JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Yesterday I saw a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook asking, "Have y'all started your fall decorating? What do you plan to do this year?" Well, I can tell you what I plan to do this year; the same thing I've done for the past four years - stick a single, uncarved pumpkin on my front porch with three hurricane lamps clustered around it. The lamps have lumpy, quarter-burnt candles in them that I will light again at 4:30 PM October 31st and blow out at 8:30. (I'll also have a large bowl of candy left out, because we have so few Trick or Treaters I would rather they forage what they like than having to deal with the dogs racing out of the door barking their heads off before collapsing in confusion.)
Here's the thing: I actually love artfully decorated porches. I do. I scroll though Instagram shots and magazine articles admiring them. The barriers I always come up against are 1) time and 2) money. I look at some of these over-the-top Autumnal Extravaganzas and think, "Who has the time to hang, wire, prop, stack and arrange all this - and then water the potted flowers every day and re-set anything the dog or kids inadvertently brushed against?"
Like the above, from Country Living. There's a LOT going on. I live in the actual country, and I can tell you, it doesn't look like this, unless the owners of that house also have a three cords of wood waiting to be stacked just out of the picture frame.
Or you could go for the extremely tasteful and subdued arrangement you find here, courtesy of Home Bunch Design. This homeowner gives out bags of roasted chickpeas to the neighborhood kids on Halloween.
Technically, Halloween is a separate decorating opportunity for the hard core home decor blogger types, but you can also put this kind of tableau, seen in Homecrux, up as early as - well, September 7, according to my FB friend. This is really cute, right? But take a look. At least one of the pumpkins is painted. There are four different twinkle light elements - how are those even plugged in? (I assume the skulls run on batteries.) And the candles! There are twelve candles I can see. Do you light them every night? And you know the people in this house aren't letting their candles get burnt and blobby looking like mine.
I mentioned number 2) money up above, right? Look at this absolutely gorgeous display from The Glam Pad. Anyone like to guess what that costs? Anyone? Don't forget to add in the fee for the floral designer, because I am 100% certain this is a professional job. One year I went absolutely nuts and got three flat, stacking pumpkins for the stone urns out front. It cost me $80! That's more than it costs for a half-day splitter rental from the hardware store (for splitting the cord of wood on my driveway, of course.)
This design from Rocket Homes? This I could actually do. I have a chair, black wellies, plaid stuff. (The other question I often have is where do people store the decorative items for the ten or eleven months of the year? Do you think the Halloween house above has a whole closet filled with glowing skulls and punny gravestones?) Of course, my black front door is a lot more scuffed than in this picture. And I'd have to move the snow melt and snow shovel into the barn for a while (don't judge.) Maybe I'll give it a try, and see if having a bit of fancy fall decor on my own front porch elevates my life... or turns me into a junkie haunting the sales at Michael's Crafts.
How about you, dear readers? Do dec? Or not do dec?
Those are all so lovely to look at, but none of them will be happening here. If hard-pressed, I could come up with a patchwork pumpkin, a stuffed jack-o-lantern, and maybe an orange basket to decorate somewhere in the house [perhaps in the sunroom], but that’s about as far as it goes . . . .
ReplyDeleteI think we had actual knock-on-the-door trick-or-treaters stop here once, but we're really not expecting anyone to show up. Just in case, however, I will buy some chocolate . . . .
It's always good to prep ahead, Joan! Last year, I didn't get any trick-or-treaters at all, but I'm still buying TWO bags of chocolates this year!
DeleteNah, not a decorator. When the kids were young, I would do a bit around the front door, plug in the lit-up skull, and we always carved pumpkins and put lights in them. We'd also get a hay bale and create a stuffed farmer to sit on it. Now? I suppose my Halloween box is moldering in the basement.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'll get a mum this year. And maybe not. I did want a picture of your actual front porch, Julia!
Edith, right now my actual front porch is a materials-storage spot for working in the garden, so my "decor" consists of bags of soil, dirty work gloves, empty plastic pots and the aforementioned snowmelt. (It's heavy! And hard to move!) The shovel I've got NO excuse for. Thank God I don't live in suburbia.
DeleteI am not a decorator. My mom did that kind of stuff but for me I don't see the point of putting forth all the effort of decorating stuff only to turn around and have to take it down later on. I'll just leave things "blank" and save myself the effort.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of my attitude, Jay. I mean, I have a hard enough time trying to keep up with the regular cleaning and yard work. I don't need to add "Macy's window decorator" to my jobs list.
DeleteI have autumn leaf garland that I bought at Michael’s a few years ago. Sometimes I remember to hang it over the fake mantle.
ReplyDeleteDebRo
DebRo, that made me laugh out loud. You're my kind of people.
