It's beginning to look alot like autumn. . .

It's fall. You know how I know? No. . . not because I am finally pulling my sweaters out of the closet and cozying up with some hot chocolate. It is over 90 degrees here today, so there is no chance that it feels like fall. No apple cider (yum!) is on the stove and no delicious and deliciously easy veggie stews are warming in the crock pot.

No, the only way I know it's fall is that I am decorating as such. I have chosen to not decorate for Halloween this year and jump straight into autumn and Thanksgiving. Although I love Halloween, I will be working this October 31 (as I did the last) and last year Hubby turned off the porch light and ate all the candy I had bought for trick-or-treaters. Better to just not buy it and skip Halloween this year without me home to supervise.

Here is my first attempt at decorating for fall.

Starting with an empty tub, which, when it was given to Hubby as a present, was filled with liquor (yay!):


And, ending with:


Now, you might be wondering - where on earth did I get so many fake flowers? No, I did not rob a Hobby Lobby store. I am a pack rat. Although my Hubby would say that I throw too much out (as he is from a family of ultimate pack rats), not many others would agree. And those flowers are from my wedding two years ago this month. I wanted real flowers adorning all 18 of my tables, only to come crashing back to reality when I realized the absurd cost that would be. As I am not a debutante, a celebutante or and other -tante, I decided that fake flowers were good enough for me.

But not just fake flowers.

I made pretty much everything except my dress for my wedding. Invitations, gifts, decorations. I wasn't paying anyone to do what I could do much better and much cheaper. I can be pretty crafty sometimes, I think. Being that my wedding was in October and my colors were green and orange (Which, no matter what you are thinking were the most beautiful colors. Really. I can prove it with pictures.), I wanted my centerpiece decorations to be carved pumpkins with autumn flowers. And I would carve them myself (with the help of family, of course).



So, when the wedding was over, I couldn't throw out all those flowers, could I? NO!! They were perfectly good flowers, and one of the things I like best about fake flowers is that I don't have to remind Hubby to water them when I am out of town. So, being the good recycler that I am, I put them away and finally took them out today to see what I could do with them. And I still have half a box left. I had alot of flowers that day!

***On a side note. . . . . Hubby liked my idea for pumpkin centerpieces, but thought that we needed something more, too. (He was a very involved groom.) He thought that we could split the centerpieces - do 9 tables of the pumpkins and 9 tables of his idea. What was his idea?



Three picture frames glued together to form a trifold frame. Each frame had three pictures printed on vellum paper: one of me as a child, one of him as a child and one of us together. A candle was placed in the middle of the frames, and as the light waned through the beautiful picture windows of our reception hall/outdoor lodge, the candle and pictures glowed even more beautifully. I was hesitant at first, but the final result was gorgeous!!