Purple Haze

Our living room just got a little more cozy.  We are switching out our accent colors for fall and winter!  Turquoise and spring green are being traded for aubergine and warm yellow!  And we're doing it on the super-cheap.  Here's a sneak peek:  pillows with a great chevron pattern that we found for $14 each at Marshalls.

Pillow love.

Isn't she pretty?  Her twin sister ain't so bad, either.

I've got some sewing projects in the works and an order from Target on the way that will complete the seasonal transformation.  I should be ready to show off the finished product within a week!

Countdown to Halloween

We are ready for Halloween 'round these parts!  Last year we had a handful of trick-or-treaters, maybe a dozen or so, and we shut things down once the teenagers started coming back for seconds.  I wonder if we'll get more kids this year, now that our house has been steadily occupied for 14 months...?

We don't go all-out for Halloween decorating, but we do try to make our front porch look inviting with some seasonal decorating and spooky lighting.  Just like decorating for fall inside our house, I have an aversion to spending much money on holiday-specific decor (Christmas lights exempt).  Plus, I hated scary stuff when I was a kid (I guess I still do- I can't bear to watch horror movies), so I just try to make things look harvest-y with a little spooky flair.  And I have to put very little effort into it, because the maple tree out front does a great job for me.

Thus begins a month's worth of weekends spent raking leaves.

We mostly used what we had- glass jars, old candles, watering cans.  And we spent about $20 on pumpkins, more candles, and some Halloween-colored glittery filler.  I've got a few mason jars that will light the path on Halloween night (filler plus tealights in mason jars = cheap, easy, cute).  And our front porch will be aglow as well.

House of Horrors?  Not since we started DIYing.

Here's some close-ups of the Halloweeny vibe.  Admittedly not very scary or impressive, but just wait until it's dark out and all the candles are lit.

Ignore the outlets.

I love the glittery filler.  Michael's had bags of black, silver, orange, purple, and green glitter balls on sale for super cheap, so I bought one of each.  Can't wait to see how the candlelight bounces off those babies at night!

I don't know why the watering cans go but they do!

So now our porch is ready for trick-or-treaters!  I am putting a fall wreath on my list for items to buy next year, which will hopefully hang on a new or freshly painted front door.  And can I just say how totally in love I still am with our paint choices for the exterior?  Although Martha's Flagstone tuned out more tan than I anticipated, I still dig it, especially with white trim.  Makes me eager to start some landscaping projects next spring!

Pumpkinized!

Like it's a real word.  The grocery store was indeed good to me and things look sooo much better.

Happy fall, ya'll!

Decorating for Fall

I know, I know.  Technically it's been fall for over a month.  Two things have prevented me from getting on the fall decor train, though.  I am a teacher, so obviously September and October are not months when I have a surplus of time to keep my house looking exactly the way I want.  And aside from our lightning fast exterior painting weekend in early July, us Western Washingtonians didn't get legit summer weather until August, and that summer weather kindly extended all the way into early October.  As much as I love fall colors and all things snuggly and cozy, I just could not bring myself to decorate for fall until the weather felt like fall (and because every teacher's favorite season is obviously summer).

My decorating has been pretty simple.  I was aiming for a fall feel without spending a lot of money or having things look too theme-y.  So essentially I've decorated the top of the piano and that's it.  But, oh what fun I had decorating the top of that piano!  The last we saw the living room, the piano looked like this:

Let there be light!

We had managed to hang the mirror and Frankensteined a lamp from Ikea (base) and Amazon (shade).  Now things look more like this:

Why yes, that *is* an antler.

Some of what is going on up there are items that are "shopped" from the rest of my house.  The pillar candle wraps I bought through Partylite four years ago and still love.  The stack of vintage hardcover books we inherited from our families or found at garage sales and thrift stores.

Bibliophiles live here (and use books to give height when decorating).

Some of the items were inexpensive finds that I intend to use or re-use across many seasons.  The wheat sheaf came from One Kings Lane.  I got it for about $10 after using my credit from my latest kitchen rug fail, and its twin is hanging out on my dining room table.  I bought the picture frame on sale from a local department store- I love the distressed green and it was $7, I couldn't say no.  And it went perfectly with the free printable I downloaded from the interwebs.

You had me at pumpkin spice.

The only item that really made a dent in our pocketbook was the antler.  It's resin, not real, and it's from Z Gallerie.  I felt like I could justify the purchase because it's manly and rustic (so of course Steve digs it), and it's an interesting focal piece with large scale that will be able to transition well through seasons and compliment a pretty wide range of decor (which made the $40 price tag less intimidating).  Also, I have been lusting after that antler since June, people.  It was time to pull the trigger.

Piano-tastic.

I usually straight up skip decorating for a particular holiday in fall, because I'm lazy.  And because I'd rather save my cash than buy holiday-specific decorations that take up space in my already cramped garage for 11.5 months out of the year.  But now that we've got a lot of the major time- and cash-draining projects in making this house live-able done, I'm happy to bring some fall goodness into our living room (and it'll be able to stay through Thanksgiving).

Although now that I'm looking at the pictures.... I think we have a serious defecit in the pumpkin department.  We'll see if the grocery store fairy has some sales for me tomorrow.