Fall is here and the leaves are changing color – mostly brown in Texas – and this is the perfect time to brighten up your house inside and out with fall colors.

Pumpkins aren’t just for Halloween. They provide a splash of awesome orange when situated on the front stoop or sitting on hay bales. You can recreate a country theme even in the middle of the city.

Decorating isn’t about buying new items, it’s about being creative. You can repurpose things you find in nature or in your house into funky art and decorations that shake up your house that is a bit bland and tired looking.

Here are some simple ideas on how to spruce up your house:

• Give leaves that have changed color new life. Make sure they are dry and then get out the paint. Make new patterns and attach to a canvas to hang on the wall.
• Take your child’s rock collection and add some color. Paint faces and expression on the rock, add hair.

• Reuse the cereal boxes you’ve been collecting. Cut out shapes, paint faces, use sticks for spikey hair and glue pasta to the face for eyes.

• Use extra wire hangers to make a tree and then hang on the wall. Wind blue and green yarn around the hangers to add color.

• Gather markers and yarn together to make decorated peanut ornaments.
• Dry corn husks and use them to wrap around a clear glass candle holder with twine. Decorate with a feather or decorated leaf.

• Glue leaves to heavy card stock and then hang on a vertical card holder or rope for a lovely wall decoration.
• Fill a tall glass with nuts in their shells and stick stalks of wheat through the nuts for an attractive vase appearance.
• Make a wreath with dried corn, small gourds, ribbon and cranberries. Use gardening wire for the wreath structure and attach decorative components.

• Use clear glass jars or glasses that are no longer in use. Fill with water and place a colorful gourd to float inside.
• Put cone flower seeds in a glass vase and top with dried cattails.
• Look for pine tree cones to use in art projects. Can be glued on a handmade wreath or dipped in paint to provide an interesting texture and pattern when rubbed on paper.

Outside of fall decorations, some folks like to dress up the home for the Halloween season. Here are some tasteful suggestions that won’t scare the kids too much:

• Select gourds with long necks and paint them white using black to pain on eyes and mouths. Hang from stoop and they look like float ghosts.
• Paint a glass jar white with ghostly black eyes and a mouth and set on a table on the porch.

• Hang old plastic pumpkins your children used for trick or treating on your fence.
• Put an old metal garbage can back into service. Paint it orange and put black eyes, nose and mouth in place to make it look like a jack ‘o lantern.

You don’t have to buy new decorations to spruce up your house with fall flair. Look around, see what you have stored in the basement, attic or crawl space and combine it with nature items you find on the ground, in a tree or floating in water.