Bring Fall Into Your Home With Easy DIY Projects

One of the most exciting things about the fall season is flipping your home decor to reflect the season. If you’re on a tight budget or looking for a fun weekend project, here are a few easy and affordable ways to spruce up your home for fall, making it look inviting and feel comfy and cozy. These projects are perfect for getting your house ready for company, or just for you and your family to enjoy.

Fall Wreath

Who said wreaths are only for Christmas? Adding a wreath to your front door is a nice, welcoming touch to family and friends who come to visit over the fall season. Of course you can buy wreaths at home decor stores, but they are so affordable and easy to make. Also, making it yourself gives you the opportunity to customize it exactly to your personal taste.

For this project you’ll need either a plain wreath or a styrofoam ring to use as the base of your wreath. These can be found at most craft stores and dollar stores. As for the decorations, you can use a combination of pinecones, artificial fall-hued leaves and flowers, twigs, small ornaments or little artificial pumpkins. Look through the seasonal isle of your local craft or dollar store, which will often have little knick knacks like this for cheap. If you’re using a styrofoam ring as your base, spray paint it brown, orange or another fall-appropriate colour before attaching your decorations with a hot glue gun.

There really are no rules here, you can arrange your decorations any way you want. You can even make it with your kids; it's surely going to be a fun activity for them. There are actually a lot of projects that kids can do, with some ideas here: https://www.sawinery.net/woodworking/projects-for-kids/. You can also easily make a Halloween wreath instead if you use more holiday-specific decorations and colours. Just make sure to leave one side of the wreath bare so it sits properly on a hook when you hang it up on your door.

DIY All-Natural Stovetop Potpourri

While there are so many home air freshener sprays and plug-ins available on the market, those often contain chemicals and possibly carcinogenic properties that you may want to avoid, especially if you have young children or pets in your home that may have access to them. As an alternative, whip together this easy stovetop potpourri to make your home smell delicious over the fall season.

All you’ll need to make this are 2 to 3 cinnamon sticks, a small handful of cloves, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and half an orange cut into thin slices. Place all these ingredients into a saucepan and top with water. Place the saucepan on the stove and simmer the ingredients on the lowest heat, uncovered. And voila! The delicious fruity and spicy aroma will soon start to fill your home. This should last a good few hours and you can always top it with more water throughout the day as it starts to boil down.

Alternatively, you can make a bigger batch of the potpourri and simmer it in a slow cooker on low heat. You’ll get about 8 hours of scent using the slow cooker method and you can leave it unattended without worry. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment with different scent combinations! Apple, nutmeg and lemon are other ingredients that would be great for this.

Monochrome Pumpkins

The natural, bright orange colour of pumpkin is of course beautiful, but for a more modern and sleek look, try giving your pumpkins a monochrome makeover! Spray painting pumpkins with white or black paint is a fun twist to traditional halloween decor and the neutral tones allow the pumpkins to fit in with essentially any decor you already have in place.

All you need for this project is some spray paint and pumpkins. Try getting pumpkins of assorted sizes and shapes for more texture and variety. Place pumpkins on a sheet of newspaper either outside, or in another ventilated area, and spray with an even layer of paint until completely opaque. This may take a couple layers depending on the quality of the paint you’re using. Let the pumpkins dry fully before placing them in and around your home. You can spray paint either carved or un-carved pumpkins and there are so many ways to incorporate them into your decor–place them on the steps outside your house, use them as a centrepiece on your dining table or even use mini ones as place settings for a fall or Halloween themed dinner party. If you want to go glam, use gold or silver spray paint instead!