From Summer to Fall Hanging Basket

Happy Labor Day, y’all! Wasn’t it so nice to have an extra day off this weekend? Mr. Ethereal and I worked on several projects and did a little holiday sales shopping, too. Saturday morning, though, I worked on a little changeover in the shed with refreshing our hanging door basket…

I started with cleaning out this little wicker basket I’ve had since I was 16 years old. I got two of them from Cost-Plus (now World Market) when I was a new driver and was newly working. My daughter has the second one down at her apartment in Austin. They are great for holding hair things, brushes, anything!

I had put together a spring or summer bouquet about a year ago and decided it was time to clear it out. All the greenery got a nice rinse and dry, most was packed away into its tubs. But, then I thought about the hanging basket I’d made earlier this summer for the shed…

It still looked good but it is getting to be time for something for fall, so I pulled all of its florals out and gave them a good washing. I saved the little moss balls to reuse for this fall basket and tossed the now-really-falling-apart floral foam.

Got a spider bite in the process, too. 🙁 (The swelling went down by nightfall, so all is good!)

I reused the piece of scrunched-up chicken wire that I had placed last year into the little wicker basket (along with a piece of granite to keep that basket from falling over).

For this hanging basket, I loosened this chicken wire some to fit this basket better.

Then I tucked the chicken wire inside the wire basket and began adding the lime green moss balls back in between the two wire pieces. These little moss balls work great for hiding faux greenery wires behind it and add a nice pop of color to the overall basket!

I chose some cream toned peony stems, even though technically they aren’t a fall flower. I like them for fall mainly because of their lovely, creamy color. Next, I added in some loose faux leaves for filler, then looked through the two tubs of florals for small sunflowers bunches and the one large sunflower I still have.

After having some of these stems for several years, the fuzz comes off of the sunflowers and new ones are needed from the dollar store or one of the craft stores.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but I’ve been on a self-imposed No Spending on Craft Things or Thrift Shopping this year. The only time I broke that resolution was when I went browsing and found the little Colonial Patriotic Statuettes earlier this summer when my MIL was getting her Texas driver’s license.

The morning sunlight was beautiful for taking these early fall photographs, but I wanted to clean up the dead things in the pots outside of the shed before taking final photographs for you. 😉

This weekend was perfect for cleaning out planters and pots and we had a 68 degree low this morning… WHAT change from the last two months of 100 degrees or more! This past week and weekend were wonderful weather for working in the garden and I took full advantage of playing with planting some of my potted roses, plus some of the new plants I will share soon.

And that’s all there is to creating a pretty fall hanging basket using florals already on hand!

I am pleased with how this turned out and I’ll swap out the peonies later in the season with faux orange leaves, berries and add a fall ribbon to take us to Thanksgiving.

Happy creating, friends!

Barb 🙂