December 2013 – While Everyone Else Is Sleeping

Believe it or not, I am only now undecorating from Halloween and Thanksgiving. Ok, I guess it is not a stretch to imagine that given the fact that I am almost always behind in life. But this year I had three really good reasons: 1) There is less than one month between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2) I refused to decorate for Christmas until after Juliette’s Dora themed birthday party and 3) Autumn is truly my favorite season. I love it, and wish I could make it last all year.

I have a lot of experience with autumn decor from our 2007 October wedding as I shared with you here and here. I have also been forever pinning ideas on my autumn pinterest board found here. This year, I decided I would again get crafty to make the house feel like it was fall inside and out.

I started with making a leaf wreath. I bought a simple grapevine wreath form from Michaels as well as several packages of dyed preserved leaves. Given that pinecones are not plentiful in ATX, I bought a package of those as well. The steps are very simple. Insert the stems of the leaves into the wreath form. I did this bunches at a time to save a little time. You can secure with glue to better keep the leaves in place. Next, wrap floral wire around the pine cones and attach to the leaf form. Before you know it, you have a very beautiful, colorful fall wreath.

Make this festive fall wreath yourself. It’s easy.

Materials needed: 2-3 bags of preserved leaves, 1 bag of pine cones, scissors, floral wire, glue gun

Insert leaves into grapevine wreath form. Glue with glue gun if preferred to keep leaves in place.

Wrap floral wire around pine cones and secure to wreath form.

My next project was to decorate the outside front entry. I picked up two bales of pine straw from my local nursery. These will serve double duty as autumn decor and material for my composting garden beds. I also picked up pumpkins and gourds from Trader Joe’s, mums from WalMart and Indian Corn from Home Depot. The scarecrow was something Juliette picked out at Michaels. On each bale of hale, I placed one pumpkin and one mum. The mums were dressed up a little with apple baskets I got at Hobby Lobby. I made bows for the indian corn using this tutorial here and secured them to my pillars using fishing wire. I am pleased with the results. Next year, I think I’ll get larger bales of hay for a more dramatic effect.

Finally, it was time to dress up the mantle in the family room. This was not too difficult, as the accent colors in this room are gold and green, and it already decorated with a woodsy theme. All I had to do was add gourds near the candle pillars, relocate my apothecary jar of pears to the end of the mantle and fill a glass vase with coconut husk (from planter liners) and pinecones. The wicker pear and basket of large pine cones both live on the fireplace year round. Next year, I am going to add garland of either fabric leaves or painted pine cones. I think that would be a nice touch.