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Welcome Your Guests This Fall~ Home Decor by Eva

Hello Everyone! I am Eva from Home Décor by Eva. I am ecstatic to be here today, have been a ‘Considered me Inspired’ reader for some time now. I hope you guys enjoy my ideas as much as I enjoy Amy’s!
I had some house guests over so just got around some décor for Halloween for our guest room.
Happy Reading!
Xoxo
Eva

Welcome Your Guests This Fall!

Fall is coming, and with it comes Halloween, Thanksgiving and family get-togethers. If you quail at the thought of the endless housework, entertaining and above all, constant civility necessary when you have guests in your home, try to take heart! Get ahead of the rush by getting the guest room all decorated and ready before the first guest arrives, get the freezer stocked with easy meal ideas and take some time to make personalised decorations for the room that will be their home away from home! Fruit bowls and biscuit tins
Fruit bowls and biscuit tins:
It is always awkward for guests to have a snack if they are peckish in between meals. Prove your excellence as a host or hostess by providing a tin of biscuits – home-made are always best – or a bowl of fresh, appetising fruit on the dresser or window sill. Adding a personal touch to store bought goods is also a good idea!
This also provides a nod to the season: harvest time, with plenty of food being gathered and stored. Not only does this give your guests something to eat without having to ask, fresh fruit looks and smells great! A useful tip is to polish all the fruit before you put it into the bowl, especially soft fruits like grapes and plums that acquire a soft greyish bloom.
Arrange the fruit attractively and be sure to pop in and check it every day or two to make sure it is all still appealing and edible. For a more daring look, you may arrange it like this:

Welcome
I recently updated the guest room furniture, got this gorgeous sideboard from Shop4Furniture. I distressed and gave it a lovely traditional vintage look. Place a few candles (my mason jars will look wonderful too!) and your guests will feel like VIP’s!
You can also make a welcome note for your guests. If it is just one guest you can even personalise it with his or her name! Find an attractive font and print out a template. Carefully transfer the word to the coloured paper that you have chosen for the background.
I used the time-honoured tradition of transferring the image by scribbling all over the back of the image with a pencil that would show up on my black background, then tracing over the word very carefully, having stapled the front sheet to my black page so as to keep the images aligned.








Then disaster struck! I happily used my new small bottle of glue, assuming that the small nozzle would release only a small amount of glue! My carefully lettered 'Welcome' was deluged with a massive thick line of oozy, runny glue, obliterating the delicate curls and swirls!
On my second attempt I used my finest paintbrush to apply the glue, working as fast as I could so as to finish before the glue dried out! At last, I had a word that I was happy with, coated with a nice wet layer of glue. I liberally sprinkled the glitter over the word and left it to dry out for about half an hour or so.
Then I carefully shook off the excess glitter (capturing carefully onto a spare piece of paper and returning it to the tube) and had a lovely glittering 'Welcome'! I was lucky enough to find some wonderful autumn leaf stickers from Little Crafty Bugs in my crafting supplies, so I applied those to the empty spaces around the world.


After that it was a simple matter to fit the picture into a frame, ready to go on the mantelpiece or dresser of the guestroom! If you like, you can even purchase a new guestroom mirror, and apply the decorative welcome message to that (or to the old one!) for a sparkling motif that is sure to make your guests feel wanted!

Wreathed in Welcome

Materials needed:
A handmade wreath always looks wonderful when you use natural elements. I began by forming a loose circle of sturdy florists' wire.

I used six lengths, intertwining them to create a strong circle with enough gaps for the decorations to be anchored into.

Then I began placing some wonderfully colourful autumn leaves around the circle, fixing them in place with lengths of a much finer wire.

I collected my leaves just as the season was beginning to change, so there is a lot of green still in the leaves. Later on in the season you will find deep orange and red and exquisite pale yellow. While fixing my leaves in place I discovered the tiniest snail I have ever seen in my life!

After a couple of photographs I popped him and his leaf back outside. When collecting leaves keep your eyes peeled for interesting plants, nuts and seeds and anything else that might enhance your creation.

Feathers and rose hips add a splash of colour and interest to this wreath, but you can use only leaves if you prefer. Study the leaf shapes and choose similarly sized leaves, saving the extra large or extra small ones for other crafty creations!

Once all the leaves were in place I fixed a loop of wire to the back of the wreath, creating a hanging fixture so the wreath can be hung on a door or on the wall.



These are just a couple of ways to get your guestroom ready for the influx of family and friends that the fall brings our way. None of these pieces require a great deal of talent – just some time and some basic arts and crafts supplies as well as some natural odds and ends – so put aside a couple of hours of 'you' time and get stuck in making beautiful things to welcome people into your home.