…that looks FANTASTIC and won’t break the bank!
The holidays are upon us, and we took a few fun hours this week to get the house looking festive for fall. The essential ingredient to home decorating for the holidays, is to save and store what you buy over the years, use what you already have on hand, add some on-sale items, candles and bows you’ve saved from earlier in the year, and of course: GOURDS!
Here at Practically Perfect Planner, we love us some gourds and pumpkins. It has been a tradition since our family first got together, for us to go to the store and pick out the pumpkins and the gourds for our fall decorations. We’d come home, pick out a teacup, have a nice tea and get everything together. It’s something I was honestly SO looking forward to this year, and we’re extra excited to be able to share it with others too!
We found items in the floral department at 50% off, and we swooped in to grab our favorites. We headed to our local Vons, which we love. We even have a really wonderful lady who helps us in the floral department. She turned us on to “sparkle pumpkins” which are really pretty little pumpkins that last longer than most!
So we grabbed our pumpkins, gourds, indian corn, and pinecones and headed home to set up our staging area. With everything on sale, we got everything we needed for $48, and that will last us for decorations through Halloween, Thanksgiving, and even into Christmas (like cinnamon scented pine cones)! That’s three months of décor, that averages out to about $12 a month…not bad! Some of the items like the corn & pinecones can be saved so we don’t have to buy them again next year.
The best way to get started on actually decorating is to assess the “focus points” in your home. The places where everyone will be looking, where you love in your home, and where décor will stand out the most. Or just a place you’d LIKE to bring focus to. That way you know what needs to go where and if it will all fit. The other fantastic benefit of choosing focus points, is then you can simply pick up and move any piece that you’ve placed out into another area all season long. It’ll give you some variety with virtually NO work other than some rearranging. One of our “focus points” is our kitchen table:
And another is the little area next to our bar. It’s a great spot for people to grab snacks and drinks during parties so we love to keep that little nook looking festive. Here’s a before shot of what we’re going to be working with:
Coffee tables, entrances, dining room tables, kitchen counters, etc are great places to start in developing focus points in your own casa.
Next, it’s important to take inventory of what you already have. It’s not about how much you can spend to buy new items, but about how much you can save in both time and money by freshening up what you already have! We can’t wait to show you how our Fall Centerpiece turned out, as well as how we brightened up our focus points in our next post. But first: here’s a quick run-down of our fall decorating afternoon:
1. Finding our focus points by figuring out the spots we love MOST…
2. Assessing what we have already saved from last year, that stays beautiful and saves us some serious bucks!
3. Finding the best time to head to the market to get some on-sale fresh fall items to brighten everything up
4. Set up a staging area to get everything all set to decorate!
5. GROUNDING our displays using existing bowls, charger plates, larger plates, or placemats we love. (We’re gonna talk a LOT about grounding, as it’s absolutely essential when decorating and totally an *event basic*.)
5. Pour ourselves a cup of autumn-y sweet cinnamon tea, and GET TO WORK!
What are some of your fall decorating traditions? Do you have favorite piece or a favorite spot to decorate every year? We’d love to hear your comments and look forward to showing you the rest of our handywork tomorrow!
