Fall Décor with Shelf Life


Sometimes it’s hard to justify spending time and money on Halloween decorations, when, in no time, you’ll be taking them down again.

Blogger Melissa Quigley has the solution: Halloween décor, that with a few tweaks, becomes Thanksgiving decor.


Fall is my favorite season! I love to look for ways to enjoy it for as long as possible. It’s fun to look for unexpected & unique ways to decorate for this time of year. Not just the usual set out the carved pumpkins on the porch for Halloween & then throw them away the next day. I enjoy using pumpkins & gourds in my décor, inside & out, all autumn season long. That’s why I try to look for ways to showcase them & surround them with other great accessories.

At our house we don’t carve all our pumpkins for Halloween night. I want to preserve them well into the fall so only a few get carved. I look for ways to bring in other types of lighting to cast an erry glow on our porch for all the Trick or Treaters. I do this using a vintage grater collection I have & an assortment of glass bottles of various shapes & sizes to use as lanterns. I fill up the glass jars with black sunflower seeds, at all different levels, & place tea lights & candles in them. I line them up & down our stairs & love how it looks. The best part is they can all be brought in & used as a centerpiece placed on your table for a Thanksgiving feast. Do be careful when moving the graters & glass jars because they do get very hot after burning for awhile.

Another way to add aspiring décor in your home is using light fixtures inside. I have 2 pendulum lights that hang above my kitchen island & I dress them up on holidays or special occasions with colorful garlands, fringe, fabric banners you name it.

I look to see what I have around the house that could be turned into some sort of banner. For example, taking strips of frayed fabric or rolls of receipt tape & looping or tying them onto the light fixtures for some instant décor. This can be changed easily for any holiday or special celebration.

Nothing says Halloween more than black & white. I recently came across some old family black & white photos of my ancestors that I thought would be a perfect to decorate with. Their solemn faces & grim demeanors in the pictures are just begging to be dressed up a bit to put out on display for Halloween. I didn’t want to ruin the pictures so I embellished them, using low tack tape, with a glittered witch hat on a little head & placed a paper pumpkin at their feet to get them in the Halloween spirit. Display them in frames or place in a glass apothecary jar.

Don’t put them away after Halloween is over you can still display them for Thanksgiving & the season of being with family & showing gratitude. I simply clipped the photos onto some wooden clipboards that I have. Tied some ribbons to the top of each clipboard to add a splash of color & placed them in a grouping in a wired basket. These would look great set out on a table surrounded by a pumpkin, squash or two.

Another fun way I like to welcome guests into our home is with our vintage black typewriter we have. It has long been retired but is still as cool to look at as ever! Since ours is out of typing order I just use my computer to type out the message & print it out. If you have a typewriter that works fantastic, if not the idea is still the same. It’s fun to write a spooky welcoming Halloween message for trick or treaters to see & then it transitions to fall with a new sheet of paper.

As a family we write down at least 7 things that we are grateful for. I type the list up & feed it through the typewriter. That way as we pass our entryway each day, we are reminded of all the blessings that we enjoy as a family.

Last is a big decorative statement on our porch for the holidays. Welcome it in with a bang by making a large wooden sign to either hang or display by your front door.

I used an old wooden garage door panel for mine but you would easily get a long, wide board or some old shutters & use the same technique to really make a statement this holiday season. You can either leave the wood as is or slap on a fresh coat of paint. Either print out some vinyl letters, which is what I did, or you could stencil on your message. Really simple to do & it makes a fun welcoming message for your guests.



You can find more everyday decorating, entertaining ideas & products for sale on my blog, www.hollyhocks-honeybees.blogspot.com.

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