A fall front porch

The air is getting cooler but still not quiet where it needs to be here in North Carolina. Fall is officially upon us so the fall front porch is a must. I thought I would give you guys a little insight on how I did this elegant fall front porch with a small budget.

I had a client reach out to me to help her with her front porch. We had a budget of about $200 to work with so I had to head to my trusty budget friendly stores. She wanted an elegant look and I knew the black lanterns would make that happen. I found the large lantern at TJ Maxx and I had a set of them. They were about $25 each. Well, when I was checking out the lovely TJ Maxx lady showed me that one of them had glass in the bottom. Ugh! So that meant that they could not sell me that one as its a liability to them. So I decided to keep the one and see if I could find something else somewhere else. You guys keep in mind that while I'm out doing my shopping I have kiddos in tow. While this sweet lady was giving me this horrible news about my duo splitting up my 2 year old was having a tantrum over who knows what while big brother was asking a million questions. To say I was a little scattered is an understatement!

I conveniences the kiddos to try to behave for use to make a run to Hobby Lobby (a good 20 miles from TJ Maxx also at 6:00 p.m.) to find a lantern to match this one. I needed to use the evening to get these items as I needed to get the mums and pumpkins today while my 2 year old was a "school" for the morning. I told my client that I could get the decor up this afternoon so I was on a time crunch.

So while at Hobby Lobby of course my sweet 2 year old little girl decided to have yet another tantrum this time about wanting to walk and not ride in the buggy which is all fine and dandy except we were in the lantern isle. You know most of the lanterns have glass in them...and she wanted to touch EVERY SINGLE ONE. Panic for mama! So I found the smaller lantern (50% off this week) and the candle sticks (also 50% off!) while trying to distract little girl from touching them all. I finally had to put her on my shoulders and have my boy push the buggy so we could run to the fall section to find a few more items. The grey pumpkins were a great find and they are made out of concrete which was a cool feature for the porch! We also found the acorn vase fillers for the inside of the lanterns and a bag of plastic pumpkins and gourds. Then we made our way to the checkout and home we went!

The colorful pumpkins all came from Trader Joe's and were just $6.99 each while the little white ones were less than a dollar a piece. The mums and orange carving pumpkins came from a local produce market and the candles were donated from my decor stash.

When putting the items together I always like to stager things like the lanterns and stacking the smaller pumpkins on top of the larger ones gives them a nice look and adds a little dimension to the look. What do you think of this elegant decor style?

-Sarah