I have always wanted a beautiful porch display. Especially for the fall. So this year I decided to do it! One of the problems I have had in the past is that it can be so expensive! So DIY to the rescue- and an excellent nursery (plant nursery, that is)!

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Supplies:

I’m going to tell you what I used, but you can pick and choose, change the number of items, and use other ideas too. Things I didn’t use that are super popular are maize, old wooden chairs and wreaths. I used:

• pumpkins (2 big, 2 medium-one of the medium ones has green on it)
• gourds (3)
• squash (6)
• bale of straw
• corn stalk
• old wicker chair
• kerosene lantern
• gallon jug
• gold spray paint
• artificial berries
• basket with handle
• 9-inch mums (2)
• pine cones
• goose feathers
• tall grass
• an 8-foot vertical welcome sign
• a pallet Thankful sign
• DIY scarecrow

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Instructions:

This is really trial and error; moving things around until they look good to you. If you don’t think you have the eye for this some things to keep in mind are:

• have different colours and spread them around evenly
• Use different heights. Make sure you have some tall things, medium and short- and spread them around
• Things look better in odd numbers: 3 goose feathers, 5 gourds. If you have 6 gourds, put 5 in a basket, and one on its own.

Here are some things that made this porch very cost effective:

• my kids and I went into the forest and our flower garden to gather some of our supplies: pine cones, tall grass
• my son got the goose feathers while hunting with Daddy
• I made the signs
• my Mum and kids made the scarecrow
• we re-purposed an apple cider jug
• we grabbed an old wicker chair from the basement (I’m trying to figure out how to re-seat them. So far I’m not having success…)
• we took the kerosene lamp from the mantle
• we took the basket from our party supplies. Do you recognize it from the Disney Princess Party?

The next thing we did was go to a nursery to get our pumpkins, gourds and straw. The straw was $5.99- so much cheaper than getting it from somewhere like a craft store, the gourds and squashes were 3 for $1. The corn stalk was $1.99. I would have liked more corn, but it didn’t seem worth the expense, because I would want three to keep it odd numbered. I think one did the trick. The pumpkins were $4.99 each, so they probably would have been cheaper at Wal-Mart, but it’s nice to support a local grower too.

The Mums we got at Wal-Mart. That was the best price I could find, and I had already left the nursery when I remembered I wanted Mums.

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Setting up:

I made the “Thankful” sign gold, and I want to incorporate gold into my table display for Thanksgiving Dinner (post to follow), so we tried it out on this stuff. We used gold spray paint to pain some of the pine cones. It really looks nice!

To make the basket look fuller without having to fill it with gourds we crumpled up a shopping bag and put it under the tea towel that lines the basket. It brings the gourds to the top of the basket.

We took the jug and filled it with tall grass, 3 goose feathers and three sprigs of berries.

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And the finished product:

I’d love to see how your porch display turned out! If you have any other ideas please leave them in the comments below. Have fun being creative!