What is the best kind of decorating? FREE decorating! I challenged myself this fall to fill my window boxes with fall decorations and not spend any money to do it. Those hollow pumpkins at craft stores are $30-$40 each, and with the way I decorate, that would have been a small fortune. Full disclosure, I already had a ton of those silk fall leaves. That was certainly going to be my filler. But I needed a “WOW” factor.
I found some tongue and groove lumber in my workshop that was left over from building my pantry doors. The wheels start to turn…
I glued and clamped the pieces together to form a piece about 6 feet long and 12 inches wide. Then I utilized one of my favorite programs for graphics sizing. It’s called Block Posters (blockposters.com) and it allows you to upload a graphic, blow it up and print it out onto multiple pages of standard sized printer paper. I took my pumpkin image and increased the size to get a 12 inch wide image.
After a quick print and tape job, I cut out the image. This became my template for tracing the image onto the boards.
After the outline was traced, I cut out the shape with my jigsaw. My board fit 6 pumpkins. I then found the outdoor deck stain that I had used to stain the arbor over our garage door. It had hints of orange and copper to it and created the subtle, aged look that I wanted for the pumpkins. I painted the stem a deep green in an exterior paint that I had purchased previously at Home Depot in the “Oops” section.
I screwed the pumpkins onto stakes of pressure treated lumber that I also had left over. (did I ever mention that I save EVERYTHING?)
I am delighted with the outcome of my free fall decoration challenge. I incorporated the pumpkins with the silk leaves and the existing plants that grew there this summer.
What do you? What thrifty decorating ideas have you used?
Hold my wine, I’ve got this…
Amy
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