Budget Friendly Fall Decor

Hello friends, and welcome to my first North Carolina fall tour!  To be honest, it’s still hot here, but this girl loves all things fall, so I’m just ignoring the weather and summoning my favorite season.  Before I get into my tour though, I want to take a moment to remember all of those who lost their lives on this day in 2001.  Today, in their honor, I encourage you all to get out there and do good through acts of kindness. I felt it was important to address that before I get into my tour, because we will never forget. Now I want to thank Marty at A Stroll Through Life for hosting this tour and inviting me to join her this year for my first (and hopefully not last!) time. We moved into our home earlier this year and we’ve slowly been making this house ours.  We’re actually currently knee deep in renovations that I had hoped would be done by now, but you’ll just have to come back to see our kitchen and dining room reveal later this fall.  Today I am going to share with you the spaces that we’ve worked on, and show you my simple & budget friendly fall touches. If you are coming over here from Monica Wants it, welcome!  Don’t you just love the unique way that Monica decorates her home? Anyhow, let’s head into mine!This blog uses affiliate links.

Our renovation has us on a super tight budget, so simple and budget friendly is our only way to decorate at the moment.  In addition, I am trying to be a much more responsible consumer (as I outlined here), and want to make sure I am not buying items that will only be used to decorate a season or two and then be tossed in the landfill. That being said, I also have grown to really prefer the less is more strategy now that we have a 1 yr old who loves to have his hands on anything and everything. Now that I’ve explained my philosophy for this fall, I would love to invite you to our 1966 rancher! (Note: If you see anything you like in this post, I’ve created shoppable little sliding galleries below each space for your convenience.)

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t get “that feeling” when we toured this house last November.  I wasn’t in love with the exterior at all, and the inside needed updating as well.  However, I loved the landscaping, the classic southern big Magnolia tree in the front yard, and the fabulous location. One of the most impactful and budget friendly makeovers we’ve completed so far was our front porch update. It is a small space and paint and a new light fixture and house numbers did it wonders.

To bring a little fall to this porch, I’ve filled my planters with mums and added a DIY owl wreath that was ridiculously easy to make. As for the mums, my mother taught me to purchase them when they are full of buds so you can enjoy their blooms for much longer.  I am still waiting for my giant yellow mums to open, but it’s going to be beautiful!

I added in a little rusty owl plant stake that was a gift a few years back.  I love how he peeps over the mums a bit. (If you look carefully, you can also see the bright blue of Wilder’s penguin bubbler hiding behind the planter.)

Our porch makeover really helped me start to fall in love with our little rancher, and I am looking forward to changing it up for each season.

We’ve also purchased a pair of adirondack chairs as well as a little wooden giraffe swing for the front yard, and we’ll be putting these to good use this season, especially once the temperatures drop a bit. (By the way, they are on major sale now here!)

To bring the pink of our door over to our chairs I added a pale pink mum, and potted it in a terra cotta pot left behind by the precious owners.  I love that it mirrors the color of the brick perfectly. Chris and I plan to sit here to hand out Halloween candy this year and are really excited about living in a large neighborhood where we should get lots of trick-or-treaters!  Hopefully by then it will be cool enough that I will need my mustard throw that currently is out there just to look pretty against the chairs, and bring in some seasonal color. (I was lucky enough to win it in an instagram giveaway from my friend Mary!)

Shop our front porch and yard here:

Now let’s head inside!  I am going to share our entry with you and to give you a little perspective, our kitchen which is under construction is right behind it, and our living room is just off to the right, but it’s closed off while work is being done. Our entry is a small space, but it’s full of personality.  I believe small spaces such as this are the perfect opportunities to be bold in your design.  I stenciled the walls and updated the lighting this past spring and it made a big difference.  This piece of statement art always makes me smile.

To give it a little touch of fall, I placed my little ZZ plant in a midcentury owl ice bucket my good friend Kelly gave me. (I found the same ice bucket here.) I also found some little pale pumpkins at the farmer’s market so grabbed a few of those, and of course nothing says fall like hats and boots!  I can’t wait to actually wear them!

While we’re here in the entry, I thought I would give you a couple of sneak peeks of what is going on in the kitchen since it sits directly behind the entry. We are getting close now, but can you see that brass apron sink that is going to he the literal shining star of the kitchen?  I love that you can see it from the front door and it really brings all of the white and gold lighting from My Mitzi together. Big news… I will be giving one of these bad boys away in a couple of weeks!

Looking from the kitchen back at the entry, you can see our new refrigerator.  We splurged on these appliances and I will have to buried in this refrigerator one day, but man, was it worth it. We’ve been using the stove for a couple weeks now and Chris said it all when he looked at me and said, “Dude, this stove is dope.”  I am pretty sure the website actually says in the item description, “This ish is dope.” They could actually make that the Cafe slogan. Anyhow, I just wanted to share these little peeks with you… Can’t wait to share the entire kitchen soon!

Shop our entry here:

Off the entry is a hallway that leads to our bedrooms.  I haven’t done anything to this space since painting the rainbow mural.  However, I couldn’t resist sharing this photo of our hallway with you, complete with one ready trick-or-treater.  Wilder still fits into his tiger costume from last year, and I have it hanging on his wall hook rack, so he often asks to wear it.  I can’t deny him. We’ve taught him to growl like a tiger, so this will definitely be making round two as his Halloween costume this year because he loves it and really gets into character.

The door he is standing at above leads to our master bedroom, so let’s head in there.  I’ll be showing you some fall updates to my kids’ spaces next week, but today it’s all about my own retreat.  With three kids, we need a place where we can unwind at the end of the day, and this room does just that for us.

