TONS (TOO MUCH) FALL DECOR

Happy Saturday!  We are at the lake where it is cold and windy and rainy, and simply miserable.   Outside.  Inside we have fire going in both the fireplace and the wood burning stove.  The Husband puts a cast iron pot of water on the stove to add humidity to the air and it feels heavenly.  He's in the loft watching the Notre Dame game like most everyone in the upper Midwest, and me, well, I'm going to get a post out and then I have all the ingredients to make a decadent comfort food sort of dinner.  Soon.  

I'm showing you a brief glimpse of my mantel which I haven't changed up much from the last time you saw it. lol! I found (or should I say Emily found) this faux white pumpkin with the gold bling on it on one of our recent trips to Homegoods.  She was ahead of me and lamented, "I wish I could afford that pumpkin."  I reached ahead of her and dropped it in my cart.  "That's okay, Em.  I love it and I can afford it."  Ooh, dagger eyes! :) 

I was emailing back and forth with a really sweet girl who works for Modani Furniture.  She happened upon my fall mantel, very much like the one above (Ha!), and really liked how I had mixed the modern metal spheres with the sort of homespun pieces and bits of nature here and there.  I guess it all relates to buying the pieces we love and doing some mixing and matching.  Everything is so much more interesting this way.  So Addison, from Modani, was asking me a few questions regarding what I've learned about decorating since that "first apartment", you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and what I might share now.  Well, I've had my focus on redoing our den into a sort of "Woman Cave".  Isn't that a neat concept?  I mean, why should they have all the  fun?  Where's our cave?  Please don't say the kitchen.   So I am going to be putting some ideas to paper and I'm going to be searching high and low for ideas and the pieces I want to have in this very me sort of space.  And I am going to be looking at Modani, which has 10 showrooms in the country, one not too far from me in Chicago.  So more on that later!

 

Last year I did a very minimal, sparse and natural sort of fall decor inside.  Outside was another story!! With all of the great variety  of pumpkins and flowers I found at my nursery here in Michigan...I had a ball and also brought lots of good stuff home to Emily and DIL, Mary Clare.  This year I did the complete opposite.  I brought it ALL out, the indoor stuff that is, and I've covered every freaking surface!  This is the table next to The Husband's chair.  I love it because he has to keep his ridiculously boring Civil War books on the floor next to him, as well as the 300 remotes he uses for one TV.  He's forced to bring his coffee cups to the kitchen because he won't have room for his candy wrappers or ice cream.  Ha!

  This is another table that I managed to keep simple and neat.  Ha!  A big departure for my non~minimalist style.

My

 front porch is just a simple mix of the rainbow mums I told you about in my last post, and some pansies I found at the same garden center.  A few pumpkins from my grocery.  I'm spraying the pumpkins with Pledge furniture polish and it's a tried and true remedy for keeping the squirrels away from them.  My neighbors either think I am crazier as ever out there spraying the pumpkins...or wondering how the heck I can keep pumpkins with the rodents everywhere.  My little secret.  And yours.  And this is the first time I ever made an urn filled with plants.  I hope it looks okay.  It was a challenge.  

I love this color combo.  Pansies last so well for us after a few mild frosts.  And they are the blowzy type of flower I love so much.  They don't like heat so I only have them in the early spring and fall.  

I've got a picture of my two granddogs at play!  Rusty and Tulo met up at their favorite hiking trail with Emily and Jeff (very close to his house, which is surrounded by forest preserves and hiking trails).  They had a blast.  Tulo loves water above and beyond any dog I've ever seen.  I have to put Milo's water bowl up on the counter when Tulo comes over.  What he doesn't totally lap up, he will paw at to spill on the floor so he can lie in it!  As pretty as his white coat is, Jeff simply towels him off and he later gets a mudroom bath.  Can you believe he is not yet a year old?  Seven months old to be exact.

We left for Michigan early yesterday afternoon.  Yes, the Sears repairman came as I wrote about last week and no, my stove cannot be repaired.  Well, at least for not less than half of what a new one would cost.  So we are looking and pricing and sometimes just pretending that we don't actually need a stove.  I brought some food up here, especially veggies that I just couldn't stand to watch get wasted.  The rain came almost as soon as we left.  This is the road off the main highway that leads us to the lake.  The colors really haven't started changing at all.  

The cornstalks have withered up and the sky looks merciless.  The wind has gusted up to 30 m.p.h.  Right now it's 41 degrees with a continuous downpour.  The lake has whitecaps although you can't really see them anymore as a sort of fog has settled over it. 

But, we feel happy and content.   While the looming surgery is always floating in and out of my mind, I look to the sleepy dogs for comfort, the fires going strong, and the sound of The Husband shouting and clapping upstairs.  My hands felt so good a few days ago that I decided to sleep without the gloves...maybe everything was getting better.  I awoke the next morning with no feeling whatsoever in my fingertips, they were swollen beyond belief and the slightest movement of my wrists was excruciating.  So, that's how afraid I am...I thought maybe things were better and  I could postpone everything.  Nope.  The gloves at night help me make it through the day.  I brought up two bags of my laundry, the whole hamper, and I've got that done and folded.  Both houses are neat and clean.  We're leaving tomorrow at noon and I will have nothing to do but shower, rest and prowl around in my robe.  Oh, maybe a quick DIY pedi.  ;-)  My surgery is scheduled for 6:15 a.m. Monday morning.  Piece of cake!

I'm ready to get cooking...boneless pork ribs, fresh steamed broccoli and two huge, beautiful acorn squashes with butter and brown sugar!

So I'm off.  I will try hard to get back to blogging soon.  You have all sent so many good wishes, don't feel you need to do that again.  Tell me what you've done to pretty everything up for fall.  Do you have pumpkins?  Do you like the weird colored ones?!  Any suggestions for the Woman Cave?  Okay...how about...if you were going to do a Woman Cave for yourself, name one thing you would have to have in it!  Please! :)

Much love to all,

Jane xx