The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

That's right - it's FALL, y'all!

I'm going to go ahead and ignore that the high for today on this lovely autumnal equinox is one hundred and four freaking degrees, and that's pretty much been the high (if not higher) for the past several months and will probably be the high for another few weeks. If I have to crank my AC and stick fake pumpkins all over my house so that I can celebrate the harvest season with the rest of the country, so be it.

The best part about fall, of course, is that it ushers in not only the cooler weather (can I get a Hallelujah???) but that it also heralds the beginning of the holiday season. I love this part of the year! So many things to make, and bake and experiences to enjoy! Lots of people Spring clean, but for me, I come alive and do all that in September. I've got my household binder to help me stay on the ball. We finally picked paint colors for the living room and started the painful process of priming the poop brown walls (really, who thought that was a good idea?) in the kitchen. My fall garden is mostly planted.

Life is GOOD, y'all.

This week I started hauling out my fall decor. Okay, I guess hauling is a bit over-dramatic. I only have one bin of stuff, because if you recall, we've been in an apartment with NO storage before this year! I'm sure as we live here my collection of stuff will grow. In the mean time, I can work with what I have and that includes my creativity! Expect to see some fall/Halloween decor posts from me in the next few weeks.

We'll start with my hutch:

You can see the new wall color in the background. It's a very pale, cool blue. I also changed out the drapes framing the patio door from a steely gray-blue to a nice, solid navy. I like how the white molding and navy curtains really stand out from the wall with the new color now. The oranges and the greens in the hutch play along with them nicely too, I think.

I'll describe what's on the shelves, starting from the bottom. Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Bottom shelf - two milk glass cake stands, a large milk glass platter (all gifts from my friend Suzy), a fake pumpkin, a stone frog (a gift from my friend Brian), a pumpkin plate that I picked up at the grocery store last year, our framed monogram (cut with the Silhouette using the Monogram KK font) and decorated with a teeny fabric bunting, and an apothecary jar full of candy corn.

Confession? The candy corn is from last year. That stuff is GROSS. I don't know how people eat it, but it sure looks pretty in a seasonal display, doesn't it? I just put it in a baggie and saved it to use again.

The middle three shelves, from top to bottom:

Top - Glass candy jar full of Dollar Tree skulls and a label that I made last year. I opted to leave the liquid out this year. Little PartyLite leaf votive holder (part of the Whispering Leaves Trio) I bought at the neighbor's yard sale for a quarter. A pair of small milk glass urns flanking a milk glass dish holding Horatio the Dollar Tree glitter skull (from last year) and some fake apples (clearance! at Fresh & Easy of all places). The arsenic bottle I did last year, along with a vintage reproduction Halloween postcard in a small frame.

The fabric bunting is just little triangles of fabric cut with pinking shears and hot glued to ribbon. I stuck it up there using Glue Dots.

Middle shelf - a pair of milk glass vases at either end, the other two PartyLite leaf votive holders from my neighbor's yard sale, a purple metal star from the Target dollar spot last year, a milk glass compote with Spanish moss and a faux pumpkin (I just pulled it off a floral pick) from Hobby Lobby, my green cheese dome cloche styled with the stuff from last year's cloche, two leather-bound books (The Classics of Horror and Ghosts), and a swirly faux pumpkin that I found at Goodwill. I like that pumpkin because it has "Give Thanks" carved into the other side, so after Halloween I can just turn it around!

Bottom shelf - A stack of my favorite milk glass bubble bowls, two old books (David Copperfield and an old Roget's Thesaurus from Goodwill), a smaller stack of mini bubble bowls, my shrinking potion victim (again, left out the liquid this year), the sugar and creamer to match the bubble bowls, our monogram under a mini-cloche which I set on top of a saucer from my china set, and a milk glass compote filled with stones, twig balls, and a faux resin pumpkin that I picked up at Hobby Lobby last week. They look just like the mini ones you can buy at the grocery store, only you can save them and reuse them every year! No waste!

The very top of the hutch has a milk glass compote (Fenton, to match the ruffled cake plate, also from my friend Suzy for my birthday this year) with an orange planter inside that I found at Goodwill, an apothecary jar holding candy pumpkins, a framed vintage ad for Milky Way with a Halloween theme that I found online and just printed out, a silver framed mirror from Goodwill ($3!!!), an apothecary jar with dowels I cut short, painted black, and hot glued white ribbon around to make fake candy sticks, an apothecary jar with some pine cones and fake acorns (we don't have real ones around here) that are sold at Walmart with the Better Homes and Gardens stuff, an empty apothecary jar (I want to fill it with candy eyeballs, if I can find them), an apothecary jar filled with green beach glass I found at Goodwill, a black birdcage found on clearance at Target containing a silver candle holder (Goodwill) holding a faux pumpkin (another Hobby Lobby floral pick, minus the pick), and topped with a fake crow from the Dollar Tree.

All of the apothecary jars came from Goodwill, and most of them have little tassels hanging on them that I made using Martha's directions. The letter F monogram under the cloche is mostly chipboard and Stickles glitter glue, with some orange crepe paper for fun. It's exactly as wide as the cloche is, so it tucked in there nicely and holds itself up. That mini-cloche came from Goodwill too, as did my china.

Here's a terrible backlit photo of the "sofa table" which is really just an Expedit turned on it's side:

I didn't want to put a bunch of stuff on here because the boy can reach it, so it's pretty much the same as it's been. I added that handled urn (Deseret Industries, $2!) and filled it with Spanish moss from the dollar store, a $3 fake pumpkin from Target, and another Dollar Tree Crow. Nice and simple. Honestly, with the mess that Spanish moss makes, I don't think I could have handled anything more complicated!

Be sure to check back for some other things that I have up my sleeve! I may have lost my mantel in the move, but I have no shortage of things I can decorate.