A $20 Budget to Give a Fall Refresh to the Deck View From My Workspace

Most of us don’t have the resources or energy to make every part of our outdoor spaces inviting in fall and winter. But we can choose 1 or 2 spaces that we see daily and give them a little extra attention.

One of the spaces I chose to give a fall refresh is the small deck space I see when at my desk/sewing table.

I wanted to share with you how I did this on a budget. I had looked through our household finances and found $20 I could use. And I wasn’t starting completely from scratch.

Here’s what I had to work with, 2 lime green pots of last year’s yellow mums, a deck chair and table, and a potted arborvitae. I also had access to some lime green patterned chair cushions.

Since this is a fall refresh, my first thought was to buy a couple of those cute and tiny pumpkins from the produce section of the grocery store. One problem — squirrels think those are food! My next thought was to take that $20 to Dollar Tree and see what they had for fall decor.

I stopped in the DT that’s across the street from Walmart after grocery shopping a couple of weeks ago. I looked at everything and bought the 2 small foam pumpkins. 

A few days later I needed to get something from Home Depot. A different DT is on the way home from Hone Depot. Different DT stores sometimes have slightly different stock. I searched through everything in this store and chose this larger orange pumpkin, a small green pumpkin, and this solar lantern.

Re foam pumpkins — are they designed to be outdoor decor? No, however what will happen to them? Critters could try to nibble. Squirrels have done that with one other faux pumpkin, but not all of them. Elements will fade the paint over a season or two. But these can be repainted with a quick spritz of spray paint. 

They are lightweight and could blow away/around. Yes, that’s true. So I turned the pot pumpkins into stakes using plastic knives, and I duct taped the table and deck pumpkins in place. We had a fairly blustery day this week and they didn’t go anywhere.

The solar lantern—I don’t know how long it will last—a couple of years, maybe? When it fails to recharge, I can remove the solar candle and replace it with a new outdoor candle. Other solar lights sold at Dollar Tree have performed well. I expect this one will do as well as those. Can it physically break? It’s all plastic.

The yellow mums from last year — the bunnies kept snacking on the mums, so I moved them to the deck. I left the pots there and was surprised this past spring when I saw new growth. We did have a mild winter, and I’m sure that helped. 

The plants are not as full of blooms as last year, but they should be pretty nonetheless. To fill out the understory, I scavenged some yellow primroses from the garden. My first thought had been to use ornamental kale. But I didn’t see any at Fred Meyer or WinCo when shopping. The kale would have been pretty all winter, but the primroses will come back and bloom year after year. Anyway, I tucked the primroses on the front edge of each pot, and they help to visually distract from the legginess of the mums.

I cleaned up the outside of each pot, moved the potted arborvitae over, and moved the chair and table to where I can see them from my desk/sewing table. 

What I spent:

3 mini pumpkins $1.50 each

1 larger pumpkin $5.00

1 lantern $6.00

Grand total for this refresh $17.13, including tax.

How long I expect the look to last — through the blossoming of the mums, about till the end of October. At that time, I will use the rest of my budget to buy one Thanksgiving outdoor decor item from Dollar Tree. When December rolls around, I’ll bring in the fall decor pieces to store until next year and place a few red outdoor ornaments that I already have plus some stems of evergreens, such as holly and cedar, into the pots. Maybe I’ll hang a few of the red outdoor ornaments on the arborvitae.

For $20 I have a charming view to lift my mood on those drab and gloomy days to come. On nicer days, I hope the view will draw me outdoors for a mid-morning coffee break.