{"id":462883,"date":"2026-10-11T10:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T10:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/462883\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T10:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T10:06:07","slug":"texas-woman-charges-up-to-2000-to-decorate-peoples-porches-with-pumpkins-and-her-business-is-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/462883\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas woman charges up to $2,000 to decorate people\u2019s porches with pumpkins \u2014 and her business is thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brandi<\/a> Brandi Hazelett\/Handout <\/p>\n

All across the U.S., homeowners enlist experts to decorate the outsides \u2014 and sometimes the insides \u2014 of their houses for celebrations like Halloween or Christmas. <\/p>\n

And while some might ask “are you out of your gourd?” for paying hundreds \u2014 or even thousands \u2014 of dollars to someone to outfit your porch with pumpkins, Brandi Hazelett learned about<\/a> the demand for such services from a podcast a few years back and decided to turn her own love of autumn decorating into a source of income in her Lockhart, Texas, community. <\/p>\n

Must Read <\/p>\n

“I think being in an area where no one else was really offering this helped,” Hazelett, 37, told Moneywise. “There was a gap in the market and instead of overthinking whether there was enough demand, I decided to try it and find out.” <\/p>\n

Hazelett, who describes herself as “a stay-at-home mom” with no business background, launched Porch In Season<\/a> with the tagline “Seasonal style, delivered” and the promise to turn your porch into a pumpkin paradise for anywhere from $200 to around $1,200 \u2014 though she told People<\/a> that her most expensive commission cost $2,000. <\/p>\n

And now, Porch In Season, which Hazelett runs with her husband, is part of a burgeoning national offering of holiday decorators catering to autumn\/Halloween and Christmas-lovers. <\/p>\n

Making a bid for your decor dollars <\/p>\n

Hazelett believes that the allure of businesses like hers is largely that “we’re selling convenience just as much as we’re selling pumpkins.” <\/p>\n

That includes the time commitment it takes to create the displays, from sourcing the right pumpkin varieties to transporting, cleaning and arranging them \u2014 and then cleaning up. <\/p>\n

“We take all of that off the customer’s plate.” <\/p>\n

Fellow Texan, Heather Torres, whose Porch Pumpkins business inspired Hazelett, proved so successful that she branched off<\/a> into coaching to help others launch their own pumpkin practice. <\/p>\n

And that’s no surprise, as decor is big business. The National Retail Federation estimated<\/a> that Halloween consumer spending will hit $13.5 billion in 2026, with a whopping $4.3 billion spent on decorations alone. While 2026 Christmas spending estimates aren’t available, one survey<\/a> found that consumer holiday budgets are up nearly 10% this year, with decor among the spending items on the rise. <\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a quick Google search of “porch decorators” for Halloween and Christmas yields a slew of services happy to share a piece of that (pumpkin) pie. <\/p>\n

In Los Angeles, Dr. Halloween<\/a> decorates homes with elaborately ghoulish decor before transforming into Dr. Christmas for the holiday season, offering festive trimmings inside and outside of the house for anywhere between $5,000 and $50,000<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Christmas decor services can also range from between roughly $2,000 and $4,500 in Pittsburgh<\/a> and Chicago<\/a> to up to $30,000 in Philadelphia<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Hazelett, meanwhile, admits that there’s “been a huge learning curve for me” in terms of running her own business. She pointed to logistics \u2014 figuring out how many pumpkins to order and how to transport, store and deliver them, as well as learning about pricing for the actual service she provides beyond buying pumpkins. <\/p>\n

“It’s very easy when you’re starting a business to undervalue your own time because you’re just excited that someone wants to pay you at all,” she added. <\/p>\n

Along with the porch design, she noted in People that she removes the pumpkins at the end of the season for farmers to use them as feed. <\/p>\n

And while Hazelett admits that she’d love to see her business become “a seasonal decorating company rather than only a pumpkin porch company,” she’s not looking to expand for the sake of it. <\/p>\n

“I genuinely love pumpkins and fall decorating, so this wasn’t just a business opportunity I picked out of nowhere,” she explained. “If we add other services, I want them to feel like a natural extension of the brand and be something I’m genuinely excited to create.” <\/p>\n

Read More: Vanguard reveals what’s coming for U.S. stocks \u2014 and it could be bad news for this group of investors<\/a> <\/p>\n

From side-hustle to small business <\/p>\n

As for others making the jump from side-hustle to small business, Hazelett advises to “start before you feel completely ready, because I’m not sure that feeling ever actually comes.” <\/p>\n

She noted that if she’d spent a year “trying to have every detail figured out before launching,” she “probably would have talked myself out of it somewhere along the way.” <\/p>\n

That said, she emphasized the importance of keeping on top of expenses and sales and how much time you spend on the job and suggested avoiding comparisons of your new business to established ones. It’s also important, she added, that you “don’t assume that being busy automatically means you’re profitable.” <\/p>\n

Experts like those at Chase Bank also recommend<\/a> identifying your customer base and determining if you have sustainable demand and suppliers before jumping in head first. <\/p>\n

Making sure that your revenue is “consistent and scalable” is also key, they noted, along with ensuring that you have a business budget and emergency savings to help buoy you if needed. <\/p>\n

Finding a way to distinguish<\/a> your business in your market is also important, as is getting any required licenses<\/a>, permits and insurance. <\/p>\n

Hazelett, however, believes that the biggest lesson she learned is that you don’t have to have the exact direction for your business mapped out before you start. <\/p>\n

“Porch in Season began because my husband and I saw someone doing something we thought was really cool and basically said, ‘why not us?'” she added. “Sometimes you just have to give yourself permission to try.” <\/p>\n

What To Read Next <\/p>\n

Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise’s best stories and exclusive interviews first \u2014 clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com<\/a> under the title: Texas woman charges up to $2,000 to decorate people’s porches with pumpkins \u2014 and her business is thriving<\/a> <\/p>\n

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandi Hazelett\/Handout All across the U.S., homeowners enlist experts to decorate the outsides \u2014 and sometimes the insides…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[93341,910,917,918,919,911,912,93342,913,914,4529,93343,2492,93344,111,9670,31522,915,916,47705,93345,2445,27,29,28,93346],"class_list":["post-462883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-401k","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-financial-information","tag-investing","tag-investment-tools","tag-investor","tag-market-news","tag-mortgage","tag-mutual-funds","tag-personal-finance","tag-quote","tag-real-estate","tag-retirement","tag-stock","tag-stock-research","tag-stock-valuation","tag-stocks","tag-suze-orman","tag-tax","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-track-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}