Fall 2022

We started our Fall decorating with some dried pods we got in Saugatuck. We saw them in the window of a closed small wellness store while we were waiting for a restaurant table one night and I have no idea what plant they’re from but I loved them so I went back the next day to buy them.

Then we began adding some tried and true elements – the pillow I made from a quilt block my sister sewed on the bench, the grapevine branches with the Fall ornaments in the living room, and the black Halloween trees in the dining room area. I also hung up the grapevine wreath with the Day of the Dead ornaments that I made last year. And we have a new piece of furniture this year so we had a new space to decorate!

Our neighbor moved to California for a year and rented her apartment unfurnished so we inherited a tall bookcase that seemed like it was made for our apartment. At first I thought it would go between the china cabinet and the bench and it fit but was overpowering so we moved the small bookcase there permanently (instead of just for Christmas) and put the large bookcase next to the sideboard. I filled it with the large bowl my sister gave me for Christmas last year, the Alexander Girard book my husband gave me for Christmas many years ago, a few art books and a bowl a friend gave me for Christmas one year on top of a little wooden stand from India that I bought at Marshalls as well as our Christmas memory books and a good chunk of our other memory books. I thought this new bookcase would be a good place to put the velvet pumpkins this year. There are some on the top shelf, some on the middle shelf in the bowl and on the stack of art books, and two on the Christmas book shelf below. On the top shelf I also put the wooden mushrooms I bought last year along with a new one I bought at an art fair this summer from Donzell Gordon.

I put a spooky barber shop I bought at an end of the season sale at World Market last year on the small bookcase. It needed something to camouflage the wooden bottom and the spooky graveyard skeletons we bought at that store that was going out of business a few years ago was perfect.

I was taken with a cute gnome on Instagram holding a lantern so I made two (and another little gnome holding a pumpkin when I came across the pumpkin buttons I got at the recycle table at the dump in Northampton several years ago) When my grandchildren came over I invited them to make some peg people too. They were spending the night and we watched Over The Garden Wall and I kept thinking the main character would make a cute peg person so I made him the next day.

And finally I searched for a vintage Halloween card to make my trick or treats this year and since they featured a pumpkin headed witch ghost I paired them with pumpkin candies.