It Says So On The Calendar

Fall is here, folks. It says so on my calendar. And now, finally, it even feels a bit like it when I step outside. Autumn is, by far, my favorite season. I love the still-warm days and crisp nights. I love having a fire in the back yard. I love cooking various foods on sticks. I love watching football games--both those of my son and of professionals. I love finally getting back into my jeans after a summer of shorts and giving my sandal-weary feet a break with actual shoes. I love sweatshirts, the smell of fires, the changing color of the leaves, and just generally getting ready to cozy up.

I am not, however, a big fan of Halloween. I don't decorate much for it, although many of my neighbors go all out. (Big surprise there, eh?) But I do like to decorate for fall. I enjoy the changing over from the lighter, cooler colors of summer to the warmer colors of fall. I like to add more candles around the house. I like to bring out my little pumpkins. I like to buy and then kill mums. It's an unintentional, but annual tradition for me. It'll just be one more way that I can make my neighbors continue to feel just a bit superior to me. That's me. I'm a giver.

Last year, when we moved into this house, there were many, many more things on my mind than fall decorating. Things like: laying 800 square feet of hard wood flooring, unpacking 60 bajillion boxes, registering my children for a new school, homeschooling my daughter, and figuring out how to cook for a family of 6 with a kitchen that was torn apart. But this year, things have calmed down enough for me to be able to enjoy fall a little. We still have a To Do List for this place that is as long as my arm, but at least now I know where my fall decorations are. Last year I would have just waved in the general direction of one of the enormous mountains of moving boxes and said, "Um, I think they're in one of those boxes...over there...somewhere..."

So this year, I was able to do this:I found the little scalloped edge stand at Goodwill and sprayed it and put a little dollar store pumpkin on it along with some berries that I found at Michael's. The tray is a cheapy little thing also from Goodwill that I painted with chalkboard paint.

And collect these branches and grasses from my yard and arrange this:

Then I was able to buy a couple of candles and some pretty ribbons and stuff and make these:

And when I saw this glass candleholder/vase thingy on a Goodwill trip, I knew that I wanted to do this:



I'm not done just yet. There are a few more things that I want to put around the house or rearrange for fall, but this is a start. And now that the weather is finally starting to match up to what the calendar says, I don't feel so strange about it.

But you still won't see any ghosts or ghoulies in my yard. That's okay. I'll leave that to my neighbors.