Fall Decorating

It's no secret that I love fall and I love to decorate my home using my rather large collection of ceramic pumpkins. Well, they're mostly ceramic but some are also glass, plastic, and even Styrofoam. You might recognize a lot of them from the Halloween Decorating and Entertaining Ideas blog from last month. Anyway, throw in a bunch of real pumpkins and you're ready to celebrate the season. Here's a small tour of the fall decorations I put up around my home.

This year, I decorated the porch with the dried corn stalks from my summer garden, added a bunch of bright pumpkins (including Punky, the singular pumpkin produced out of my garden), some Indian corn, and a welcome sign. Simple but festive. The dried leaves on the porch in the picture below, are the leaves my boys collected while on a bike ride around the neighborhood. The title picture above, shows what they looked like when they were first collected. A few short days later, the vibrant leaves lost their brilliance and faded to brown. It's amazing to me how the photo reflects only a moment in time and it reminds me to always be thankful and live in the moment. I put them out on the porch next to the pumpkins, to let them transform before our eyes and let the wind scatter them about.

Our house is west facing. I took this shot as the sun was setting and I love all the pronounced shadows and the glowing light produced when shooting at this time of day or evening rather. The sunset seems to blend all the yellows and oranges into a golden spotlight which is reminiscent of summertime.

Here's a fall wreath I made last year. I got all the "ingredients" on sale from Joann's and I think it turned out just beautiful. Every time I look at it, I see something different and I love that. I love all the different greens, oranges, whites, browns and the purple. I was surprised that I liked the purple in this arrangement. I wasn't so sure it would work in this wreath, but gladly it's that one unexpected thing, I like the most. 

Note:The base of this wreath was an old grapevine wreath which was re-purposed into this one. New items used were: a fall leaves garland as the base on the grapevine wreath. Then I added the following items around the fall leaves: Lotus flower pods, some fall picks with pine cones leaves and brown spear flowers , green acorn picks, a bag of small foam gourds in greens and white, purple flowers, white berries and a few extra leaves. One trick is, to disassemble some of the ready made picks so you can spread out some of the components. Keep layering the components until it looks symmetrical but not too much so. And you're done! :)
 

When you come in my front door and look toward the hallway that leads to the kitchen this is what you'll see. (sunflowers and pumpkins-below) I took a bunch of shots of this on two different days and I decided on these rather dark shots. They are much darker than I'd usually select but I like them anyway. I took these particular shots on a rainy day in the late afternoon. The picture is a bit dark but I love how the candles play with the darkness and highlight the warm orange of the pumpkins. This picture feels like fall to me, where fall days are short, dark and hinting at winter's arrival and yet quietly illuminating a brilliant show of color that reflects the warmth of summer's departure. Simply beautiful!

This shot below is all together, not a good shot, but there is something I like about the dark shadows and obscured line of vision. I only included it because I like it. I lack all Photoshop skills...I don't know how to use it at all. If I did, I might have been able to make this shot great. But no matter. (New To do list item for 2014: Learn Photoshop!)

The Dining Room...

The picture above and below are of my buffet in my dining room. I love to use these glittery pumpkins along with the rustic and metallic pumpkins all in muted earth tones. They also say fall to me, just in a more sophisticated way than the typical orange pumpkins.I love the glow of the candles as it bounces off the metallic pumpkins. 

With all the glittery bowl fillers everywhere now in the stores, I couldn't resist filling a vase with them to add a touch of glitter. This vase is also in my dining room, on a side cabinet. Subtle and festive. 

My kitchen gets a little attention as well. Even though I don't host Thanksgiving at my house each year, I still love to decorate as though I'm entertaining every night. Here is a picture of the nook in my kitchen that I use to display some of my serving pieces. 

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!