Season Long Fall Decorating Ideas: Halloween Through Thanksgiving

There's a crispness to the air. Stores are lining their shelves with candy and costumes. Leaves are starting to turn. It's time to break out your fall decorations!

Come September, we start thinking Halloween. Decorations focus on ghouls and goblins. While focusing on Halloween may be fun and easy, it is also short lived and can suck up your seasonal decorating budget quickly. With a little planning, you can decorate for more than just the next month and extend your fall decorations through Thanksgiving, until it is time to focus on that next big day.

The obvious choice for fall is pumpkins. They are abundant and relatively inexpensive. Any novice decorator can put out a bunch of pumpkins in various sizes inside or out and have an instant, decent looking display. The problem with pumpkins comes when you carve them. Of course, no Halloween is complete without that flickering face welcoming visitors to your door. So go ahead and start cutting! Just don't cut them all. Carve out a few friends and freaks, and place them among your piles. One or two jack-o-lanterns here and there is all you need to create the effect, and the uncut pumpkins will last through the rest of the season. Add interest with gourds and squashes as well. An alternative to cutting pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns is to paint them with a freakish face or Halloween scene. When the trick or treaters leave, turn the painted side so it can't be seen, keeping the pumpkin for the rest of the season.

What else says fall? Leaves and acorns! Nothing is cheaper. Put them everywhere, inside and out. Scatter them, fill baskets with them, tuck a few under your pumpkins to add color and dress it up. Bring the outdoors in by using prettily colored leaves under and around orange and earth tone candles. Top with the acorns for a little more interest. Rake the yard if your must, but where nature has given you a decorating hand, let piles of color stay near pumpkins, along fences and next to the house. If you don't relish the thought of real leaves inside your home, check our the craft department of your local department store. You'll find bright, pretty fall leaves of the fake variety for little money, and they will last for years.

While you are there, buy some fake ivy as well. The greenery makes the perfect compliment to your pumpkins and gourds, mimicking the long vines they grow on. An added benefit is that they too last forever and can stay all year by nesting new decorations among the leaves each season.

Buy candles in pumpkin shapes and earthy tones of browns and oranges. You can take candles from Halloween straight through Thanksgiving with just a little change of the accessories. For Halloween, start with wire and beads. You can use wires to mimic spider webs and add a few of the plastic variety creepy crawlies. For an elegant Gothic effect, string wire with black beads, using crystals and dangles for accent. After Halloween, trade your Goth and bugs for something more natural and subdued (again, your cheap leaves are handy here). Make rings around candles with your ivy. Tie some inexpensive raffia ribbon around them for a natural, straw-like effect. Copper wire strung with earthy green and brown beads make pretty candle rings; use glass beads to add sparkle. As always, use care and remember to remove all flammables before burning!

In your fall decorating, don't forget the groceries!! Harvest themes have replaced Halloween in many homes as both a compliment and an alternative. Fall is all about reaping the earth's bounty. While Halloween is fun for a few weeks, Harvest lasts the season long. Bowls filled with apples, pies and cookies on the table, corn on your door…the possibilities are limitless. Candy corns may be the quintessential Halloween treat, but they suit the second half of the fall season, too. Try filling a mason jar (or three) with them for a new twist on traditional elements. Nuts are another fall bounty that can be used all season long. Think about the things you are buying and eating and how you could use them for double duty.

Although technically an early spring product, maple syrups and candies often enjoy a resurgence in the fall when people start thinking about comfort food and warmth. The leaf that is the hallmark of maple products is also one of the most used during the fall. Maple syrup is often bottled in displayable containers. Look for syrup in pretty traditional shaped bottles with country scenes and glass leaf shaped bottles that showcase the earthy amber tones. Group bottles in a variety of sizes for interest and effect.

Using what you have, what you are buying anyway and items that are not exclusive to one celebration will give lasting life to your decorations. Decorating for the seasons adds fun and interest to your spaces, but the price tag involved in changing your decor every month can break the budget. Use holiday products as just an accent to a season long display that will last for more of the year. Look for double duty decorations and enjoy your efforts for months to come!