DeleteWe used to decorate inside and out and have Halloween Birthday parties, too. Not any more. I brought the decorations that were still in good shape down to Delaware last week and gave them to Rachel's boys. They decorate now and go all out. We go out to dinner. I still bake my own birthday cake;-))
ReplyDeleteMaybe the elaborate front porch is a young person's game, Judy. The you get older and realize, "I don't have to throw a party, I can just take myself to a good restaurant!"
DeleteMy Halloween decorating ended when the last kid started to highschool. When we moved into this house, I usually bought a pumpkin or two, and I've been known to carve one and stick a light in it. Also used to buy those big potted mums. And try to get them planted in the garden and nursed thru the winter.
ReplyDeleteNot any more. I really don't care. We'll have plenty of candy for the trick or treaters. The number has ranged between seven and a hundred. Very inconsistent but going steadily down.
Can mums last through the winter, Ann? Because I'd feel less like I'm tossing money away if that $20 container didn't die on me every year.
DeleteNot a green thumb person, but the very smart lady at the nursery said to the mums live through the winter they must be planted in the ground below the freeze line. In pots all the soil freezes and the plants die. This nursery is in CT. Further north who knows.
DeleteI don’t possess the decorative gene but I enjoyed your pictures, especially the Glam Pad one.
ReplyDeleteI did a little decoration when my daughter was at home but I didn’t for a long time now.
I think a lot of us put in some effort when we had kids - I used to get a pumpkin for each one, and we would carve them, and I had some fake webbing and would put out a witch dummy. Because it was fun for them.
DeleteLike you, Julia, I love looking at these things. Doing them? No way. When the kids were small I managed Halloween, but that's about it. Too much time and yes, too much money.
ReplyDeleteYes, and once the kids are out of the house and at college, the equation becomes: five pots of mums? Or that biology textbook he needs?
DeleteI prefer simple. Since my house cannot be seen from the road until all the leaves are off, I simply do not bother to decorate. or I could say nature does my decorating for me, and sometimes in a good way.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of what I have here, Judi! Although my neighbors can see my porch and dooryard, much to their regret, I'm sure. At least in my small country neighborhood everyone has come to a kind of silent agreement not to deal with the leaves until most all of them are down.
DeleteWe lived in a small rural area of Ontario when the kids were young. Everyone packed their kids (dressed in snowsuits under their costumes) in the car and drove from house to house (farm to farm). Some people left their treats in a bowl on the doorstep – Mom was usually driving, Dad was in the barn milking and others left a parent or an older sibling to pass out the treats. Kids took what they wanted. One old guy gave out those giant costing-more-than-a-dollar chocolate bars to the few kids who came to him (most people thought he was weird). There was one family that gave out organic raisins and nuts – long before organic was a thing. No decorations, just a light, but it didn’t matter, none of the kids went as the ‘candy was icky!’
ReplyDeleteBy the way the unwritten rule was if there was a pumpkin out and the light was on, you were welcome. Once all the treats were gone, the light went out, and no one knocked – nice-right!
The one thing we did was carve out pumpkins – at least one for each of us. Then a candle was put in and lit and hopefully it didn’t sizzle out too soon. The best part was after Halloween, we would drive around the area and ask for other people’s pumpkins (we always liked the ones that were only marker-decorated the best, and then the kids tossed them hard (so they would break) into the sheep pen. They loved them – almost as good as zucchini!
Margo, that sounds absolutely wonderful! What a delightful memory. I recognized several elements from my childhood, or even my own kids', until you got to the tossing pumpkins in the sheep pen part!
DeleteHa ha ha ha ha….. falling off chair in peals of laughter. Not a chance in the world. Besides, who is coming over? This is a realm of the universe that is completely alien to me.
ReplyDeleteWow. Exotic. Extensive. Julia, you are wonderfully introducing me to a whole new world of things that I am not going to do. But I have to say, it is wonderful to wake up and laugh.
Yeah, I've decided if I want to see a gorgeous front porch, I can just walk through mine, into the house, and open my laptop. :-)
DeleteToo much time, too much money, yep yep yep. A big pot of mums and a pumpkin or two will be the extent of my fall decorating. And yes, do they rent storage bins to hold all the decorations after the season ends? And if that's fall, one can only imagine Christmas!
ReplyDeleteFlora, I DO have a lot of Christmas stuff, and it's a PITA to drag it down and up the attic stairs every year. But at least it's just once a year. I can't imagine hauling down storage bins for every holiday.
DeleteI made an inspired purchase one year: a small flashlight to insert inside the carved pumpkin instead of a sputtering candle. It has a purple light, which I later found out is used to look for scorpions and bed bugs. I love the otherworldly purple glow.
ReplyDeleteMargaret, I like decorative items that serve more than one purpose - I shall go on a hunt for the purple bed bug flashlight!
