Fall is unofficially here - the weather has cooled a bit and New England is gearing up for her annual autumn color show. While the autumnal equinox and official start of fall is still a couple of weeks away, it is time to transition the summer entry decor to more fall-appropriate fodder.

I adore summer and it is hard for me to let go of the season. I am NOT a “YAY pumpkin spiced everything season has arrived” enthusiast. Fall is beautiful here, though way too short. The colors are spectacular, the weather is crisp, and most importantly, hot apple cider doughnuts are in season at the orchards!

This is a post from last fall…this is aspirational as I have yet to actually get my fall decor together. So far, I have purchased some yellow mums and some faux Japanese lanterns to add to a door arrangements. I still need to gather some other elements…but the advice from last year still holds!

My front door urns filled with their spectacular summer blush hydrangeas have seen better days - truth be told, they have been looking pretty sad for the last month. I’m not sure what happened, but it was past time to move them to the garden bed and hope they make a comeback next summer! (update - they did survive the move and bloomed a bit in the garden this summer, though not as beautifully as their first year)

The ivy in the urns has grown fabulously lush though, so that can stay a bit longer.

A recent visit to the nursery wholesaler offered some fall inspiration. Miles of sunflowers are so pretty, but I have killed off more than I care to admit…gorgeous dahlias, ornamental kale, and acres of mums in every color and size…what to buy that will survive me….

I bought evergreens for the centers for height and because these will transition from fall to winter easily when I change over the decor again after Thanksgiving.

For the entry, I decided to go with a simple golden yellow color scheme featuring yellow sunflowers, crabapples, and mums. You can see last fall’s seasonal house tour HERE.

In the height of laziness, I left the same spring door decor - a flat willow basket with a rope handle, along with the green bow, and faux ivy and just took out the pink azaleas and pussywillow branches and replaced them with crabapple stems and sunflowers. I didn’t even take it off the door! It took all of 5 minutes. (you can see the spring iteration with this basket HERE)

When you have a versatile base, just like in a room, it is easy to change the look by just changing a few things!

To repeat the yellow from the sunflowers, I added a few yellow mums to the urns, along with some kale (the best use of kale is in decorative planters IMO), and tucked in a few mini white pumpkins to finish them off.

These follow the “thrillers, spillers, and fillers” rule of arrangements that we have mentioned before. The evergreens provide the height and thriller, the ivy provides the spiller, and the mums and pumpkins provide the filler.

The rest of the case of white pumpkins piled into a shaker wood basket to become a fall table decoration.

I’ll be back to share the progress on the transition of the rest of our outdoor decor to fall.

I still have to change over my pocket patio to purple and white mums, and add some fall to the back deck. This will involve some pumpkins - possibly faux since the squirrels munched on my real ones last year making a mess. We have a lot of nature on the deck, some of it uninvited.

It will also involve some new pillow covers for fall, and some new cozy throws so we can enjoy s’more season around the new fire pit (named Calcifer after the fire demon in Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones) and under Percy (the patio heater). It turns out to be much more pleasant toasting marshmallows over a fire pit than under the patio heater LOL.

Yes, we tend to name things…plants, equipment, visiting woodland creatures…

Happy Fall!