Feeling Seasonal? Fall Decorating On The Cheap!

October 11th, 2011 by Crystal Beran| Posted in Apartment Guide, Apartment Holidays, Apartment Interiors, Apartment Life 2.0, Apartment Living, College Housing, Decorating, Etsy & DIY, Resident Life, Saving Money, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Autumn is here! With it comes shorter days, cooler weather and the promise of Thanksgiving and Halloween right around the corner. While many of us may decorate our apartments just for these holidays, decorating for fall is a great way to spruce up your apartment and make it more seasonally festive. Want to read the best fall decorating article EVER written? That is also INCREDIBLY …profane yet hilarious? It is distinctly NOT this article, but Google ‘McSweeney’s decorative gourds’ and go nuts. Worth it!!! Anyhoo, back to decorating…

1. Fall Produce

Apples, pumpkins, gourds, dried ears of corn and winter squash make great decorations to place around the house. They can be used as centerpieces on tables or placed in baskets by the front door. The best thing about using these fruits and vegetables as decorations is that you can eat them as well. Pumpkins and other squash will stay fresh at room temperature for a long time if their skin is undamaged. Apples will last only a few weeks, but you can buy a bunch for your centerpiece and munch on them for a while, replacing them when you run out. A dried ear of corn can be placed in a paper bag and then put in the microwave to be turned into popcorn. If you have farmland near your apartment, it may also be possible to harvest some of your own fruits and vegetables rather than buying them from the grocery store.

2. Dried Flowers

Though refrigeration and greenhouse flower farms make it possible to get fresh flowers all year round, placing vases full of dried flowers around your house is a great way to signal the start of fall. One of the benefits of using dried flowers instead of fresh is that they last a long time, often a year or more, and don’t require any care at all. They can also be dyed so that you can match them to your color scheme or perfumed to add a nice scent to a room.

3. Fall Themed Accessories

Some of the most classic autumn decorations are taken straight from the farm. Scarecrows erected to frighten birds away from crops find new lives as cheerful greeters in entryways. Wheelbarrows needed to cart supplies from one side of the farm to the other can be filled with pumpkins and apples and parked by the front door. If you have a large area in the front of your apartment or a patio you’d like to decorate for fall, adding one of these larger decorations is a great idea. Creating your own scarecrow can also be a fun and inexpensive art project.

4. Wreaths

A great way to make your apartment seem more inviting this fall is to place a wreath on the front door. Traditionally, wreaths have been worn and used to designate that a person had a high status in society. Nowadays, wreaths are used as seasonally themed decorations for the door. A fall wreath can be made out of dried flowers, cobs of corn, apples or small pumpkins. While wreaths can be purchased at stores, it’s fun to create them yourself as well. At the beginning of winter, the fall wreath can be boxed up and kept nice until next year.

Have an autumn decorating project you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you – here or on our Facebook page!