DeleteWell luckily the begonias we bought to hang by the garage doors are orange. I hadn’t realized how smart I was in choosing them. Actually they chose me as I was late with the Spring decor. Our house has a very small visual footprint to the road. So that’s it for the decor, let’s hope the big frost isn’t too early this year. Decorations went to the grands, or rather the grands mom a while ago. Her childhood was lived on a very popular T or T street in our suburban heaven. All the kids from the wealthier neighborhoods came over to visit- see how the other half lived - because the driveways in their neighborhoods were too dark and long to walk up. Much too scary.
ReplyDeleteHa! Celia, once they were in grade school, I used to take my kids into the most populated areas of Portland - usually Deering Oaks. Scuttlebutt from parents was that the really $$$$ neighborhoods in the Western Prom were stingy with the goodies.
DeleteJulia, this cracked me up. I wanted to see your actual porch, too. There will be many magazine worthy porch displays in our neighborhood (historic district/touristy) but ours will not be among them. I will put out lots of pumpkins--Trader Joe's has GREAT prices on those lovely green and blue ones. And I'll tuck mums into the some of the pots on the front porch, but that's about the extent of it. And then what to do with the pumpkins after Thanksgiving? I don't want to throw them in the trash, so last year I just let them moulder behind the garbage toter.
ReplyDeleteOh, and those perfect candles are probably battery powered, and so $$$.
Argh, I never thought of batteries in the candles, since I don't do that! As for your pumpkins, Margo has a solution for you above: find your local sheep farmer...
DeleteNo decorating here. At all. Ever. I enjoy other people's outdoor Christmas lights, but I'm afraid decorations for the seasons and for Halloween are beyond my interest. And, as Deborah says, what happens to all those pumpkins and decorative gourds on November 1st?
ReplyDeleteWe composted some miniature gourds last year. This year they showed up as volunteers in my garden! So I will have gobs of tiny yellow striped pumpkins and yellow and green crookneck squash. They'll live in bowls on my countertop (and all my friends), and they we will eat them.
DeleteAs Karen says, all kinds of squash compost really well, so if you've got a compost pile, Amanda, go for it. There have been years when I've been strategic and bought pie pumpkins for the front porch, and then cooked with them later. I'm not actually that keen on pumpkin pie, but I love savory pumpkin soup and having chunks of it in stews.
DeleteI am so glad to hear that pumpkins can be composted. Yay! This makes all the difference to me.
DeleteI let nature decorate for me. The leaves from grand father oak have blown into the house.
ReplyDeleteThey have turned brown shriveled sitting adjacent to the cat urp that resembles slugs. Our indoor spiders -- Helen and Max - have spun a cunning web blanketing the urp. Layers of dust on the what not shelf have brought the transforming question "why not?".
The porch continues to reveal the progression of termites as they are slowly devouring the insect treated railing. We now have cracks and holes. Twenty years of torrential rains created exits for the waterfall from our roof. The morning glory vine which was encouraged to die last spring, laughed and laughed and is not attempting to capture any Amazon or Door Dash deliverer. The front door has a lovely patina of green mold, adding the final touch to the end of the wet season.
Pictures available upon request.
Coralee, I'm dying. I'm dying here.
DeleteWe should start our own blog: Horrible Porches Monthly. Tagline, "We'll make you feel better about your own porch!"
OK, this cracked me up, too. Love it! And I'd definitely subscribe to Horrible Porches Monthly!
DeleteSome of those displays make me wonder about how much liability insurance they have. How does one safely navigate those steps?
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm the outlier in the group, because I LOVE Halloween, and go completely over the top for our usually every two years Halloween parties. Our front porch is even more elaborate than the one in the photo, and every public room in the house, is, too. It takes me weeks to get it all together, and days to put it all back into the dozens of storage boxes I have for them. Boxes labeled "Skulls", "Bats", "Light strobes", and so on. We have two big storage bins with nothing but costume bits. We may not wear them, but the skulls and skeletons do. I've been collecting this stuff for thirty years, and yes, my husband complains like mad, but he adores our parties.
Those lanterns don't have candles in them, as Debs said. They're battery-operated, Julia, so as to avoid that unsightly stubby look. And what a pain to turn them all on and off every day, unless they have an automatic function.
Up until a couple weeks ago my oldest daughter lived in a hoity-toity neighborhood outside Detroit, and every house has over-the-top decorations like the one with the masses of pumpkins. And then they have it all removed, and replaced with Christmas ones.
Note the passive voice: "They have it all removed" - meaning somebody else does it, for pay!
DeleteI also used to throw Halloween parties, with dancing, Karen. Not in a long time!
Karen, as someone who LOVES looking at fall/ Halloween decor, I'm very grateful there are folks like you who do go all out!
DeleteNo Halloween party this year, Edith, even though it's the year for it. (I always say doing it every year would probably kill me. I'm not even kidding.)
