by Trudy Brown

Created on: October 18, 2009   Last Updated: October 20, 2009

Usually, if you have a front porch, that is one of the first things that will draw the eye of a visitor or a passer-by. Decorating your porch for holidays and seasonal changes gives your house personality and pizazz. Liven up your block by having a festive, cheerful porch decorated to celebrate the fall season.

You can decorate very simply with a few small pumpkins and gourds lining the rail along the porch and cascading down the steps. For an especially elegant touch, intersperse some white pumpkins amongst the others. Make your own cornucopia to place in a corner or beside the door. Fill a wicker horn with Indian corn, pumpkins, gourds, and apples. Mix in some dried grasses to add dimension and texture. A hay bale can add to a harvest theme as well. Use an apple cut in half to stamp apples on a piece of linen or a burlap sack and throw it carelessly over the hay bale. Top off the hay bale with your cornucopia or a basket of fall harvest.

Buy or dig through your closets to find baskets, matching or varied, and hot glue fall colored ribbons or festive bows onto them and fill them with apples or small pumpkins then set them along the rail or beside the posts.

Leaves are both a fitting and a versatile decoration for fall. Using string and a couple of sticks, you can make an elegant decoration for your porch. Cross the sticks and tie or hot glue them together. Hang strings from various places along the length of the sticks and tie leaves, either real or synthetic, to the strings. Hang from the corner of your porch where it will catch the wind and the attention of visitors. You could add shine with some amber beads or add music with bells dipped in an earth colored paint. You could also alternate leaves and pine cones on a length of fishing wire to make a garland to hang from your porch rail. Use hot glue to attach acorns or dried berries to the leaves.

Throwing a fall-themed party? Core apples, pumpkins, and gourds to make unique candle holders and place them on the porch rail to welcome your guests. To either side of the door, place pumpkins that you have cored and fill them with dried grasses and fall-colored flowers. These decorations will only last for a couple of days but they add charm to a fall evening party.

Let fall creep up onto your porch and make your house stand out from those around it. Show off your crafting and decorating skills by putting together a visually appealing tribute to the season.

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