Getting Seasonal in the Entry

pumpkins on the porch

Over the weekend, I spent a lovely afternoon autumn-izing our front entry. Last year at this time, I was barely functioning, and I only have a vague memory of putting a pumpkin on the porch. And if I remember correctly, the squirrels ate that pumpkin! Not my best October for sure. Hah!

pumpkins on the porch

So this year, it was fun to put some thought and effort into it. I have loved the simple colors in our living room — whites, woods, pale textures and a bit of metal — so I thought it would be fun to extend the same color palette to the entry decorations — with the hope that it makes a pretty transition from outside to in.

pumpkins on the porch

First, I moved our cement planters full of succulents, and filled in the space with pumpkins. Instead of the traditional orange-y-orange pumpkins, I picked out Cinderella pumpkins in a muted, dusty orange, and white pumpkins as well. I wanted big impact, so I went with lots of pumpkins.

pumpkins on the porch

Next, I swapped out the summery pillow on the porch chair, for some fresh ones. The gold adds just a touch of glamour! A nice contrast to the home-y textures. I chose two pillows from Target — one in metallic chevron, and the other in an embroidered pattern.

I also added a throw blanket from our linen closet (it’s a super-cozy traditional wool picked up in Ireland), to make the porch chair inviting on cool evenings.

handwoven basket with leather handle

Then, I brought a favorite stool outside to act as a side table — the perfect spot for a cup of tea. And I included a woven basket to hold magazines. The basket is easy to move indoors if the weather gets iffy. (I wish the weather was iffy! California needs some rain!!)

I love a project like this! It didn’t take long to pull it together, but it makes a big difference. The entry feels like fall, even if the weather here hasn’t caught up yet, and it’s so cheery to come home to. I also like that I mixed it up this year and tried something new with the colors, instead of going with our usual orange and black. I like classic orange and black, but it was fun to experiment. And assuming the squirrels don’t eat the pumpkins, I think this look will keep the porch looking gorgeous through Thanksgiving!

Tell me, Friends: Do you decorate your entry in the fall? Maybe put up a wreath or a bouquet of leaves? Or do you like to keep it spooky in October? We have loved spooky stuff over the years, but The Treehouse isn’t on a trick-or-treating street, so I’m finding it’s easier to focus on “fall” for our decor, instead of Halloween. How about you?

P.S. — Some of our favorite good-looking, but spooky Halloween Decor DIYs. And the coolest scarecrow!

32 thoughts on “Getting Seasonal in the Entry”

  1. Love it!! The wooden lanterns are a great touch and the spilling effect of so many pumpkins is just gorgeous!!! The palette you picked is super pretty. I am dying for some of those muted orange ones now…I have not seen those before (just the white and muted green in that shape)!

    I am a huge fan of fall decorating that I leave up until Thanksgiving. No spooky Halloween stuff for me (for a variety of reasons, but especially because the anniversary of my brother’s death is 11/1). Fall is my favorite, and I can’t get enough of all the cool funky shaped gourds and pumpkin varieties. I keep it pretty traditional….different textures and shapes of pumpkins and gourds in oranges, greens, whites, and yellow, a corn stalk bunch, mums in my planters and hanging baskets, tall black IKEA lanterns, and this year I was super excited to add a raw wooden stump-like stool from a neighbor’s tree removal and a chair I got on clearance. Throw pillow from the attic and it’s my favorite year yet ;). Now that I have seen your post, I may have to look deeper for those dusty oranges and a throw from somewhere inside that I can move out there.

    1. The stump chair sounds awesome! Actually, the whole thing sounds awesome. And I LOVE the muted green pumpkins. I was hoping to find some to add to our collection, but so far I haven’t seen any at all.

    1. I gave myself a $100 budget. I bought the two pillows and used the rest of the funds for pumpkins. Everything else we already owned. The pumpkins were definitely the splurge. The pillows will last beyond the season, but not the pumpkins. I was picturing it as $50 for October decor and $50 for November decor, or $100 total.

