Create a Tablescape, Fall Decor & More

When it comes to holidays and decorating, I may be a tad on the overzealous side. From the decorations, to the fun holiday-themed activities and traditions, to the actual day of celebration, I can hardly contain the excitement! Having children brings out the inner kid in me and amplifies my excitement to an entirely new level. After all, seeing life through a child's perspective brings us back to our childhood days and somehow makes time stand still, even if just for a moment.

From the tablescapes on the kitchen table to the mantle decor in the living room to the wreath and pumpkins on the front porch, I love to sprinkle a little fall fun throughout the house and in each of the rooms where we spend the most time.

The cool crisp air, seeing God's beauty at work in the gorgeous changing leaves, getting tastes of excitement for the quickly approaching Christmas season, pumpkin everything, football season, and cozy oversized sweaters that give a little more grace with all that Halloween candy that I know I shouldn't have bought a month early or eaten the whole month of October... Yes, I love all things fall!

INSPIRATION DECOR:

Let's get started with the kitchen island! I started with the kitchen island decor as my inspiration for coordinating the rest of the kitchen decor.

I absolutely love having a 2-tiered display tray and switching up the holiday-inspired decor each season. I just added a few fall pumpkins and welcome signage to complete the look! There's something about fall too that makes you want to have people over for hot cocoa, chili, or a good football potluck. I love all signage that speaks to opening your home to invite others in. I kept my go-to white pitcher full of eucalyptus and a lantern filled with pinecones as the accent features in the kitchen.

If you're in the market for an adorable tiered tray, I am obsessed with this Distressed Wooden Tiered Tray that could be used with fresh fruit, delicious food or drinks for entertaining, as a coffee bar staple, or as the perfect rustic touch for every day decorative items. The options are endless!

Don't forget to display your favorite fall kitchen towel! Our black and white buffalo plaid tea towels coordinated with the rest of my buffalo plaid kitchen decor, but I'm usually a sucker for cute, cheesy, or funny tea towels. This set of 4 Fall Tea Towels is the perfect addition to add a pop of fall color to your kitchen!

If you're looking for a fresh autumn bouquet, Trader Joe's is my absolute FAVORITE place for flowers! Not only do they have some gorgeous varieties and greenery, but you can't beat their price!

TABLESCAPE:

Creating a holiday or season-inspired tablescape is one of my favorite things to decorate as it's an easy, fun, and cost-effective way to switch up the decor and keep things interesting.

CREATE A TABLESCAPE:

To create a tablescape, first decide on a theme and then determine your color palette. Next you'll create your centerpiece which can either be one main focal point in the middle of the table or be continuous and flow from one end to the other.

For this easy rustic, fall inspired theme, we used these versatile Pottery Barn Lanterns and filled them with pinecones that we found on our walk. I love using lanterns for decorating as you can fill them with so many season or holiday inspired objects and create completely different looks just by switching up what's inside!

Add varying shapes and height to add interest and dimension to your table. Using different size candle holders, lanterns, and festive decor can accomplish this easily.

You can use a table runner as your base and then build on top of that, or do without. I found this black and white table runner at HomeGoods to go with the rest of the black and white buffalo plaid decor as I needed to find something quickly but then found this Buffalo Plaid Table Runner after I took the pictures. Oh well, I'll save it for next year!

Another idea I love is weaving Faux Eucalyptus Garland along the table. If desired, add a few branches of other greenery to make it even fuller or add more dimension. I'm buying a few more of these Faux Eucalyptus Garlands and wrapping Christmas lights around them to hang on our mantle this Christmas and around our front door on the porch. Never too early to start planning!

Incorporate different textures, colors, and patterns with your placemats, linens, chargers, and dishes to make the different elements pop and stand out from each other. We love these inexpensive Natural Handwoven Water Hyacinth Placemats / Chargers. These work great year round too!

I used our go-to wooden lantern with the greenery wreath around it to add in some more green and natural elements to the table. I then just added a few extra pinecones to tie in the lanterns and fall theme.

I completed the look with these Buffalo Plaid Dinner Napkins and these home-made pinecone napkin rings. Can you believe I made 12 of them for $1?

I found 12 shower curtain rings at the Dollar Store (for you guessed it...$1) and then just hot glued pinecones onto them to make a super easy festive napkin ring that tied in the pinecone theme of the tablescape. Now I wouldn't say these are top quality, but they do the job and serve their purpose! And bonus, they are a great conversation starter too!

We just used white dishes to keep the look simple and classic but you could also tie it all together with some fun fall dishes or a dish set with a pop of color!

I've had this fall decor up since September so it's almost that time for my favorite holiday of all time... But until then, I'll enjoy it for a few more weeks!

LIVING ROOM:

For the living room, we kept it simple by sticking to the fireplace for our main decor purposes. We kept our main year=round decorative items up and just incorporated a few pumpkins, fall signage, fall garland, and fall florals in a rustic basket.

Most of these cute little pumpkins and fall signs were found at HomeGoods. A few I painted to match our home colors. I found the fall garland at Hobby Lobby last year after Thanksgiving for 80% so the garland came to around $8!

Most of my decorations for fall are pumpkin and leaf themed, but I do have one small Halloween section to add some fun and whimsy for the kids. This tree was actually black and had just a few plain branches on it. It was super ugly to say the least and in the toss out pile. So I spray painted it silver, then hot glued silver leaves all over to fill out the tree. Not too shabby for a quick nap-time project. This little ghost and cat are from my childhood home when I was a little girl so had to pull these out with a battery operated tea light. The kids love turning on the spooky tree with the cat and ghost each day.

I also have little pockets of fall and themes of thanksgiving sprinkled throughout the house like this little sign in the main guest bathroom. So much of life is all about perspective.

This year we went with decor that matched the rest of our living room colors (cool greens, blues, grays, etc), but the year before we added pops of color with traditional fall colors. Again, those lanterns came in handy as we filled them with fall-colored faux leaves and mini pumpkins. The wreath came from HomeGoods.

ENTRYWAY:

When I have more time, I also like to have a fun setup like this in our entryway. These were originally orange pumpkins I painted to coordinate with our home colors. I added the florals from Michaels, suitcase from a craft/antique fair, and the framed sign from HomeGoods on clearance from a few years back.

FRONT PORCH:

Nothing announces fall like a porch full of pumpkins and mums! We found a 4 pack of these beautiful tri-color set of mums at Costco for $12.99! We of course visited a few pumpkin patches with the kids so our porch stash grew every week with a few more pumpkins. We added the mums from Costco and planted more mums along the sidewalk from Home Depot (not seen below) which to my surprise, just had a second bloom a few weeks after I thought their time to shine was well over.

Don't forget the front door! I made this colorful wreath just by adding in fall florals and pumpkins into a bare white wreath and securing it with floral wire and hot glue. I then added this "hi" wooden sign from Hobby Lobby to complete the look and welcome our guests.

TRADITION:

One of my favorite traditions is bringing out Thankful Tom Turkey. Each morning we take turns coming up with things we are thankful for to add to Tom. It's such an easy and fun way to start talking about gratitude early on in your littles' lives, and it's so fun to hear what they are thankful for.

We laminated Tom so that we can reuse him and let the tradition continue year after year! It's an easy, fun tradition that gets us in the Thanksgiving spirit and starts the day off with a grateful heart.

Thanks for checking out our fall decorating ideas! Subscribe and keep checking back for more projects, decor inspiration, recipes, kids' activities, and parenthood tips and tricks! Follow my new page on IG, LifewithLittlez (with a z) for all the fun!