Fall wreath

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for fall. I am so over the humid, 90+ degree days and am looking forward to that crisp, cool fall weather and all of the awesomeness that comes along with it: sweatshirts, football, boots, pumpkin-spice flavored everything and my birthday!

So, despite protests from my summer-loving husband and mother, I jumped headfirst — and maybe a little prematurely — into the new season with a brand new front door wreath. What better way to welcome in fall!

There is a lot of wreath inspiration on Pinterest. It was super hard to narrow down my ideas and finally choose one to try and execute myself.

Burlap wreath, Moss wreath, Pink spring wreath, yellow spring wreath, Paper bag wreath, Dried berry wreath

In the end, I decided to go the most frugal route and use what I had on hand to create our new wreath. I decided to take a little pinspiration from a pretty spring wreath I came across (pictured above, bottom left). I already had the grapevine base from an old Christmas wreath I created and ditched last year in favor of a new ornament wreath. I also had the ribbon lying around, the floral wire and the chalk paint for the letter. Next step was heading to the dollar store for some faux plant/leaf decor and to Michael's to pick up a new "H" since my old "B" would no longer do!

Our new fall wreath!

The assembly was very easy. I bought two sets of each plant/leaf bundle at the dollar store. I made sure to get them in fall-y colors and picked out plants/leaves of varying lengths to add some interest once assembled. To keep each bundle together, I used floral wire, then to create the double-sided look, I then bundled the two bundles together like this:

Knowing that stems and wire are not very attractive, I took some of the ribbon and wound it around the middle, like this:

I then attached the bundles to the grapevine wreath base using more floral wire that I wound through the ribbon and stems to hide it from sight, like this:

You'll notice I also added a matching ribbon loop to the top of the wreath to hang it from the over-the-door wreath hanger I already owned. I attached the loop by weaving the floral wire through the ribbon and into the wreath.

Meanwhile, I had purchased the "H" from Michael's, which comes in either black or white, for about $3.99. I bought the white one knowing that I wanted to paint it a more fall-y color. I chose orange for several reasons. 1) it is obviosuly one of the most identifiable fall colors 2) we already have some orange accents on the porch in the form of a table that we picked up from the stripes in the indoor/outdoor rug there 3) I already had Barcelona chalk paint from Annie Sloan on hand.

The "H" took about three coats of paint because I wanted it completely, and evenly covered and it was kind of awkward to paint a complete coat each time without making a mess and smudging everything. I secured that to the wreath by hammering two tiny nails in the back and then wrapping the floral wire around those two nails and in through the grapevine wreath. This ensured a seamless look, both from and back, which is something I needed to be cognizant of since my front door is actually a window and the wreath can be seen from both outside and in.

Once the letter was attached I layered on some more ribbon. The maroon ribbon was very thick and hard to manipulate, so I decided to keep that as a trailing ribbon and added a burlap bow for more texture and depth. I love how it turned out!

I can't wait to deck out the rest of the front porch. I have something like this below in mind, but I think I'll wait until the calendar actually says its fall! Stay tuned for an update on that!

Photo credit