Deconstructing the perfect fall porch

Like 100,000 others, I fell in love with this Brian Jannsen photo as it flitted around Pinterest. So I thought it would be a fun exercise to deconstruct the vignette.

Here are the pieces that went into creating this amazing front porch, aside from the perfect canvas of historic house in Vermont with original front door, mature boxwoods, and beautiful lintels for parking tiny pumpkins above windows. I mean, seriously, this place is amazing. But without further ado, here are the ingredients for an awesome autumn front porch:

Bundles of corn stalks flanking the door (tied to pillars in this case)

Two real straw bales, not the teensy ones at the craft store

Two large bushel baskets

Two huge orange mums perched in the baskets

Scarecrow

Crow

Thirteen assorted pumpkins and gourds

Four huge urns

Four more huge orange mums for planting in urns

A million golden leaves, some strewn on the sidewalk and others dangling from branches above (obviously this can only be recreated by Mother Nature herself, but it is lovely)

Notice there is no wreath.

Here’s my less-impressive attempt to replicate the look at my house. For front-door décor, scale is pretty important; the mums are big, the hay bales are big, and the bushel baskets are big. The baskets were 50 cents apiece at an estate sale, and I’m on my second round of mums this season. I didn’t have room for two bales on my little step, so an old crate stood in on one side. And instead of a crow, I added a couple lanterns we light at night.

Check out other fabulous front-porch ideas on Instagram by searching #kkhfalldoor AND #shutthefrontporch. •

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