Stimuli

Now that the summer holidays are over everyone is busy with their routines at work and school. Add after school practices and evening activities and that makes for a long day. After days like these coming home is especially welcome. A beautiful front door display will make that homecoming even more special. We are all short on time in these busy months but with a little planning now, and a few well chosen pieces, you can have a display that will transition well and look great the whole season through.

The leaves have barely started to change so instead of pushing the season with pumpkins and scarecrows I’d rather put the focus on Autumn flowers. If you have containers at the front door where the Summer flowers are still doing well you can incorporate some Autumn flowers into your existing containers. When your flowers do start to fade you can pull them out and replace them with more fall plants or add harvest type accessories directly to the container. Adding a variety of grasses and or Coleus and choosing rich colors like deep purple, burgundy, wine, bronze, copper and orange is a sure way to make the look more Autumnal. Adding twigs and branches will take the look up to even another level.

Closer to Thanksgiving is the time to really go into the Harvest theme. You can put a single pumpkin or groupings of pumpkins beside your containers at the front door. If you have room inside your pots you can put them here too. In this basket arrangement wiring in a mini pumpkin or two would look great. Adding any element of twigs, grapevines or straw will look fabulous in a Harvest display and will transition well into Halloween.

Another idea is to put a leaf garland around your front door. It should last from Thanksgiving until Halloween. You can either purchase a faux garland or make a real one yourself. All you have to do is collect dry colorful leaves and then, with a needle and thread, string together a garland. You can attach the garland around the door with strong sticky tape.

When Halloween approaches all you have to do is add a spooky touch. If your flowers have packed it in you can pull them out and either put straw or twigs or leaves on top of the soil and let your pumpkins sit on top of the containers. If you have a wreath on the door that can be altered, you can tie on a little skeleton or bat or what have you. Tying a black ribbon on the wreath will also help set the spooky Halloween mood. In the last picture here you can see how easily this display is taken from a Harvest theme to a Halloween theme with the small addition of the black crows. Hopefully you enjoy your homecomings during these colder busier months and find time to relax and enjoy the splendor of Autumn!

by Christina Kristensen
Contributor