Fall Decorating 2020

I started decorating for Fall at the end of August when I put the lotus pods and the Fall runner back on top of the yellow dresser at the end of the hall. That led me to bring out the Fall pillow for the hall bench. My youngest sister had made several of these patchwork leaf panels before she died and her daughter gave one to me and one to my other sister. I made mine into a pillow and I love bringing it out each Fall.

One of the bloggers I read posed the question, “Do you ever have an internal struggle between the ease of doing the same thing you did last year or mixing it up a little by adding something new?” Well, no I don’t struggle – I like doing the same things every year AND adding something new. This year I put my velvet pumpkins in a basket and put them on the bench that had belonged to my older daughter and now sits below our gallery wall.

And when I got a cute little pumpkin person from my Birmingham niece I knew it belonged on the top of the china cabinet which hosts pretty much the same pieces as last year.

The Day of the Dead decorations are new to the top of the china cabinet. I gave the doll made by my Birmingham niece to my older daughter for her birthday a few years ago and bought her the Day of the Dead cat in front of the blue vase at a CVS. The Day of the Dead cat mask displayed on a pumpkin was made by my Birmingham niece and I wore it for Halloween the year she sent us all Day of the Dead masks.

I had moved Batty Girl and the Wicked Pumpkin over to the CD case last year and this year they were joined by the new skull fabric pumpkin I bought at Target and a skeleton arrangement we bought at a store that is going out of business (more on that in a bit).

Around the corner I hung something new – a skeleton I downloaded from the Ella Claire Inspired website.

We put the black trees in the dining room area windows again and decorated them with the Halloween and unbreakable Day of the Dead ornaments. They posed somewhat of a challenge in the beginning as it turns out Mr. Burns is one of those cats that thinks felt ornaments are cat toys.

Our biggest challenge this year was finding a branch for our Fall ornaments. Since we had a derecho this year (this was a new term to me – it turns out it is a storm like a tornado but in a straight line) and a lot of trees had lost their branches that we would have been able to find lots of possibilities for our Fall branch in the park. But because the park was such a mess with not only branches but trees all over the place and because many regular park activities are suspended in the Time of Coron, the park workers have been diligently cleaning up the branches so none remain. I had no idea how I was going to hang all my Fall decorations but after I saw my Birmingham niece’s daughter’s bird ornament wreath (see last post) I had an idea for some of my leaves and nuts.

But the wreath only held a small portion of the Fall ornaments. The store that is going out of business that I have mentioned a few times is both a gift store and a floral arrangement store so I thought maybe they would sell us some branches from one of their arrangements. They would! We bought three stalks that resemble grapevines but seem a bit sturdier and hung them up.

We were only able to hang the rest of the leaves and acorns and the pinecones and fruit. There was no room for the owls, foxes, and other Fall ornaments although we did squeeze in the three breakable Day of the Dead ornaments- one for each window. Each window also got an anthropomorphic leaf or acorn hanging above the branch.

We hung the leaf/ light garland in the window between the wreath and the branches.

A few more old favorites and our decorating was complete.