  2. Beautiful! I bought pumpkins over the weekend, and it’s really put me in a good mood! I will say though – pumpkins are expensive! One year i splurged on a Cinderella/Fairytale one, which are at least $18 a piece here. Now I just stick to orange with either white, striped, or maybe some ghords. It’s just hard for me to pay too much for stuff that will rot, but it sure is pretty!

    1. Wow! $18 for a cinderella pumpkin is pricey! Trader Joe’s has them for $6. Our local farms seem to sell them for 60c/lb, so I’d expect to pay around $8-10 for a good sized one.

      But don’t let them rot! What I LOVE about decorating with pumpkins is that they’re not only decorations, but dinner! It’s fun to ‘shop’ in my living room. You can make them into pies, soups, sauces, muffins, chili, ice cream…

      1. I’ll go check out Trader Joe’s then! Thanks for the tip!

        Also, I’m SUPER impressed at your culinary endeavors…. maybe one day!

  3. I loved your entry way renovation when you posted it way back when and I’ve been dying to make my own concrete planters and put out some succulents. However, we live down in the desert part of the state and I’m afraid of attracting lots of bugs due to our rural location (lots of black widows about & I’ve got a couple of tiny tots running amuck) . How has it been going for you since it seems you aren’t in a standard neighborhood?

  4. Pingback: Getting Seasonal in the Entry | The Tressle Blog | The Official Blog for Tressle.com

  5. Hi Gabrielle! I love your fall entryway! I think you picked the perfect color pumpkins with your house and door color. There’s an art to pumpkin picking! :) Hope you and your family are all doing well! xo

  6. I can’t wait to decorate my porch- especially need updated pillows. One thing I can’t figure out are the squirrels. After a few days, it’s like a pumpkin all-you-can-eat buffet. Oakland squirrels are so greedy! At least they won’t eat the pillows. :)

  7. Always had a problem with squirrels eating our pumpkins until I found this idea–spray them with hair spray. They haven’t touched them. When you are finished with them you can wash them and let the squirrels have at them.

  8. Look absolutely beautiful. What do you do with all those pumpkins after they rot? I have two big ones on my doorstep right now & already it feels like they are a time bomb!

  9. The two varieties of pumpkins you have are awesome for eating. You can just throw them in the oven whole at 350 until fork tender, then dispose of the innards. Our neighbors put chili powder on their pumpkins to discourage the squirrels.

  10. Oh, I wish we had an porch to decorate. My kids love carving jack-o’lanterns but no one gets to see them in our apartment.

    The apartment doors in our building are all orange so one simple thing we like to do for Halloween is turn our door into a giant jack-o’lantern. A few pieces of black cardboard stuck to the door and, voila, we’ve got a scary pumpkin face!

    Oh, and when we first moved here from Australia it was a few days before Halloween (3 years next week!). We carved pumpkins for the first time ever and put them on the porch of the house we were staying in. Within half an hour one of the pumpkins was missing its “lid”. My daughter was so upset as it was the one that she had carved on her own. We had no idea what happened to it until the next day when we spotted a squirrel stealing the lid off another of our jack-o’lanterns! Those crazy squirrels! I still can’t believe just how many squirrels there are here and how unafraid of people they are.

  11. So, speaking of the weather getting iffy — that’s really my question with these sorts of things. I’ve never had a chair with a pillow or throw on it outside — not something I grew up with, not something I’ve ever done. What do you do if it rains? Go get all the pillows etc and move them indoors? What if it rains while you’re out? How do you pick things that can go outside without you stressing about it?

    1. Good question, Alysa. For me, it definitely depends on where we live. In Oakland, the weather is so mild that sometimes I use inside pillows outside. And yes, if I can see it’s going to rain, I might bring them indoors. In the case of the porch, the chair and pillows are under a covered area so if they did get left out in the rain, it wouldn’t be a problem.

      In Normandy, where is the weather is very wet, the idea of outdoor pillows wouldn’t have been realistic.

    1. The chair! It’s from the Homecrest collection which was widely available in the fifties. If you do search on your local craigs list or ebay you might find some. I check every other week or so and it’s not unusual to see it. Here’s a google images link so you can see what sorts of pieces Homecrest made.

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