Happy fall y’all, and Happy Halloween! It actually feels like fall in South Georgia at the moment, so I’m embracing it! The temperature is barely reaching 80°. Woo hoo!
Just popping in to talk about our Halloween decorations, and the little touches of fall around the house…
I love fall. I think most Southerners do. At some point there comes a break from the heat, we cheer on our favorite college football teams, and are starting to put together holiday plans. If you’re really on top of things, you’ve also begun your Christmas shopping.
It took me a while to get the hang of decorating for Halloween and Thanksgiving. It’s like, all our Halloween decor is bright orange and black and playful, and then our fall decorations are a mix of oranges, browns and other colors, including metallics, and overall more formal looking. There are skeletons, spiders, and black birds. Then there are pretty pumpkins and cute scarecrows. Together, especially in this “new” smaller house, it just looked like a cluttered mess – one belonging to someone who couldn’t decide on a decorating direction. Girl with her hand raised right here; that would be me.
Then comes the issue of when to take it down. The Halloween stuff on November 1 and then the rest of the fall stays up until after Thanksgiving, when you bring the Christmas boxes down from the attic? So there’s no clean slate/house in between? I don’t know…I start to twitch.
Amanda, from Dixie Delights, does a spectacular job of decorating for Halloween and goes all out. So does the Makerista. But they don’t decorate for “fall”. Many other bloggers decorate with only fall decor, leaving out the Halloween stuff. This approach makes it much easier to create a cohesive, themed look.
I do love looking at their photos, and admire their creativity and knack for holiday decorating. But we opt for the mix. And I’ve decided to embrace that mix, however un-coordinating, perhaps disjointed, it may be. We don’t have a ton of decorations anyway, so I’m going for it.
I used things from both sets of holiday boxes and threw in some new things. Also, the kids have had strong opinions the last couple of years. They requested (begged for) more spooky decorations. We went to Target last year and I let each kid pick out something “spooky” and I found a few smaller things. {Joseph chose a telephone with a scary voice, and a motion sensor that he can put outside and scare people with spooky sounds. Hannah chose a skeleton.}
Meet Skully:
Last year he had black pom poms but I can’t find them anywhere (???). Skully sits next to a stack of design magazines on our “time-out” bench, a little children’s pew I found at Scott Antique Market years ago. I’d like to sit on that bench and catch up on my magazines. I’m only several months behind.
My tiny addition this year was this yoga skeleton, sitting next to the diffuser I turned into a jack o’lantern.
…And, man, it smells like fall and soooo good in our house.
For our table, I brought out my supply of pinecones. I’m picky about pinecones. These I’ve had since we lived in Sandersville.
The gourds have a story. Five years ago, we visited a pumpkin patch. While Hannah walked through the rows and carefully selected her pumpkin, Joseph came up to me with those gourds. Typical Joseph. They have had a place in our fall decor ever since. He did pick something that lasts, I’ll give him that!
The mercury glass pumpkins are from Pottery Barn and purchased years ago. I wanted a little bit of metallic sparkle in that brown, natural mixture.
Hannah and I stopped road-side and picked some dead branches last year. This year, I didn’t do the leaves, but took those big spiders (from last year’s gallery wall) and scattered them on top. That gallery wall spider web was way more work than it looks. I tried several different types of tape, but those felt spiders gave me trouble the whole month of October. A lot lower maintenance having those crawlers on the table…
The battery-operated wire lights and candles are messed with constantly by a certain little boy, so by this time the pile has lost it’s nice shape and I just toss the pinecones or spiders wherever.
I got these multi-colored velvet pumpkins from TJ Maxx a year or two ago and I love them on the living room credenza.
Then, there are little touches of decor spread around, on dressers and doorknobs, windows and bathroom counters, and hanging from ceiling fans…
That skeleton (bottom right) is part of a garland of little skeletons, strung around the dining room window. My mom was babysitting the kids several years ago while Joe and I were out of town at a conference. We came back to those guys strung up over our bed.
I have to say, year after year, my favorite decoration doesn’t seem to change. It’s the artwork that covers the doors to the garage and laundry room in the little hall off the kitchen and master bedroom, where we pass by many times a day.
My mom taped mine and my brothers’ artwork to the kitchen cabinets during the holidays growing up. Even into adulthood, we would see some of the surviving pieces decorating her kitchen. I was excited to carry on that tradition. It’s special, it’s cuteness and memories, and it makes me smile. I love it.
The kids also paint little pumpkins every year. This year’s edition:
Hannah’s, described as “abstract”, is on the left. Joseph’s is on the right. Just like his coloring pages, he doesn’t like to leave any negative space. I love their different approaches.
Painted pumpkins from years past:
This year, we carved our first pumpkin together. Well, I did. Hannah did the stencil and Joseph helped me scoop out and separate the seeds so Daddy could bake them. (Yum!) It turned out pretty good:
When it comes to holiday decorating, my philosophy is this:
Decorating is fun – or it should be anyway. Why do it if it’s not, right? So, be creative. Play around. Pare down or put it all out. Go for simple or over the top. Go for classy or go for tacky. Go for beautiful or just go for fun. Keep it the same or change it every year. It’s your home. Do your own thing and let the other people who live there have a say.
Let go of perfection. Look at Pinterest or Instagram for inspiration, but not for comparison.
Celebrate the excitement and happiness of the season, the joy in the memory-making.
And when you do those holiday things – going to the pumpkin patch, trunk-or-treat, or fall festival, painting or carving pumpkins, dressing up, going trick-or-treating – whatever it is, be all there. The colorful pictures that fill your memories (and maybe your phone’s camera roll) are far more lasting than any store-bought decoration and are a lot more meaningful.
This advice is a reminder for me, too.
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