The Sights and Aromas of Autumn for Your Home

by Lois Breneman, © 2006, Heart to Heart

 

As nice as natural decorations are, three years ago I decided to switch to mostly nice artificial decorations, such as brightly colored pumpkins from craft stores to use in my fall decorating.  Why?  For three reasons - beautiful simplicity, savings and less clean-up.  I found this to be a quick, easy and less expensive way to decorate!  This way I don't have to continually buy pumpkins each fall at rather high prices only to find them thrown into the street or see them rot on my sunny front porch.  The gorgeous colorful pumpkins, gourds and silk fall flowers that I found in craft stores over the last few years will be a decorating investment for years to come.  Rather than buying everything all at once, spreading it out and buying mostly things on sale made it easier on the budget.  But now this year it was so easy to simply get the fall decorations out of my fall storage boxes for my front porch and inside my home - with no further shopping necessary this year or for a long time to come.

 

For a fall basket of pumpkins on the front porch, in order to raise up the pumpkins a bit, so less decorations are needed, I stuffed the bottom of a large fall basket with newspaper and covered it with tissue paper, so the ink wouldn't rub off onto the pumpkins.  Different sized pumpkins and vivid fall flowers were arranged in the basket, covering all the tissue paper.  A few more pumpkins were arranged on the porch, in front of the basket, as an overflow from the basket.  Autumn decorations, rather than Halloween decorations are what I choose to display in my home and our fabric store had a vast array of lovely door decorations at half price.  I hung one decoration on the door and two more on the nails driven into the brick on either side of our door.  Then using small hooks at the bottom of our front windows, used each December for poinsettia swags, I hung garlands of colorful fall leaves below the two center windows.

 

For the kitchen table I use colorful gourds, smaller pumpkins and fall flowers from a craft store arranged around an orange pillar candle or a jar candle in the center of a large doily.  Sometimes I place them on a colorful autumn platter and add bright fresh apples for eating.  Mixing fresh decorations with silk works very well.

 

Years ago I bought a dozen large burgundy-red paper mache' apples and usually arrange them either in a large copper bowl or on a four level metal tier - you know the type you often see at Christmas with a pineapple on the very top level, and apples beneath.

 

A touch of autumn can be added by arranging garlands of colorful silk leaves on the fireplace mantel, hearth, or around chandeliers.  Add swags of autumn flowers above framed pictures and mirrors.  Add baskets filled with colorful chrysanthemums, gourds, pumpkins and orange nandina berries.  If you have orange nandina or pyracantha berries growing in your yard, you are most fortunate, and by all means, use those rather than silk ones.

 

Arrange a lovely basket or cornucopia of nature's bounty, including fresh fruits, vegetables, walnuts, almonds and acorns and tuck in a few silk autumn flowers and a sprig or two of orange nandina berries or pyracantha berries, also known as firethorn. 

 

Ahhh!  The smell of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg!  Aluminum foil on your stove burner with sprinkles of spices will permeate your home with these aromas when turned on the lowest setting.  The spices could also be added to water in a simmering potpourri pot.  Or make an autumn potpourri by mixing together orange peels, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla and even the contents of herbal tea bags and spread the wonderful natural aroma around using a simmering potpourri pot.  Make use of fragrant candles in autumn colors and aromas such as pumpkin, spice and hazelnut.

 

You might want to change your sofa and chairs by covering them with rich warm autumn hues - mixing a warm patterned quilt on the sofa and solid pieces of coordinating fabric on the chairs.  Change the tie backs on your curtains, add pillows, throws, quilts in autumn colors, if you want. 

 

I'm sure you won't want to try all of these ideas - I don't.  You might want to choose just a few to start out and add to your fall decorations for a few years.  Don't overdo though, or it may grow to be as much work as putting up and taking down Christmas decorations! 

 

When when you take down your autumn decorations - items you won't use until next fall, store them all together in large plastic covered storage containers, and label them for easy access for the following year.   Let your children join in the fun of decorating too!