Autumn in My Home Blog Hop {worst place. Ding!}

 

 

As our family grows, we’ve settled into a few seasonal traditions which are unique to us, which mostly involve baked goods and lots of coffee.

While I truly believe I’d take great joy out of decorating our home, I generally put little effort into it mostly based on the fact that we’ve always rented, and the words this is not really your home emblazoned in my mind’s eye have me back off of the more extravagant ideas I think up– which in truth, is better for everyone…

…Think of me pulling out my high school Wicked Witch of the West’s broom prop with the idea to somehow to hang it over the mantle –I mean that thing is close to authentic as it gets, which means it’s large, it’s heavy, it’s dirty, and probably full of friends of Hagrid after sitting years in my parents’ attic– and creating an autumn-y garland out of lacquer-coated leaves gathered by my boys, to hang from it.  À la:

Yep, see. Always best to draft it out. Super cute.     …      :|

PLUS. Craig’s kind of the interior decorator of this outfit, and he’s only super motivated during Christmas time.

There’s also the fact that it’s me battling 4 males in the house who believe the sink is also a trashcan, and who easily slop through multiple changes of clothes daily, creating mounds and mounds of laundry, and if I were fine spending all the days of my life simply cleaning, perhaps all my homemaking problems would be solved, but there are far better things to sketch or crochet or bake or photograph or blog about in life, and decorating simply falls last on the list of things I cannot stay on top of.

Nevertheless! I still agreed to blog along with Bonnie at A Knotted Life and some seriously talented ladies who all make their homes look lovely this time of the year. Someone has to set the bar applebottomjeansbootswiththefur low low low low low low low, right? Right.

What do I do in our house for the Fall?  

I like to have pockets of pretty, which upon feeling like I’m sinking into an abysmal black hole of clutter, catch my eye and I can go “Oh, okay, that’s not so bad right there,” and I regain the will to live.

So last year, the boys painted their pumpkins, which we placed on our mantle next to a little turkey-made-out-of-a-pinecone craft they did with my mom (she’s a preschool teacher and has the cutest little crafts up her sleeve all the time). I’ve pretty much reasoned that until the boys are big enough to brandish knives and clean up their own pumpkin entrails, on top of knowing well enough to STAY AWAY FROM THE FIRE HAZARD, I’m not cutting into those mothers for anything. The mantle remains decorated with pumpkins and turkeys until December.

I was so disappointed in the non-curly-vined pumpkin selection this year that I have to share last year’s pictures instead.

I like to keep the small space above the kitchen sink decorated for the same reviving-my-will-to-live reason as explained above.  After convincing myself that hanging an enormous broom in our living room was a bad idea, even though I’d already sent the boys to collect fallen leaves for the garland, I decided to throw the leaves into a dish, toss some ugly gourd-like things on top of it, and call it a day.  Add a pumpkin-y scented candle, and as Lexington likes to say, it smells like victory in here.

Worst place. Ding!

Other things we do which make it feel cozy and fallish are:

–Brew up an espresso with steamed milk and sprinkle with pumpkin spice.
–Have Apple Cider doughnuts freshly baked from a local farm for breakfast. That is, if we can all find shoes in enough time to beat the crowd.

-Bake cookies- lots of cookies.  My favorite Autumn cookie recipe is an Old Fashioned Iced Oatmeal cookie, with warm nutmeg and cinnamon in the ingredients.  For as much as I always find myself disappointed in an oatmeal cookie, I’d rank these above yon classic chocolate chip. Say it’s not so!  Oh it is. If you’re interested, here’s my pin.  There’s nothing more autumn-y than the smell of these puppies wafting from the oven.

-Spend evenings watching Halloween-y movies.
We don’t celebrate Halloween in the way of candy begging or glorifying the evil or gory- and we don’t watch those types of movies either.  If I haven’t already passed out for the night, we curl up to my favorites, after the boys are in bed:

Mel Brook’s  Young Frankenstein

Arsenic and Old Lace

Harry Potter

The Lord of the Rings

 So there you go, that’s what we do in the Autumn around the house!  For far lovelier ideas, hop through the links  below to visit Bonnie and friends.

How do you welcome fall into your home?

A Knotted Life | Mama Needs Coffee | Fountains of Home | This Ain’t the Lyceum | Surviving our Blessings | Team Whitaker | Clan Donaldson | House for Five | Two O’s + More | Better Than Eden