’ market and picked up several pumpkins to add some fall color to my front porch. I love all of the interesting colors and shapes of the pumpkins and gourds there – putting a mix of them on my front porch was a simple way to decorate for the fall season. 

I had to buy new planters too because my old urn planters kept blowing over and were a mess so I picked up these two planters that were on clearance at Home Depot for $20 each.

My original plan was to plant mums in each of them but honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I’m just not a big fan of mums. (I had to say that quietly because I know that 99% of you girls love your mums and I wanted to minimize the gasps of horror at my confession.) I do love all of the pretty fall colors that mums come in and I can absolutely appreciate a pretty front porch that has been decorated using them but I just don’t love the look of the blooms. As you know, there aren’t a ton of other flower options out there this time of year so I decided to try a combination or ornamental corn and millet. I placed the ornamental corn in the back of planters to add some height. It’s hard to tell when you’re far away, but up close you can see the pretty striping of the leaves and the small colorful cobs of corn.

In the front, I planted ornamental millet, which has these great cattail-like plumes with a really cool texture. Home Depot has huge millet planters for $22.95, which I split in half for use in my two planters.

Since I had to spend money on new planters this fall, I didn’t want to buy a new wreath so I just pimped out my wreath from last Christmas. 

It is a Smith & Hawkins star anise wreath that I bought from Target last year and it was my favorite wreath purchase ever because not only did I love the look of it, but the licorice smell of the star anise was amazing and lasted for months. 

To turn it into a fall wreath, I added a burlap bow from Ballards – I buy a bunch of them after Christmas every year when they go on clearance. Then I took two mini pumpkins and a gourd, drilled a pair of holes in the back of each of them, inserted a piece of floral wire into each hole as far as it would go, and then hot glue gunned the wire in place. I then stuck each piece the wire through the front of the wreath until it came out through the back where I twist tied the two pieces of wire together to secure the pumpkins in place. Doing it this way, I didn’t have to use any hot glue on the wreath itself so I can remove the pumpkins in a few weeks and still use the wreath for Christmas.

While Target doesn’t sell the star anise wreath anymore, it’s a simple one to DIY – see my post about my DIY star anise wreaths {here}.  If you love the smell of black licorice, you will LOVE having a star anise wreath!

Since I haven’t ever shared any pictures of the exterior of our home and since I know you all love “before & after” pics, I thought you might like seeing what our front entry looked like when we bought our house compared to what it looks like now:

What do you think? For loads of other ideas about decorating your outdoor entry for fall, be sure to check out this post if you haven’t already seen it. Have a great weekend everyone!