As I mentioned, we are on a very tight budget, so to give this space a fall update, I worked solely with items I already owned. I will say though, you may notice that there is a new rug in here.  This past summer we all came down with the norovirus, including one of my dogs which led to the demise of our former rug.  I was fortunate enough to work with Well Woven who provided me with this cozy beauty.

It’s amazing what a difference something simple as changing out textiles can do to a feel of the room. Last spring I purchased the mudcloth style lumbar and I thought the wheat color was just right for fall.  I also changed the order of our bed pillows and brought forward the linen stripe pillows from Modern Plum.  A classic stripe is always right, in my opinion.

On the bed itself, I added our Moroccan striped blanket I purchased several years ago with an Amazon gift card.  In all honestly, I washed it and a couple of tassels need to be repaired. But overall, it still looks great and is a perfect weight for when the nights get cooler, whenever that happens here in North Carolina!

As you can see my husband’s nightstand just has a thrifted bamboo tray I bought years ago. (And yes, we both have our old alarm clocks from our college days over 20 years ago! They still work!). On my own nightstand, I’ve simply added the book I am currently reading, the journal I just started using, and a vanilla woodsy perfume I created at a local place called Scent Workshop (The name is in transition in case the website shows up as Bloom Anthology.  I just went to owner Lindsay’s amazing relaunch party this past weekend!). If you are local to Greensboro, NC, you have got to check this place out!  Emmy and I have now been twice and just love it. You can create your own candle scents as well as perfumes. Also, full disclosure, but I may not end up finishing The Witch Elm… It is dragging on and not nearly as good as I thought it would be.

Our nightstands were an awesome score years ago that I have a makeover with a little white paint and gold leafing. You can read about that here.

Since Chris likes to keep his nightstand pretty clear of decor, minus a tray full of random junk he empties from his pockets and 3 cups of water (I removed them to make the photos look better), I take it upon myself to bring a little seasonal love to his dresser top. As you can see, his dresser sits on a slender piece of wall between our bathroom and closet.To the top of it I’ve added a little wooden pear I thrifted years ago, and on the wall above I hung a mustard toned vintage painting my parents gave me for Christmas one year.  The added color really brings in the warmth of the season.

On the opposite side of the room sits my dresser which I scored at Goodwill years ago. It’s a long time favorite piece of mine. When we first moved in, I hung this gallery wall to hide the TV and I still love it. The neutral mix really works in this space.On top of my dresser, I added a little wooden bird to hold some rings, and a candle from one of my favorite Frederick candle makers, Whiskey Bottom Candles. When we moved here, shop owner and candle maker, Shelby, sent me a box filled with all sorts of scents and Stillhouse is one of my favorites and suits the cozy feeling of this season. On their site it’s described as an “invigorating blend of hardwoods and moss combined with leather and a velvety musk.” If that doesn’t say fall, then I don’t know what does! It’s also on sale right now for half off, if you want to check that out here.

In the corner of our room sits a chair, which generally serves as my place to set my running clothes the night before so I can get up at 5:30 am and grab my stuff from the chair, get dressed, and head out the door.  My shoes usually sit right under the chair, too. However, for this tour, I removed my headlamp and running shorts and let the throw and pillow shine. 😉

Shop our master bedroom here:

Because of all the work happening in our home, our main living room is behind plastic zipper doors and under wraps to keep it safe.  Instead we’ve all been hanging out in the basement family room. It’s generally where we hang out to watch shows or movies at night with the big kids after the little one goes to bed.  My oldest loves scary movies, so we’ve made a list of some favorites to share with him this season to get into the Halloween spirit.

We still have a lot of work to do in this space, so I am just going to show you our seating area, which I’ve added some black and white and mustard velvet pillows I already had in my stash.This room faces our back yard, so our dogs love to keep watch.

Our coffee table was an auction find and is a vintage glass waterfall piece.  (I’ve found a similar one here.) I actually had a different vintage table here, but my 14 year old is killing it by rocking it with his feet constantly, so we had to switch this with our upstairs living room coffee table.  I prefer the other way around if I am being honest, but I also don’t want my other table to fall apart.  On the top of the table I’ve set a very large thrifted midcentury live wood bowl, and inside of it I added a disco ball and sequin acorns a friend of mine made me years ago. The disco ball gets put aside when Wilder is in here though because all he sees is a ball to throw.

However, he does enjoy the magic that this disco ball offers when the sun hits it. Next to the bowl I added some of my favorite design books and a candle that Emmy made at Scent Workshop, which I mentioned earlier.  Like me, Emmy loves the smell of baked pumpkin goods, and she created the perfect fall scent.Shop our family room here:

As I mentioned, this space faces our back yard.  We have yet to get any work done out there but are hoping to tackle the weeded jungle this spring and add a chicken cook.  For now, we’ve created a little space on the patio where we can enjoy family meals. This past spring we added DIY string light poles and they made a huge difference. When it’s not too hot and buggy, we love to sit out here and eat dinner and play cards.On the table I added a Mexican blanket from Wakened Apparel.  I just love the fall color it brings to the table while keeping it super simple.

Shop our patio here:

There you have it!  That concludes my simple budget friendly Fall tour!  I hope you will come back next week to check out the kids’ spaces as well as some little updates (Um…. did someone say pumpkins?!?) If you’d like to subscribe so you don’t miss out on all of my budget friendly DIYs and designs, please subscribe here. Thank you so much for stopping by my home today.  Now head on over to Hymns and Verses to check out Doreen’s beautiful home.  If you love black and white like I do, you will LOVE Doreen’s style!

Also be sure to check the line up for today’s other tours, as well as all those who’ve already shared and for those who will be sharing later this week.  They’re full of inspiration!