DeleteJulia, that's how I feel about Christmas stuff. Which some people go completely overboard with, to a factor of about a million over my Halloween stuff. Since our kids moved so far away, we usually get together at Thanksgiving, so I quit even putting up a tree years ago.
I do a little bit for Halloween, but I do much more for Christmas.
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me, I need to look for new outdoor Christmas lights. Mine died last year, and everywhere was sold out in early December, when I discovered the problem.
Yes, hop on it now, Mark. I've heard warnings about supply chain problems worsening this fall and winter. If you can't find anything, hit me up - I have SO many Christmas lights there are always multiple strands left in the boxes.
DeleteHang macrame' skeleton on the front door. Set out plug-in jack-o-lantern. Set out a couple of ceramic pumpkins and ghosts and Halloween luminarias with battery candles inside. Ta da. Done. And that is pretty much it for porch decorating. I take Southern Living and enjoy looking at those artful wreaths but this person ain't doin' it. I've got a lot of magnolia leaves decorating the ground right now if anyone is interested in raw material.
ReplyDeletePat, you should hop on Instagram and tell folks you're selling organic magnolia leaves for $5 a bunch. I bet you get lots of interest!
DeleteNo, no, no, no. I love seeing what other people do, but I live in the country and one year I put out uncarved pumpkins from our garden. We don't get trick or treaters, so it was really only for us. In the morning some animal had chowed down on the pumpkins. Now critters are not known for neatness and cleaning up pumpkin innards is not how you want to start your day! We still get the odd pumpkin vine in the flower beds. They must stay viable for ever.
ReplyDeleteWhatever that animal was, Kait, you know it was thinking, "Wow! This whole gourd? Left out for me? Thanks, guys!" Reminds me of the time the kids and I did a winter craft of hanging peanut butter-smeared pine cones for the birds. It did not end well.
DeleteOh, yes! I love fall decorating. I’m fortunate to have a big front porch that’s like an outdoor room, so I have lots of options. I usually have pumpkins and lots of mums in rusty/gold fall colors. I can’t wait for it to cool off enough here in Dallas to feel like fall!
ReplyDeleteCarolyn, I actually have a theory that these beautiful fall displays are more likely in hot areas than in, say, the north and northeast, where we already have the first inklings fall is around the corner. That extravagant front yard is in Dallas, and I imagine with the heat you get through September and into October, you all want to bring on autumn any way you can!
DeleteI love the Halloween decorated house! I don't decorate outside for fall/Halloween (because fall is Halloween to me), but I go wild inside. I will probably start putting out some Halloween decorations this week, maybe even today. What's really great is that my granddaughter Izzy (twelve years old) is as enthusiastic as I am about Halloween and decorating for it early. My daughter used to think I was over-the-top on it, but then she started gradually getting into it, and with Izzy and my son-in-law both liking it, their house will soon be into high gear Halloween decor.
ReplyDeleteThis post made me laugh, especially because the temp. today is a cooler 92 degrees, but will feel like 96! Not even close to feeling like fall yet. But I do enjoying looking at other people's magazine-worthy decorations. At our home in the country I only occasionally put up some black and orange tapers, along with a small pumpkin or two, and one of my favorite voodoo dolls on a rustic bookshelf, then call it a day. (Our driveway's over 1/4 mile from the road, you can't even see our house through woods and pastures) My girlfriend who lives in a larger town in the next county goes all out decorating their porch differently every year in October, with a straw man sitting in a rocker, or a spookily-dressed mannequin with lights and all kinds of scary, imaginative things. They have lots of trick-or-treaters.
ReplyDeleteI used to go all out - cobwebs, ghosts, carved pumpkins, spooky lights and music but as the Hooligans aged out of trick or treating, I just got over it. Plus, there are storage issues. I had a full skeleton and a bunch of mock headstones taking up way too much room in our shed. When I decluttered two years ago, I was just sooooo over it. A nice fall wreath will go up and I'm done. :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, this is Jenn. Blogger hates me. Whatever.
DeleteI'm with you, Julia. I do a bit of porch decorating for trick-or-treaters, including our annual carved pumpkin. Otherwise, I can't be bothered. I have friends who'll go all out, though, decorating the interiors of their houses, and putting fall foliage centerpieces and runners on their tables.
ReplyDeleteI do minimalist decor changes for fall, winter, and spring/summer, just enough to have something different to look at. I've given away some, and would give away more if asked for it.
ReplyDeleteMeh. I plan to sweep the porch. I do have some faux plastic pumpkins I put out. (The squirrels eat actual pumpkins, which I suppose saves on carving, but it turns out squirrels are hard to train, so I can't get them to chomp on the pumpkins in an interesting pattern.) I have a few Halloween decorations and an old strawman, all purchased about 25 years ago when our kids were young, that I might put out. Or not.
ReplyDelete